DJ Cashmoney (Wax Poetics, 2007)

 

DJ Cashmoney’s legacy as a turntable supremo began in 1988 when he won the DMC World Supremacy. After effortlessly beating down the competition , DMC banned him from entering the competition any more - no one else stood a chance, they said. The same year, Cash went on to win the New Music Seminar and American Mixing Championship competitions: he remains the only DJ in the world to have held all three titles simultaneously.

Applying his dextrous skills to the studio, Cash has also made a name as a diligent beatbuilder, putting out mixes for seminal labels such as Sleeping Bag and dropping old school jams like Where's the Party At? with partner MC Marvelous. Over the years he has worked with everyone from PM Dawn and Q-Tip to Busta Rhymes and The Roots.

His underground mix tapes have been sought after amongst the b-boy community, especially cult mixes like his WKIS-FM (a fantasy radio show) and his “Old School Need To Learn'O – Plots I & II”, which have sold out and been re-released time and time again.

Still active on the global club & festival circuits, Cash currently hosts a regular night in Manhattan called ‘The Get Down’ (@ Table 50), where he drops not hip hop jams but hot funk nuggets alongside pal Rich Medina.

His latest mixtape, “Head Bangin’ 45s”, started life as a promo for the night and features a fat stack of grooves from the likes of James Brown, Jean Knight, Ohio Players, Rick James, Dennis Coffey, Cymande, Betty Wright, Marva Whitney, Ike & Tina Turner, Pure Pleasure and Gil Scott Heron - all cut & blended to perfection by one of the world’s finest turntable craftsmen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I understand it you started out in hip hop listening to NYC tapes by Grandmaster Flash and Grand Wizard Theodore. Did you have any enlightening musical experiences before that?

I used to dance in a group in South-West Philly called The Franchise Dancers doing what we used to call ‘steppin’. We’d dance to James Brown, Black Heat, KC and The Sunshine Band etc. We used to have these parties in our neighbourhood where crews would challenge one another. A guy called Grand Wizard Rasheen made the music for us to dance to. He would mix r & b with old and hip hop beats on these tapes and also on local pirate radio. He was a dancer too and got me into DJ’ing. He introduced me to the New York stuff; to be honest with you he was doing stuff to the fifth power of what Flash was doing. As a young kid I used to ride to his house on my bike after football practice. The way that I DJ…my whole style down to the way I stand…is all from Rasheen. He taught me how to have a flow to the music, to know that if a record is 122 bpm, a 95 bpm record ain’t gonna work with it.

How did you get your first major shows?

At that time NYC had all the records but when the New York artists did concerts in Philly the promoters made sure that a few local acts were on the bill. That’s how we got introduced properly to the NYC scene. Me and [Jazzy] Jeff would open up for people like Doug E Fresh and because of that, as well as the house parties we used to do, we got a reputation on the streets. We would jam at parties in The Plateau [park] too in order to make our name locally. It was hard-core back then. We would be on top of roofs and there would be gang wars going on down below. Because we were doing the parties we got a kind of respect from the people and from the gang members. No one ever got paid much at these parties although that wasn’t an issue.

Was there a trigger tune that got you hooked on rap?

What really got me hooked was when I heard [Grandmaster Flash’s] ‘Superrappin’’. After that I heard the Live Convention tape in ‘81 and began listening to New York underground tapes. I had a lot of homies who would come down and we would battle those tapes. It’d be ‘I got this new Flash tape’ etc. Over the years I’ve been into every aspect of hip hop. I tried MC’ing, which I sucked at. I wasn’t that good at graf either so DJ’ing became my niche. I’ve always loved playing records; when mum and dad had parties in the house they would let me stay up late to play records. To put a mix together for me is still a beautiful thing.

What equipment did you start out mixing on?

I started off with a component set – one of those combined turntable and tape deck units, and then a couple of basic turntables, then finally Technics, the early belt driven ones. By the time I get myself some [Technics SL 1200 MK2’s] my hands were used to working with this early stuff; it was all good training. The first time I saw a 1200 was on a Malcolm McLaren single [‘Bufffalo Gals’] and the first one I touched was Jazzy Jeff’s.

