His father is Episcopalian, my best friend’s mom is Episcopalian, they’re both parts of the Diocese of Queens and Long Island, so we used to actually go to religious retreats together, steal the church wine and go out and get drunk, so I knew Ted and I knew he knew his hip-hop because we used to talk about it at the time. I knew Ted, Ted and I were friends outside of I knew Ted since high school and we hung out together. Like, I would be with Gang Starr at D&D Studios with Premier explaining his process, or with the Bomb Squad talking about how they put Public Enemy’s records together, those little things, to me, meant a lot cause I was mad curious about them as well, you know.Įd Lover: I bugged Ted to death. That was kind of a new innovation I think in general, as far as music, where an artist could talk about how they make beats. On MTV Raps, you got to see it, as well as hear it and hear the artist explain their creative process. So it was just a great experience to introduce people to different types of music and show the lifestyle, that was important, as opposed to radio, where you just hear it. They did something different, like ‘let’s hang out in the clubhouse with them’ and artists came to see them, so they had a format that had some comedy and stuff and interviews and my thing was mostly moving around, traveling around the country and the world. And I’m not a funny kind of dude, like, I like a good joke, but Ed Lover and Doctor Dre had a perfect comedy idea. And I thought about it and I thought, you know, that was nice, but I felt like I would be overexposed. I went to the 5th Ward Houston with the Geto Boys, so I traveled around and took it to the streets and that was the blueprint and the formula that actually worked and spread the culture around the world.Įd Lover And Doctor Dre Become Yo! MTV Raps‘ Dynamic Duoįab 5 Freddy: What it was was they had asked me did I wanna go on and do it every day as well as every Saturday. And Peter said, ‘How would you wanna do it?’ I said ‘Man, well I would be more comfortable being on the street, going to the basement, whether artists is making music in Harlem or the Bronx.’ See where they live, let’s go to Compton, let’s go to Liberty City in Miami, that’s what I did. The concept of my show, from the beginning, was I didn’t wanna be cooped up in the MTV studios like the other VJ’s that were on the air cause I just thought it was corny how that looked and they was on for real long spectrum of times. But in New York, the shows were on the weekends for a couple of hours, so it was a revelation and people tuned in. At that point in time – I like to point out – rap radio, where you could hear rap records on the radio all day, every day was nowhere in existence, except maybe AM radio in California, a station called K-DAY. People tuned in, they liked what they saw. It was the highest-rated show the minute it went on the air and that started the ball rolling. He explained all the stuff I did, so they said ‘give it a shot.’ And that guy was me and the rest, they say, is history. And they were basically like ‘we should do something’ and MTV finally gave them a shot and Peter said I got just the person, I know him. So when the music was selling crazy with no marketing and no promotion, Peter was a big fan and he got with another dude that worked at MTV, named Ted Demme, who was also a fan of the music. He knew moves I was making with the movie Wild Style, like, just doing my art, making moves on the downtown scene having linked Blondie to the culture and that turned into a No. Fab 5 Freddy: It was a guy named Peter Dougherty, who sadly passed away a couple of years ago, he was a friend on the downtown scene in New York.
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