![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill002.jpg\")
\nWinter of 2009<\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n
Chill Will- No problem. Thank you also.<\/p>\n
Will- I was born in Harlem Hospital, right here in New York. I was raised up on 118th Street between 8th and St. Nicholas Avenue.<\/p>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill004.jpg\")
<\/div>\nWill \u2013 Yeah, right across the street from the church. I went to JHS 136 on 135th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. I went to Charles Evans Hughes High School and then later transferred to Martin Luther King High School.<\/p>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill006.jpg\")
Will- Exactly.\u00a0 That was where me and Doug met. That was like 1980 when I was about 15 years old. So when they closed Hughes down me and Doug went over to King High School over on 66th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Then we both got kicked out of King. Then we ended up going to Park East, which was a smaller school compared to King and Hughes. In there you called all the teachers by their first name. Park East was on 105th Street between First and Second Avenues.<\/p>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill008.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Will- You right, I was in the Mecca of it.<\/p>\n
Will- Exactly right! (Will laughs) The block was crazy and everybody came through there. Not just addicts caught in their habit, but hustlers and wannabe hustlers.<\/p>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill010.jpg\")
Troy- See you had two different eras that came and went through your block. You had the big heroin trade going on.\u00a0 Then just before it left, it was overlapped by the crack epidemic. So it went from one extreme to the next. So were you allowed to come outside and play in front of your building?<\/h5>\nWill – Yes, for sure.\u00a0 Because the players in that block took care of us. They took care of the kids. They made sure nothing happened to us when we were young. So we never really worried about it that much. So when we were outside they kind of shielded us from that. They bought us baseballs and basketballs and kept us doing things instead of getting caught up in all that. Because you know that the longer you stood around stagnant, you started to see all this stuff go down. So that was pretty much how I grew up in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill012.jpg\")
Troy- So when did you first get wind of Hip Hop?<\/h5>\nWill- I got into hip hop in the late 70’s. Like 77 or 78 when it was like brand new, just starting out, and it wasn’t any records or anything like that out yet. People were just out in the streets doing their thing. This was really before cats got their turntables. Cats sometimes just had two phonographs: turning the volume up on one and turning the volume down on the other. (Troy starts laughing)<\/em> Sticking the headphones in one and taking the head phones out.<\/p>\n I am from that time and place. It evolved from that. That’s when the DJ was everything and the rapper was something that just added a little flavor, nothing compared to later on. But the DJ was the main event. I always wanted to be the DJ because it seemed like they always had something to do. When the early jams would start people would come around for the DJs, not so much the rappers.<\/p>\n Will- That is right. People would be coming and going, as well as rappers coming through saying “Ho! Throw your hands up in the air” or whatever for a few minutes and then they gone. But that constant was always him. I would go home and do what I had to do, and come back and he would still be there.<\/p>\n Will- So he was the one that made me want to do this.<\/p>\n Will- Well what happened was I got down with two older guys from my neighborhood, Wayne and Cyrus, and they had jobs and I was still in school. So I teamed up with them and it was a learning curve, but I caught on really quick. I started doing it better than them even though they bought the equipment. I used to go up to their house to practice and I practiced so much up there that when they would be leaving, I would still be up there. So as they would be leaving I would say, “Yo, if it’s cool with your moms, can I stay?”(Troy busts out laughing)<\/em> \u2026”Yo, if it’s cool with your moms, can I just chill\u2026?”<\/p>\n Will- Once I felt confident I would go out when somebody was out there. In fact, Harlem World did a party out there on 118th Street in the middle of my block: DJ Randy, Son of Sam and Charlie Rock.<\/p>\n They were dancing and everything, they threw a whole big block party. The cats on the block bought them in and told them whatever it takes just come through.