You’ve been friends with Jeff for a long time…you DJ’ed together back in the day, right?

Yeah, myself and Jeff had a routine. We were called the “Twins of Spin”. I had a completely different style to Jeff but I introduced him to a lot of the scratches. He still is one of the top DJ’s in the world as far as I’m concerned. He was basically very neat and precise and I have a bit more rhythm than he does and I was a bit faster. Jeff was in the city and I was in the ‘burbs when we met. He introduced me to a promoter and I started getting on bills in the city. Our routine…I see the X-Ecutioners spinning now and it reminds me of what we used to do in those days. We would warm up for people like Salt n Pepa at first and then I started building a rep and becoming a headliner. Me and my MC [Marvelous] and another guy called Kool Breeze Steve used to also have routines. This was all in the days when we would collect beats and cover up the labels so no one could see them. I used to love having people running up to the decks and saying ‘What’s that? What’s that’? I’d say ‘come to the next party and I’ might tell ya’.

There must have been plenty of diggin’ to be done in Philly back then?

Philly at the time was a Mecca, there was such a major music scene, like, old warehouses that no one knew about selling 40,000 records for 49c a pop. There was a guy in this store Funk-o-Mart called Chino, he used to put stuff aside for me. I‘d walk in and he’d have stuff all ready for me to check out. He would order stuff in from NYC too, and because he was Hispanic he would put me onto the Spanish breaks as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You’re known for putting out underground hip hop mixes, but your latest release “Head Bangin’ 45s” is a funk mix…

Everybody knows me for hip hop but I’m a huge funk collector, always have been. I’ve always loved the music and wanted to put something together and I did this album initially as a promo for my night in NYC, “The Get Down”, which I run with Rich Medina and Botany 500. When I saw the initial response to it, I took some up to NYC and the response there was amazing too. The (Manhattan record store] Sound Library took twenty of them and within a matter of two days they all sold out. To this day they’re still asking for more. I go overseas a lot these days too and so I figured I’d see if I could get a deal or something. A company called Boombox ended up being down for a release so it’s been distributed in Europe now too.

What do you personally dig about the mix?

I’ve heard a few funk comps in my time but this is the kind of CD you can just put on and drive to. I don’t play the entire songs all the way through, which you get on most funk comps and I think that keeps it interesting. At “The Get Down” we play a big mix of stuff, and this promo is like a snapshot of what we do. The main thing that separates me from someone else as a DJ in general is that I have the ability to cut, but of course you don’t wanna cut too much, which is what I also avoid on the mix. It’s the same type of thing I do at my parties, a selection of party tunes. I’m not down with those guys at parties with their arms folded. I got ladies at the party to please, you know?

Is that why the mix has both rarities and well-known records...?

Like I said, it’s what we play at the party. You can’t go too over people’s heads. You have to let them get just a little taste. People’s attention spans are real short with something that they don’t know. I’d rather have them say ‘Oh, that’s where that record comes from’ and listen a bit more, and then the next mix I do I’ll go a little deeper if there is a demand for it. It’s hard to please everybody. If I put a mix out that’s really deep I don’t think it would sell much to the masses, though for the beatheads it’d be the shit. I had to kind of keep it on that level. But still, a lot of people I’ve given it to haven’t heard some of the tunes before. “I Got Some’ [by Billy Gardner] - a lot of people don’t have that record. “The Sugardaddy” [by Levert Allison] record is very hard to get and “Close Your Eyes” [by The Caprelles] is another one that’s hard to get. All the records on there are original 45 pressings too, even the ones that are well known. The only one that isn’t is “Fusion Beat” by James Brown, which is a bootleg from back in the 80s that has ‘Flash To The Beat’ on the other side, and that’s a pretty rare twelve anyway.

