Stones Throw Records

“I started buying records weekly. I could only afford the 45 singles, but that was enough for me.” I first discovered popular music as a young kid in the mid 1970’s. The first song I remember making an impact on me (besides Schoolhouse Rock) was “What’s Goin On” by Marvin Gaye. The TV station I used to watch would play it saturday morning right before cartoons started at 6AM. I remember liking the music, the vocals, and even the message it brought. (Kids understand more than we give them credit for). In the late 1970’s I started buying records. My second grade teacher would play us disco songs on Fridays. I was maybe 6 years old and would get a record for my birthday or Christmas. Some favorites were “Saturday Night Fever,” “Boogie Nights,” and “YMCA.” Coincidentally, 1979 was also the year that hip hop records started to spring up at the neighborhood record store. It was mostly songs on an independent label called Sugarhill Records that made it to the West Coast (They had their promotion, as well as their distribution together.) I soon noticed that whatever I bought from that label would be consistant to the other songs from the label. In 1982, I bought “Planet Rock” on Tommy Boy Records. I started to realise that they always had it together. With songs like “Pack Jam”, “Play That Beat,” “Space Is the Place,” and “Play At Your Own Risk,” you always got your five dollar’s worth. Then I noticed a pattern. Sunnyview Records was cool because of “Jam On Revenge” and “ET Boogie”. Beauty & the Beat Records had “Triple Threat,” “King Kut,” and “What the Party Needs.” Vintertainment had “2,3 Break,” “Hip Hop On Wax,” “Girls,” and “Pee Wee’s Dance.” Def Jam had “It’s Yours,” “I Need A Beat,” “Drum Machine,” “Beat The Clock,” and “Party’s Gettin Rough” (They couldn’t go wrong.) At this time, I was a bedroom DJ, making mixtapes for my friends at school. I also borrowed a drum machine and started recording demos with a group called The Slobs. “We were local heros. Who would ever think a group from San Jose, California could put out their own hip hop record?” Four years later while still in college, I put out my first record (“You Can’t Swing This” by Lyrical Prophecy) with a label called PMR Records. It was run by Kim Collett, who DJed with me at the local radio station (KSJS). I got my dad to pitch in $500 to get the thing released, making me a part owner in the label. We only pressed 500 copies, never mastered it, cut and pasted the artwork, and didn’t even know you could sell them to a distributor. We gave some copies away to our friends and family and local radio stations and sold some to the local stores. After all that, we still had about half of the records leftover. But our goal was to make a record and we had reached it! We were local heros. Who would ever think a group from San Jose, California could put out their own hip hop record? Later, that year I met Charles Hicks AKA Charizma. We hit it off right away and before you knew it, we were a group. Charizma was a lot like myself in that he was weird, liked to take chances musically, and had a good knowledge and appreciation of hip hop (even though he was only 16 when we met.) After a while, Charizma and I decided that we wanted to sign with a label that had already proven themselves. Wild Pitch and Tuff City came to mind, since we liked their artist rosters, but we were thinking bigger like an Elektra (Leaders, KMD, Del, Brand Nubians) or Jive (Tribe, BDP, Too Short). The Source had just come out as did Yo MTV Raps and hip hop promotion was becoming the fifth element of hip hop. After shopping our tape to a few labels, we decided to “settle” for Hollywood Basics (Walt Disney). We were never too excited about the deal (we were cocky back then), although we were fans of Organized Konfusion. We figured that at least we would have artistic freedom with them, since they were the most interested in us. Besides, they were promising us soundtracks, a movie role in “Sister Act 2”