<\/p>\n Will- Right. So when they came in, the party went on all night. See like Artie Art, Randy was “the” DJ. But he stayed all night, while Sam and Charlie would leave and come back throughout the night. So Randy was that dude.<\/p>\n I wanted to get on, but I didn’t have my confidence up just yet to do that. But later on, I finally came out on 140th Street between 8th and Edgecombe Avenues in that school yard.<\/p>\n Will- No, but B Fats was there. I just can’t remember the guys that bought the equipment out. See during those days I wasn’t introduced to a lot of those cats. I just knew somebody who knew somebody. See I had to pass me getting on through like three people: I told a friend of mine’s, who told a friend of his, that told a friend of his, that told the DJ! – That kind of thing. But I was so nervous. I only played like one record and I didn’t really do what I do in the house and that was because I was still not confident.\u00a0 I had to build it.<\/p>\n Will- Well what actually happened was I got down with a guy named Short Man. Me and him started our group. Short Man had equipment of his own. We wanted to come out in the street and do our thing, but he had a little side hustle where he used to do the airbrushing on people’s jackets and pants.<\/p>\n Will- That kind of took off for him where as he didn’t have a second to really concentrate on DJing. We would be trying to make tapes and people would be coming upstairs with jackets and pants. So he was like “I need to get this paper right here right now.” So he did his thing while we tried to keep practicing and making tapes. It was all fun at the time. Me and Short Man was about 14 or 15 years old. I was just getting ready to go into high school. In fact, Short Man went to Hughes with me and Doug.<\/p>\n Will- I was sitting in the lunch room of Charles Evans Hughes High School with Short Man and we are talking. And this guy Mike I know comes up to me and says, “Yo, you have to come see this.” He takes me to the other end of the lunch room and Doug is doing the beat box and these other guys are rapping. So when Doug finishes Randy introduces us and this is when he was Dougie Dee. \u00a0Randy says “You two guys should hook up, and do something.” Doug was looking for someone to DJ, although he had someone DJing for him, but his DJ was doing other things. So he was never really available when Doug needed him.<\/p>\n Will- Neither one of them.\u00a0 His name is Rich. Barry wasn’t even with us yet!<\/p>\n Will- When me and Doug met in school we didn’t even know Barry yet. So me and Short Man were still doing us, and we were trying to put Doug and Short together also – but it didn’t work out, and Doug actually lived closer to me than to Short.<\/p>\n So me and Doug would hook up all the time around the neighborhood and we were always trying to figure out a way how to get some equipment so we can make our thing happen. We actually met another hustling cat named Ted. Ted said he would buy the equipment for us. He said he would invest in us.<\/p>\n Will- Yes, he was down with Harlem World when he wasn’t in the street. So he actually gave us the money to go to 42nd Street. He said “Go down there and find out what you need and come back and let me know and I got ya’ll! ”<\/p>\n Will- Man I went down there and priced everything and came back and said this is what it is going to take for us to get what we need.<\/p>\n Will- I let him know and he peeled it off and gave it to us, and we bought the stuff back to my house. We were going to hook it up that night\u2026 you know how you get excited!<\/p>\n Will- My mother was like, “Oh no, I am not having that right now!”<\/p>\n I didn’t have the room for it in my bedroom, so I had to make the room. So I told Doug lets work it out tomorrow. You know that way I can make the room for it. So I changed my room around that night instead of plugging up the equipment. I was like “Ok, I don’t need this or that.” I was ready to throw my dresser out. (Both start laughing) <\/em><\/p>\n Will- Word up. I didn’t even care. So we changed everything around and I took all the equipment out of the box. Doug called me the next day at seven in the morning like, “Yo, you ready to do this?” (Both laugh)<\/em> Yo, we were mad excited. We hooked up the tape deck, but we just needed records now. So Doug says he is going to get some records. He goes out and comes back with records. I don’t know where he got them from, but he went borrowing from everybody. He came back with a bunch of records.