You’re known for having a, er, monumental record collection…

I love collecting. The greatest thing is to find something you’ve been looking for forever or to find something you didn’t know about. It’s an addiction. I don’t just collect funk and hip hop either, I’m deep into everything, you know like radio spot records, those records for commercials that would come on back in the day for the Blaxploitation, Kung-Fu and Horror flicks. I’m into collecting video footage, old Soul Train episodes, live concerts, cartoons, TV shows…most guys specialize in one thing, sneakers or records, but I have everything, even toys. I got board games, pinball machines, Muhammad Ali dolls, boomboxes. basketball cards, posters, the list goes on and on. Right now I’m looking at a cereal box of Frosted Rice Crinkles, the old brand of Rice Krispies, and it has a Jackson 5 record on the back that you can cut out and play. It even has the cereal still in it (laughs), it’s completely intact. I also collect old school trainers. Puma are making a sneaker for me that has my face on the tongue.

What’s the most expensive record you’ve bought?

I have funk 45s going up to $2500. Johnny King’s “Peace, Love Not War” is one of them, I have an absolutely mint copy. Kenny Dope just reissued that. I used to close down record stores, kick everyone out and buy up the whole place. I’ve done that three times. In Japan, I gave a store owner $10,000 to take everything he had. I left my clothes at the hotel, took all the rare stuff on the plane with me and shipped the rest home. No matter how much music I have it’s always an education.

What other music styles do you dig for?

The current craze is for late 80s hip hop twelves, real obscure stuff, not your EPMDs or whatever but stuff like the Busy Boys and Cobra MC’s. I have to give props to DJ Ivory from Nottingham [UK], he’s very deep in that area. A lot of big groups like Public Enemy, they were called something else, like Spectrum City so that stuff is a kick to find.

There has always been a question mark hovering over the invention of the transformer scratch. Both you and Jazzy Jeff have been credited with inventing it, as has DJ Spinbad. What’s the story from your side?
 
There was this video-tape I got with DJ Spinbad doing this new scratch. The tune was ‘It’s Time’ by Hasheem and he [Spinbad] scratched like “It’s tii-i-i-me”, bringing the fader back and forth. I saw that and said ‘I can make that better’. I made it sound like the Transformer Robot, the iconic cartoon of the era, which is where the name came from. Jazzy Jeff was the first person to put it on wax, on ‘I’m The Magnificent’.

You are also credited with developing other scratches like the shiver and the stutter: do you claim those as your inventions?

I used to do those scratches all the time and then I saw DST do them on TV. It’s crazy the way human minds work in complete synchronization sometimes, you know? Back then I never gave my scratches a name but I know for a fact I was doing those scratches too.

Your “Old School Need To Learn-O” tapes…how did they come about?

The title came from line in a Biggie song that says just that: “The old school need to learn-o,” and I thought “woah, right, people do need to learn the old school”. So the first mix I put out was ‘Plot I’ in ’95; that had all the early Sugarhill stuff, tracks like ‘Superrappin’’, my first inspirations. Grand Wizard Theodore and Red Alert are on there, giving shouts. ‘Plot II’ came out a short time later and had more of the late 80s stuff on it, my own cuts and stuff from Biz Markie, Marley Marl etc. I’m going to re-release both of them when I get some time. I want to put some extra surprises on there for people.

In 1998 you became the World’s Best DJ in the DMC Hall Off Fame. How did that feel?

Getting recognized for something is a beautiful thing. I’m a humble thing, or I try to be, and I don’t take anything for granted. I mean I’ve worked hard. I’m still rocking major festivals and I don’t have a major publicist or any records out, so with me what you get is still just the raw talent. I mean, I do get mad if there’s no credit or props where it’s due sometimes as I don’t think that hurts. I didn’t wake up and became DJ Cashmoney for example, I had to learn from other people.

How much has hip hop changed?

There needs to be more peace. I think artists need to shut the fuck up and just feed their kids, you know? A lot of people are making a lot of money out there so why do we have all this violence and thuggery?