808 Page #6

And I heard that opening.

Duh duh duh...

I grabbed Ken, the pharmacist,

yanked him over,

before he could get this

close the lady says,

"Brand new number one requested

song by T L.A. Rock."

And I said, "Oh my God she said my name

wrong, but my record's on the radio."

I put it on and I heard

it and I said, "Wow,

"this record sounds like one of

the demos that we were making."

To me that was like the official

version of hip-hop as I knew it.

Everything slowed down, and now all of a

sudden the groove was a little slower,

you could hear more of the rap

as opposed to the rap just

kind of like flying over the

beat.

Fast forward, Danceteria,

record release party.

Beastie Boys. They were

the under card.

For those that don't know Danceteria was the big

scene back then, but not really for hip-hop.

I'm thinking, "Oh my God, how are

these people going to react to me?"

I went out, the record came on...

I'm talking about everyone,

the entire club just erupted.

They were drowning me

out, put it that way.

Once again I have to come

back to that drum machine.

I had those speakers at

Danceteria booming.

Now everything is great with 'It's

Yours' but I have one major complaint.

This guy walks up to me and I thought I

had some kind of beef with this guy.

I'm like no I'm this gentle giant, this nice

guy, what kind of beef can he have with me.

And he goes, "Oh man, if you weren't such a

super star man me and you would have problems."

"Why?" He says, "Man your

record blew out my speakers."

I said, "Oh my God..." I

said, "Are you serious?"

He says, "Man I turned the bass up.

My whole system just blew out."

I said, "Well..." In my

mind I'm like, "Yay!"

but in front of him I'm like,

"Hey man... Sorry about that,

"but that might be the best

story I've heard all year."

True story now.

After the success of 'It's Yours', the

kick drum and low bass of the 808

became key building blocks

of early hip-hop.

It's one of the defining sounds of

hip-hop, from 'Planet Rock' to,

I mean we used it on '99

Problems' you know with Jay-Z.

Rick Rubin was the King of the

808. He put the rock in the 808.

The album that he definitely

utilized the 808

in its finest moments to me was

'Licensed to Ill' by the Beastie Boys.

The fact that he was able to get

so many ideas out of the 808.

Well I think before

we talk about

Well what happened

Before we talk about the

impact of the 808

and everything on the album,

to get there I am just going to

go in baby steps, I think.

Adam, to give credit where credit's

due, procured our first 808.

Right. We put out our song 'Cookie

Puss' and it was a twelve-inch

with some other sort of dubbed versions

of it and stuff on the B-side.

And we had come into

some money as a band

regarding a lawsuit against a well-known airline

company that used the song, part of it.

- Without licensing it.

- Without licensing it.

And so I went to the used music store

Rouge Music and I was going to buy,

I had two hundred and fifty

bucks and I was going to buy

a Rickenbacker guitar like Paul

Weller's, the exact guitar.

And then there was an 808

and I'd heard about it,

and I'd heard like, "Oh that's the 'Plant

Rock' thing." or something like that,

like I'd heard... And I

wanted a drum machine,

and I was like well f*** it

I'll just buy this one.

So instead of the guitar I

brought the drum machine.

It ended up at the studio, we all

recorded at the studio called Chung King.

And so like my 808 is on our album, on

the first couple of LL Cool J albums,

on Run DMC, a couple

of their albums.

And so it was kind of like for whatever

reason became the Chung King 808 for a while.

Now here's a little story

I've got to tell

About three bad brothers

you know so well

It started way

back in history

With Adrock, M.C.A.

and me, Mike D.

I mean to take an 808 and

reverse it on 'Paul Revere'.

How do you even think about that? Play the

tape backwards and then they rap to that.

Which is... Who thinks of that?

Basically, Mike was saying that we would push

riffs, or like push the bass and the kick.

It was really Adam Yauch that was really

the techno wiz, and so he was very into

production and how to get certain sounds

so he was really into that sort of thing.

The three of us were going to meet Run and

DMC and write a song, and record a song,

and we didn't really have an idea

we were just going to meet at some

random studio on twenty

something street.

And so we get there and there's an

808 there, I don't know whose it was

maybe it was theirs maybe it

was ours I don't know.

But Yauch was like, "Oh, we

should record it backwards."

And tell me if I'm saying this wrong, but

Yauch was like, "Because Jimmy Hendrix, I'd

"heard or read somewhere that he used

to do a lot of stuff backwards."

Like he'd turn the tape over, record the guitar solo, and

then turn it back over and the sh*t would be backwards.

I've got a license to kill, I think you

know what time it is, it's time to get ill

Now what do we have here an

outlaw and his beer

I run this land, you understand,

I make myself clear

So he programmed just like the simplest

808 pattern, but recorded it on a tape.

- Then flipped the tape over. -He flipped the tape over so it

was recording it backwards then played it back so it would...

Yauch recorded the beat, you

know recorded it onto the tape

but then flipped the tape

over. So then the tape's

- He flipped the tape over

then recorded it. -Backwards.

- No. No, other way. -Yes he flipped

the tape over recorded it.

- See it's like forty years later and I still

don't know how it happened. -With the record

- head on, anyway it's not for the film. -No

it is your telling the story tell them how it

- actually happened. I don't remember. -With the

recording head on it only goes in one direction,

but so you record it... Um...

You record it forward but then you flip

the tape so when its playing back,

its backwards but everything else your

recording on it is recording forward.

- Which is what we did.

- OK.

- Does that make sense or does

it not really make sense? -No.

And the way you just looked at me it seemed

like you were really confused when you said it.

- Not a good sell huh. Alright I didn't sell that very well.

- But it comes out backwards which is the whole thing.

- The sh*t was f***ing backwards. -What I'm saying

is, as you can see in terms of the technological and

production level of our band it

went Adam, and then Mike

and then myself was

kind of dead last.

Stick 'em up, and

let two fly

Hands went up and people

hit the floor

He wasted two kids that

ran for the door

Now we're hearing the 808 beat backwards and

it went zzzum zzzum zzz zzzum zzzum and

Run comes running in like, "Yo!"

Just yelling, jumping

up and down like,

"This is the record,

this is the record."

But it really was amazing it was

just one of those moments where,

inspired by one thing that had nothing

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