<\/p>\n Then one day we were going to get into this MC contest at Harlem World. So we said we need to buy some clothes and sneakers. So we tried to make enough tapes to buy some gear. But when we got to Harlem World they had a shootout in there and we never got on\u2026<\/p>\n Let me go back a little bit because I went too fast… Doug and his DJ, Rich, were supposed to play Harlem World one night in the past, but Rich didn’t show up and another brother that was cool with us named Kev Ski DJed for Doug that night in Harlem World… But all these guys we’re talking about had families at an early age, so they had to be committed to their families.<\/p>\n Me and Doug were not there yet, so our connection was closer because we had more things in common: Neither one of us was working, and we both lived close to each other in the neighborhood. We were trying to do this and we were out hustling whatever we needed to do to make this thing work. So Doug said “I can’t do this with Kev, and I can’t do this with Rich”\u2026and mind you Doug was 24 hours music, that’s it. That was his whole discussion. That was all he talked about. That was all he dealt with.<\/p>\n Go to Part 2<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Doug’s conversation was strictly music 24 hours a day! That’s all he talked about. If it wasn’t music on a radio station, it was “Did you hear this,” or “I am trying to get over to Harlem World \u2026We got to find equipment \u2026We need to make a tape.” This was all the conversation we had. We would go into, “Yo, I like this new girl that just came into the school.” That might take about 20 minutes, then we were off of that and back into the music. So his determination was a little crazy with it, but it was cool. I was like, “Lets go!” \u2013And he was the one that got Ted to buy the equipment.<\/p>\n So me and Doug talked back and forth and we decided we would do this thing together\u2026 So now we running together and we met Doug’s friend named Pop. Pop tells us, “Yo, I got this other cat you guys might want to meet because you can go to his house to rehearse because he has a group of his own.” The brother he was talking about was Barry Bee.<\/p>\n From time to time other people would come up there and want to put something on the tape also. Now the tapes are getting a little fame in the streets. So now everybody wants to be down every time we do a tape. Cats were like “Let us know when you are going to do something.” And that was mostly cats that never blew up from the house tapes, but cats like Tito and them from the Fearless Four would come through and rock with us also, just house tapes though.<\/p>\n Will- The lunch room was the first time I heard it, but it was still in the early stages. He didn’t have all the stuff he has now.<\/p>\n Will- Doug was before all of them.<\/p>\n Will- I can only put it this way; when me and Doug met I had never heard of a human beat box, you dig what I am saying? Doug was the very first person I heard doing it and by then I had been with Doug maybe three years before I heard anybody else do it.<\/p>\n Will- I never heard the Fat Boys before their record. I don’t know anyone that could say I know the Fat Boys before they were on a record. The first time I heard of the Fat Boys, I heard “Fat Boysssssss.” (Will makes the echo sound effect from the Fat Boys first record which was titled “Fat Boys”) That was the first time I ever heard them: I never heard of them in the streets, I never saw them at any parties, I never saw them do anything other than that very first record.<\/p>\n Now Doug already had a reputation in the streets. People already knew that Doug was this and that. So if you ask most people, they will say the first person they ever heard was Doug.<\/p>\n The Fat Boys got a better reputation off it because they brought it out on a broader scale. When they did it, they actually moved around the country. We worked New York, New Jersey and Connecticut pretty much. It’s the same way with Michael Jackson and the Moon Walk!<\/p>\n Will- Right, but we’ve been seen the Moon Walk, like five years before he did it.<\/p>\n Will- Exactly. So it’s Michael Jackson now and he has taken it on a scale that none of the break dancers could take it on because it’s Michael Jackson! And those B-Boys can’t claim it because people in Germany, London, etc, don’t care. They know that Michael Jackson did it, and that’s all they care about.<\/p>\n We met Biz at a show in Long Island, but it was the same situation, we never heard of Biz before that! We went to Shirley, Long Island and that was the first time we seen Biz. Biz came out and did what he did. And Doug never had any animosity about anybody doing it, we just never heard of any of these people before.<\/p>\n And Barry is the one that actually coined the phrase “Human Beat Box.” Barry was the one that actually told Doug that is what you should call it, and that’s where the name came from. Barry made that up as far as we know, because we never heard anybody else say that before.