Known for the 1990 Zakia Records fast-rap gem, “Massive Material/Run For Cover,” Bolaji Barber recently re-emerged with a new album project called The Vinyls on his own Hotstyle Music label. I recently caught up with the North Babylon native over the phone from his new hometown of Orlando and, it turns out, he never really left rap behind.

JS: What is the Vinyls thing about, is it a group?
Bolaji: No, it’s just me. Some people were googling my name and found me through some mixtape stuff I was doing, and they were asking if I was the same Bolaji that did “Massive Material/Run for Cover.” They were from overseas—the U.K., Poland, Belgium, Holland. They said, “You don’t know how many people are looking for you and wondering what happened to you,” and started giving me websites to check with people looking for my older stuff. I guess the record did a lot better overseas than I knew about. I got to talking to some outlets who were asking me for the product I had did from then to now, and I’m trying to ship some CDs, and they’re like, “No, we don’t want that.” They all wanted vinyl. So I said I’m going to try to capitalize off that, and give the people what they were asking for. Rather than repress “Massive Material” and “Run For Cover,” I threw a new mix together of “Massive Material.” I left the instrumental the same, didn’t touch the hook, and basically did three new verses but built off the original. Just to reintroduce me as the same guy they liked before.

JS: So you’re living in Florida now. Were you originally from North Babylon?
BB: I was born in Port Jeff, but when I got introduced to music, it was North Babylon. I really consider my [music] to be a North Babylon thing. I was primarily there from 13 through 16, then I was floating around that immediate area in Brentwood, Bay Shore, Islip.

JS: Were you in school with LL Cool J and Freddie Foxxx?
BB: Freddie was in high school when I was in junior high. That was an older crowd. But Freddie was like my brother, because he used to date my sister for years. We had Thanksgiving and all that, he was always in the house. When he was doing his Freddie Krueger project, I was spitting my little freestyle sessions on the corner on Mount Avenue. I was in my beginning stages and he was in the stage where people were starting to recognize him as an artist with Supreme Force. I looked up to Freddie because he was making moves, and he was willing to lend some knowledge and whatever I wanted to know. LL was right down the street from Freddie. He wasn’t really known for ripping anything until he moved away. People knew him for running his mouth. As far as hip-hop, I can’t say I was looking towards him. There were so many other people and crews at the time. There was Royal Flush, Rakim’s camp. So many names I can’t remember.

JS: Were you connected to Ra at all?
BB: The Five Percenters was kind of prominent in that time. Everybody was on some conscious stuff, kind of what Rakim brought to the forefront. I used to bump heads around that time with MCs who were letting me know where I could take my skills to actually get recorded in a studio. There were some little studios around the neighborhood so you weren’t just pressing record on the tapedeck. And I ran across Ron Griffin, Ra’s brother. Do you know him?

Ra’s brother that’s the music teacher.
BB: Right. He couldn’t really help me out directly because of conflict of interest, which I didn’t even know about at that time, but he gives me the phone number for Robert Hill from Zakia, which [Rakim] was signed to. Dude hooked me up right away when he knew that Ron was referring me to him. My demo was tight—my production was weak but my rhymes was on point. He said, “I’m interested in seeing what you can do in a studio where you got a better sound. I got a producer, he’s rough around the edges but I feel he’s got some talent.” He gave me some funds and a number to Eugene Sackey, the guy that ended up doing the production for “Massive Material” and “Run for Cover.” As soon as I left Manhattan, I shot over to Lefrak City in Queens. We recorded a bunch of things that day, I came back the next day and the next and probably within about a week we came up with “Massive Material.”

“MASSIVE MATERIAL”

“RUN FOR COVER”

JS: When was this?
BB: It was ‘89 when I brought the demo with “Massive Material” and “Run For Cover.”