<\/p>\n Will- Of course he had to work it out first. He was just doing a little beat box thing, and he wasn’t even doing it for anything other than if somebody else wanted to rhyme, he was just doing it for them.<\/p>\n Will- He wasn’t making it like, “Yeah I am going to be the human beat box out the gate.” That wasn’t his plan. His plan was to do it so that when it was his turn to rhyme someone else would do it. But no one else would do it… It was crazy because we had a whole lot of places we went to where people didn’t understand it.<\/p>\n Will- Ain’t that something, because he later brought the Fat Boys out.<\/p>\n Will- Right.<\/p>\n Barry had been doing it just as long as I was, but he was very creative, even doing tricks with the turntables. So he had a lot going on in that department, but I wasn’t really that cat. That wasn’t me. Really, I am just trying to get my feet wet in front of people, because the people thing kind of made me nervous! But Barry was already seasoned.<\/p>\n So Barry and The Devastating 3 would perform along with us and we would all do a lot of Mike and Dave events, as well as other jams. So I am just really getting in and getting my feet wet in front of people, but I am starting to get my skills up\u2026 and Barry is still on top of his game \u2026and The Devastating 3 is on \u2026we on \u2026everybody is trying to make something happen. We’re thinking we are all going to blow. But while all this is going on, we are all still in high school – and after high school, the Devastating 3 does what most people do, they went to college. So that left Barry by himself.<\/p>\n Will- Right. See we thinking we all going to blow up, make money, travel, and do this and that. So we had big plans for us all. But the Devastating 3 decided to go to college and further their education, and do all this other stuff. So they went to college away, they didn’t stay here in New York. So since they went away to college, Barry was kind of left here by himself. Doug said, “I don’t want to leave Barry out there like that, plus his skills are too crazy to just let him do nothing.” So we agree to let him do his thing with us. Plus Doug was like, “Yo, this will be crazy having two DJs because nobody has that.” After a while it became a plan.<\/p>\n Will- Well what happens is we do a lot of stuff that if one person does it, you would have to stop and use tracks like in a studio. There is no way you could do the stuff we do at one time. So it kept us going as opposed to having one person. If I was doing it by myself, there would be certain times where I would say yo, I can’t do that because it is physically impossible. But with somebody else there, such as Barry or myself, they fill that void and Doug would just continue to go. See, some of the stuff Doug likes to do and create, it takes more than just the regular way to do it. So that is how we kind of complete each other. We make a complete circle with that. See, those things me and Doug couldn’t do before, we can now do with Barry added into the mix. Like if I play this record, and all I have to play is 5 seconds of that record, then I have to throw this one on, – there is no way I can get the other record on.<\/p>\n Go to Part 3 <\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Will- That was something we used to do in the house, and people don’t know it actually started the other way; Doug used to do stuff on the stage and we would mimic him. But really, we would do it in the house and Doug would follow us and that was how that started. Then we did it on stage and people went crazy, and that was when we added it into the show.<\/p>\n Will- Well me and Barry would do our own set before Doug would come out. And that would mostly be to get everything warmed up and make sure everything works, as well as get ourselves warmed up. Then we would start our show and Doug would come out. The first record we would do of our songs is “Keep Rising to the Top.” We would do that first because you would go to a lot of concerts and cats would play something first that you might not really know about. You might say, “Oh, that’s a mediocre record” or “something I never heard before at all.”<\/p>\n We always felt you had to keep peoples interest and so you need to start with something strong enough to hold their interest at the very beginning. And if you have more than one song, then it should be easy to do. But some people still don’t do it that way. We feel like if I can’t get into your show within 15 minutes, then I am like ready to go to sleep. Or I will ask my girl, “You want something to drink or eat? \u2026Let me get you something.” Basically, my attention is not being held.<\/p>\n Will- Man, we used to do La Di Da Di off of “In the Club” by 50 Cent. So we would try and take you on a journey with something new and something old and try and have something for everybody. We know that young people 13 and 14 years old know “The Show” by relationships to other people. They don’t really know it firsthand.<\/p>\n Will- The battle was really between Barry and Don. It wasn’t really all of them, they just got involved. What happened was Master Don said Barry stole what Don was already doing, which was suppose to be, I believe, a rhythm of a cut. Barry said he was doing it before Don. Don was like, “Nah, I made that up.” Barry said he didn’t, but Barry is not really a vocal person. Barry really doesn’t like too much confrontation, but Doug enjoys it. (Laughter)<\/em> So Doug got involved and was like, “I will talk for you.”<\/p>\n Will- Right. So Doug said “I am going to talk for you, and you just show them what you do!” But then Don’s MC’s came and they said they didn’t know it was going to be a battle, which was a lie, because they had all this stuff prepared. They was like, “We wasn’t prepared for this!” But I was like, “But ya’ll got rhymes for this! I don’t get it.”(Will laughs) <\/em><\/p>\n But we all family now, but at that time the most heated person was Don. I think it was more Don vs. Barry than Doug vs. the Def Committee. They were just the vocal people to give some color to it.<\/p>\n Will- For sure. But Don, I think, believed that Barry actually took something from him and that is what started it off. And nothing really came out of that battle because it wasn’t like the crowd said who won.\u00a0 Everybody just kind of let it go; it didn’t escalate, you dig what I am saying? You know how some battles go on for two years and it’s still going on!<\/p>\n Will- Doug got on, but he didn’t really say too much, He was putting more of the focus on Barry by saying Barry can do this and Barry can do that.<\/p>\n Will- No, that wasn’t really our thing. We were cool with everybody.<\/p>\n Will- Nah.<\/p>\n Will- The Savoy Manor was me and Doug’s very first show together. Not something like at an outside jam where we would shoot from the hip, this was something where we were at home practicing and we had a format, a plan… And it was one of my worst nights ever. And I say that because I messed up from the jump. And that was because I wasn’t used to being structured like that. The first record I played jumped and skipped; it was just a rough night.<\/p>\n Then later the shootout happened and everybody started running. We were in the back trying to get out the door in the back, but the doors were locked. And then one of our friends, Lay Low, got shot. And no one knew he got shot because he got shot under his arm, right in the arm pit. We never seen blood, so being as he was diabetic people thought he was having a seizure or whatever, But come to find out he had got shot and he passed away that night.<\/p>\n Just before he got shot, the Crash Crew were on stage performing and when the shots rang out they dropped their mics and took off. Crazy thing about it, I was the one that was making the tape. I was talking just before it happened. So as soon as it happened I was trying to snatch my tape and get up out of there! I had to leave the tape in there and come back and get it. Really I wasn’t concerned about the tape as much as I was concerned about my tape deck, because I bought my own deck. I was like this is our first night performing, I definitely want to have this on tape.<\/p>\n Will- (Will laughs)<\/em> Yes that’s my tape. I made that!<\/p>\n I had a little drum machine up there that was actually Tito’s drum machine\u2026 Like I told you from the beginning stages, we were borrowing from everybody. (Will chuckles)<\/em> We had turntables from homeboy next door. The only thing I owned was a mixer. Ted, the guy that bought us the equipment earlier, did a party so he came and got the equipment and now him and his cousins are starting to do a lot of parties. So we never actually got the equipment back. So we went back to our old hustling days of I got to get a turntable from here, and mixer, etc\u2026<\/p>\n So my house was full of rented stuff. But Slick Rick came through and we played a beat up in my house. It was a bunch of us up there along with Tito and just local homeboys.<\/p>\n Will- You’s a funny brother, because James was the one that named me Chill Will. I used to be mad quite. So James one day was like, “Will be chillin. He always chillin! I’m going to call you Chill Will.” From there it just stuck.<\/p>\n \u2026Back to your man Rick. Rick actually said “La Di Da Di” for us for the first time. Yo, we was dying! He did like half of the routine and we was like “Yo, we got to record this. We got to put this on record!” This was about 1984 when this went down; “The Show” came out the summer of 1985. We got to know Rick for almost a year before “The Show” came out. Then he did, I think, “Indian Girl”, and we was like “Yo, this guy is sick, we really need to lay something down with him.”