How old were you then?
BB: 16. King Sun was in the development stages at that time. Zakia had a lot of artists but it was such a shysty environment. Reality Records and 4th & Broadway were all part of the same network, and they were all being distributed by Profile. There were so many hands in the pot. But we had all these grassroots artists that were really coming with it, and Robert Hill was really ready to put his money behind them.

JS: Who is Eugene Sackey? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that name doing anything else.
BB: He did a bunch of stuff after that for Zakia that was never released. O.C. was on Zakia at that time. He recorded a bunch of stuff at the same studio I was in. It was me, him, another guy named Rock One. I was supposed to be routed through 4th and Broadway. I don’t know what happened but some stipulations [Robert Hill] had with them didn’t pan out because of some money issues with people not getting royalties. When that happened, the O.C. project and Rock One fell through and even King Sun wasn’t getting any push. We weren’t hearing much of the record here. We was getting a little bit of play from Kid Capri on WBLS. Whoever was getting paid to do that, they wasn’t getting paid anymore and that was the end of that story. But while that was going down that record was actually doing well in other countries.

JS: Why did the label release a second version of “Massive Material” that basically wasn’t as good as your second single?
BB: You’re talking about the “I Want You” record. [Laughs]. I never understood what happened. That mix of “Massive Material” was remixed without me. I didn’t know about it ’til it was done. I asked Eugene, “What the hell is this?” He wasn’t really feeling it himself and I said, “Why are you doing it then?” He said Robert Hill wanted a club mix of it. I guess because it was doing well overseas, he was trying to get whatever what he could out of it because he was running the label into the ground. He started making all these other mixes. But the only thing commercially released was the remix of “Massive Material” with “I Want You.” At that time, the whole get to know the girl thing was happening.

JS: Did you record any other material?
BB: We recorded a whole album with 12 songs at Chung King Studios, which was going to be called In Demand. They spent some money. I can’t say we were totally jerked because if we told Robert Hill, “We need some bread, when are we going to start seeing some money?” he would just dig in his pocket and break us off. I can’t say that I didn’t get nothing. Over the two years we was running with him, he was giving us money. I’m sure we were entitled to more. I should have appointed somebody that knew better. I took the contract to a lawyer that wasn’t an entertainment lawyer. I didn’t know the difference between entertainment lawyers versus criminal lawyers versus paralegals. I was so excited to be getting to where I was going as a rapper that I let the important things get by. But that forced me to to learn how this business really works. So, we didn’t release anything else off that album because while we were waiting, he closed up shop.

JS: Being around Rakim and King Sun, were you on the Five Percent thing as well?
BB: I would take on their lessons and build with them at that time but I never took on an attribute or claimed to be anything. I was always one to dig a little deeper, and if I had a question and you had to beat around the bush with some sort of mathematical philosophy then, to me, you wasn’t sure about yourself and why should I take part in something you’re not even sure about. I saw people well-known in the neighborhood for being so “righteous,” but they would do so many things not righteous that I had a problem becoming one. But at the same time I was cool with a lot of them. I needed to know what it was because there was so much of that going around.

JS: What ever happened to Robert Hill and that guy Eugene Sackey?
BB: Robert Hill, don’t know where he’s at, or if he’s even still alive. But Eugene Sackey, I still talk to on a daily basis. We became really good friends outside of music. He actually owns a recording studio now in Lefrak City.

JS: What did you go and do after the Zakia thing dried up?
BB: In ‘92, I hooked up with another local producer, Alex Geary, and we got together with a few other local MCs and created a group called the Original Ruffnecks. That project ended up going to Top 40 Management, this local management company and they got some funding together. Their clients were more like C&C Music Factory, not hip-hop. Me being reluctant to get into any other contracts, I was just recording and doing shows. But we recorded this project called Explicit. Do you remember Carol Shaya, the police officer who got fired after she posed for Playboy? There was a lot of publicity over that, at the time. The New York Post wrote something like, “She posed for an underground sexist rap group,” saying she was representing violence. She was actually married to a sergeant, and they denied it. But that was her that posed for the record. She posed partially nude at the back of a court building holding a gun. And then she posed for Playboy. When that happened, Top 40 Management said, “We can use this.”