<\/p>\n So we were still making tapes and selling to people and trying to get money together to go into the studio to do this. We would do shows, but we weren’t really making any money from it. We might pull down 200 or 250 dollars something like that from these shows. We tried to take all that money and go into the studio to make “The Show,” but we couldn’t get the machine from Teddy Riley’s house because he wasn’t there. We actually had the studio time set up, and we couldn’t get the machine, so we used another machine.<\/p>\n So now we have another version of the show that was horrible. (Will laughs)<\/em> We was like, “Yo, we got to get the other one, because this isn’t working.” It doesn’t sound the same, nor does it have the same feeling. And we got tapes of that, and it’s horrible.<\/p>\n So we did get the machine back later on, and we did the beat and laid it down. We tried to get Teddy Riley to come in and play, but he couldn’t make it. So our manager, who was Dennis Bell at the time, ended up playing the keyboard parts on it.<\/p>\n Will- Doug actually met him at some event he was at and Dennis was talking to him trying to tell him how we could make this stuff happen and move us forward. Dennis had a lot of stuff that we didn’t know about, where he could take us to the next level. And he could do this and do that. In fact, Dennis Bell was the music teacher up at Truman High School in the Bronx. He also put some money into this thing we was trying to do, and that’s when we felt he was real about it.<\/p>\n Will- That was Doug and Rick who was doing the shaking of the salt shakers.<\/p>\n Will- He actually gave us a place to do it, and he played the stuff in the house, but on the actual product Ted didn’t play anything. Ted didn’t even come to the studio, and we tried to get him to come, but he was busy. And we didn’t have the privilege to say, “Well since you can’t come, we will schedule it another day.” We didn’t have money like that at the time. Cause if we cancel the session, they are going to charge us anyway.<\/p>\n Will- We thought it was hot from day one, but not for what it did. I didn’t expect that. We thought the record was good, and we thought at the least it would get us on.<\/p>\n Will- When I started working… Listen, I only had two jobs in my life other than what I do now, and I have worked a total of about a week between the two jobs. I worked in Madison Square Garden as a vender for two days, and after that second day I said this is not for me, I really can’t do this. Then I started a construction job and I worked there for like five days, and like the fourth day there I heard the record on the radio!<\/p>\n We listening to the radio and I am telling the other construction workers, “Let’s just keep on working. And this could be big,” because I heard the record like four more times on the radio that day. It got so much play that after only working like five days (More laughing)<\/em>\u2026 which I am still on a leave of absence from. (Both start laughing)<\/em><\/p>\n Go to Part 4<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Will- Well my family was excited and my mother was excited hearing it on the radio, but she was hell bent on me going to college. She was like, “You enjoying this now, but you are going to have to go to college in time. Maybe take a year or so to enjoy it, but let’s get back in the books!” But it never really stopped.<\/p>\n Will- Yes, and we lived up there also. After awhile, I started bringing acts and producing shows at Broadway International.<\/p>\n Will- Yeah, about a year and a half off of The Show and La Di Da Di. We toured so much we didn’t even have a chance to do the album. You know usually when you have a single you want to have an album to follow it up in case the single blows, so cats can buy your album. And like I said, it didn’t come out for like almost two years after the hit single, which was a big mistake on our part. And I guess that was like that because no one expected the record to go that far.<\/p>\n We would be on tour on the regular. We would be on the last leg of a tour, and they putting together another tour. So sometimes we would have a week to go home and then we would be right back on the road for another tour. Some of these tours would last five and six months.<\/p>\n Will- We went all the way across the country, back and forth. We criss crossed the country like five times, then we went to London for the first time. Doug and Barry went, but not me, because I could not get my passport together because my birth certificate was late. So I actually flew out of the country to London for the first time by myself. And when I finally got there, we played at a club – but I can’t remember the name. But we did a TV show called “Top of the Pops” while we were there.<\/p>\n Will- Well at first we thought it was crazy, and we didn’t know how to react to it at first, but after awhile people would say “If people talk about you like that, then you know you made it! Just leave it alone, it’s not worth it.” Plus none of us thought Salt -N- Pepa were going to go anywhere at first. (Will chuckles)<\/em> We were like nobody will be talking about them in a week. Who knew?<\/p>\n Will- We really didn’t think the record was strong enough to make any noise, and we didn’t feel it was going to go anywhere, and it didn’t.<\/p>\n Will- Right, and you never heard of them any more ever.<\/p>\n Will – That was all a coincidence. And what’s crazy\u2026 we did a lot of shows with them, so it was no bad blood with them, it was all good.<\/p>\n Will- Well I think Rick was always ambitious to do his own thing. I think that was what he always wanted to do. It just so happened that this was a platform to get it started, and once he got it started, he did what he wanted to do. Plus maybe he felt he could do it the way he wanted to do it.<\/p>\n Will- Well they really didn’t have any beef, but what I was trying to say\u2026.<\/p>\n Will- Well like I said before: I think the way I said it went down is what actually happened, but it sounds better if they said Doug and Rick had beef, which they didn’t.<\/p>\n Will- Right. We just happened to say “Let’s make a record together,” and we made a record together. And the thing is if Rick was with us as a group he could not have went anywhere, because he would have been signed and stuck into this deal that we were all stuck into. But Rick had his own separate situation going on, and we never had a problem with it. I think we would have stayed together as a group if we had done that album, because after we did those two cuts that was it.<\/p>\n Will- Man\u2026 Rick was actually on the record “All the Way to Heaven” in the very beginning stages of making it!<\/p>\n Will- Well the record was never finished at the time. It was like if you were doing your rhymes and you weren’t feeling it, you would be like “Hold up, hold up. I messed up on that, run that back!” That was what was going on through that whole record with Rick. So when we were actually ready to lay everything down Rick was already gone.<\/p>\n Will- No, it wasn’t like he didn’t like it. When we were doing it, we just didn’t know where the record was going, because at the time when Rick was with us it wasn’t called “All The Way To Heaven.”<\/p>\n Will- It was the same beat. Everything was the same musically, but lyrically it wasn’t called “All The Way to Heaven.” In fact, we didn’t even have a name at the time. We were sitting there making up stuff. We were trying to fall into something. But all in all, what I heard with both of them was good. Certain things we were moving around with and everything started falling into place. We started adding stuff, but what happen was the road came back up again and we had to put that project on hold until we got back!<\/p>\n Will- When we came back off the road we were trying to get back into that song, but I think by that time Rick decided he wanted to do his own thing.<\/p>\n Will- No. Rick had gone somewhere, I think he went away.<\/p>\n Will- I am not sure, but it was somewhere with his family and it could have been England. But while he was gone, we were like we are going to have to start doing stuff. But after that, we found out Rick was going to do a deal with Def Jam. So we were like alright we got to move forward.<\/p>\n I don’t think anybody wanted to go back and forth with it because we were really so far behind on the album. And see our manager was trying to get us to do an album while we were doing “The Show”! He was like, “Yo, let’s just continue on and do a whole album before we let this single out.” But we didn’t want to hear that, we were like “We coming out now! ”<\/p>\n Will- I was happy for him because the first cut I heard was “The Rulers Back” and I thought that was hot.<\/p>\n Will- Exactly. So I was like Rick is out and he is doing his thing. So I was hoping that he could come out and then we could come back together. Kind of like what we do now: Rick do his songs, and we do our songs, and then we come together on “The Show” and “La Di Da Di.” And we will just keep it moving like that. Will- Yeah, people can really go places in their mind. Man we got stories like that all the time. When “The Show” first came out they had stories about “The Show” saying “six minutes” three times, which is “666”.\u00a0 And they were going “Oh my God, is it real!”\u2026and they would say that we were asking “is God real? ”<\/p>\n Will- Because when we said – “Six minutes\u2026 six minutes\u2026 six minutes, Doug E. Fresh you’re on”\u00a0 – that just fit into the realm of the beats. If he had said it one more time, he would have been off beat. Or if he had said it one less time, it also would have been off beat. So it just didn’t work. We were not thinking 6-6-6!<\/p>\n And when we said. “Oh my God, is it real?” –\u00a0 Doug is doing the beat box and we are like, “Oh my God, is Doug really doing it?”<\/p>\n Will- But they said we are saying, “Oh My God\u2026Is God real!”<\/p>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill014.jpg\")