Okay, I’m vaguely starting to remember this. This was a record cover for your group?
BB: Yeah, but it never got released. At that time, people were eating up the controversy over gangster rap. So our management was thinking we can get in the mix. We called it Explicit because I was talking some real dirty shit on the intro to the record. And that’s why they got this sexy chick to pose for the cover. That ended up being the lead they used to promote, and this “movie murderer” thing. I did a song, well it was more like an intro, before horrorcore was even out called “Movie Murderer.” The guy’s name was Johnny Camisa. He was not a hip-hop promoter. It wasn’t his field and he couldn’t get it to the right people. But the people financing the project thought he could, and they wanted to spend the money. They started coming up with all these promotional scams to push the project and get this immediate exposure. But every plan they came up with, I really wasn’t interested in. [Laughs] You feel me?

JS: What were some of the ideas they had?
BB: I knew you were gonna say that. You ain’t gonna let me slide on that, huh? OK, for instance, they wanted me to supposedly be mad at the chick that posed for the cover. Because she was getting so much publicity at the time. They wanted to hold a press conference, and they worked it out with her where they were going to pay her, and they wanted me to crash her press conference, and wile out on camera, screaming on this lady who I had no problem with. At this point, I’m seeing what they’re trying to make me out to be. They’re trying to clown me, get me to be this ignorant knucklehead getting stupid in the street, and kill my career. I said, “What does that have to do with what we’re trying to do?” You can pretty much guess what happened with the project after that.

JS: Did you get anything on the radio at least?
BB: This one called “Rack Em up” leaked to some DJs, and became popular on the underground. I remember the whole promo was “Breaking Boundaries in ‘93.” You know the issue of The Source with Run DMC on the cover with their shaved heads for the first time? That issue has a full-page poster of me inside of it.

The investors were these guys from the Huntington area, and they tried to put the whole tough guy act on me, like “You don’t know what you’re doing, you’re gonna do this.” I was like, “I’ll meet you there.” And never showed up. And that was it. They opened a restaurant and forgot all about music. After that, I hooked up with a few different artists and groups from Brentwood, Bay Shore and C.I. and Rip Styles from Wyandanch, and we did the High Council Unsigned All-Stars project. Me and this guy Patrick formed [a label] High Council Entertainment. I made a little money with the Original Ruffnecks, and I re-invested it into the High Council Unsigned All-Stars project, along with everybody else who had their own song on that record. Even though me and Patrick were the heads, everybody was in control of that project. We sold some copies out the trunk and one of the girls that rhymed on there, Shorty, was from New Jersey and her father was real popular over there, I’ll leave it at that, and he got promotions cracking in Jersey. We generated enough money to come up with money for a second, more refined album called Project S.C.A.R. Four of us out of all the groups on the Unsigned All-Stars stuck together and created this one group called High Council. And that came out around 2000.

HIGH COUNCIL-”NO STRESS”

You’re gonna laugh but I was selling “Massive Material”/”Run For Cover” for 186 euros. I thought somebody was trying to clown me. I had a few in my garage that didn’t get warped by the heat so I posted em up on Discogs.com. I sold every one of ‘em.

JS: Do you know about the random rap mixtapes? Records get on those, and the price kind of gets out of control. I read on my man Noz’s site, Cocaine Blunts, that people were paying a lot for your record because of that.
BB: I know what you’re talking about. I actually found an article that was like a little review of “Massive Material.” The guy was actually giving some props to the original “Massive Material” and dogging out the remix.

JS: Yeah, that’s what I’m referring to.
BB: He said something like “Bolaji’s my man but I don’t know what Eugene Sackey was on when he remixed it.” I actually sent the article to E after I read it and he said, “What the fuck is that all about?” I told him, he should have never took that over to [Robert Hill at Zakia]. We got a few laughs.