See when I seen cats like Flash and others in the streets, they weren’t like stars yet. They were just DJs in the streets. To be honest, the first DJ I seen was DJ Artie Art out of Foster Projects. He used to DJ for Johnny Wa and Rayvon’s Magnificent 7. See DJ Spivey was one of the main DJs for Magnificent 7, but I seen Artie Art first. He was always right on Lenox Avenue and say 115th Street or 114th Street, right on the street doing his thing. He used to be out there starting at say 3pm in the afternoon till like two in the morning. And that was the thing, even if there were no rappers out there he would always be there. He would be playing for like nine hours. (Both start laughing)<\/em><\/p>\nTroy- All by himself, ain’t that something. And people would be coming and going.<\/h5>\n
Troy- Damn, ain’t that something!<\/h5>\n
Troy- So the next level now is getting your equipment. How did this go down? You asked your mother or did you get down with somebody?<\/h5>\n
Troy- How long did it take before you took it to the streets as a DJ?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill016.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTroy- So the hustlers paid for this!<\/h5>\n
Troy- So this wasn’t B Fats and his brother Don doing that outside jam?<\/h5>\n
Troy- So now you are about to get to the next level because you are building your confidence. Where or when was it when you felt “Yeah, this is what I want to do, and I can do this?”<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill018.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTroy- I remember that.<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill020.jpg\")
Troy- So how did you and Doug E. Fresh meet?<\/h5>\nTroy- So are you talking about Barry Bee or Kev Ski?<\/h5>\n
Troy- I always wondered who was first between you and Barry.<\/h5>\n
Troy- And Ted was a house DJ from Harlem World also?<\/h5>\n
Troy- Damn!<\/h5>\n
Troy- Damn!<\/h5>\n
Troy- Word up!<\/h5>\n
Troy- You were ready to sleep on the fire escape. I hear you.<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill022.jpg\")
We started making tapes for people and personalizing them by putting their names on them; “Yo, a big shout out to \u2018so and so’!” Cats were paying us $25 for a tape because it had their name on it. Yo, we were trying to run a business. We would tell them we will make a regular tape for you for ten dollars, but if you want us to put your name in it, then it’s going to cost $25! We started making money off that.<\/p>\nTroy- Well give me an idea of that?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill024.jpg\")
Will- Well when we would come to his house he would have on WHBI,\u2026\u00a0he got some rap on, \u2026he got some track he wanted you to hear\u2026 he got some beat he thinks will be hot to use. This is all he would discuss. You know how you get with your boys and you talk about this, or you might talk about cars, or I am going to see \u2018so and so’ tonight.<\/p>\nTroy- So why would you and Doug put Barry down if you are handling the DJ part?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill026.jpg\")
Will- Nah, he is not putting Barry down. Pop was just saying there are these other guys you can make tapes with as well as go over to his house and do things that you needed. See, we didn’t have the records to do what we wanted to do. Barry had a plethora of records, he had equipment, and he had the tape deck. He had everything we needed to do everything we wanted done. We ended up going to Barry’s house in the middle of the day instead of going to school. So now we going to Barry’s house and he got his MCs there, The Devastating 3: Magic Dee, Kid West and Von Jeter and of course Barry Bee. They were already there, so we would make tapes with them.<\/p>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill028.jpg\")
So that kind of allowed it for Doug to kind of\u00a0 have someone to bounce off of so he could put his skills up against somebody else, as opposed to him working by himself on the mic. But Barry still wasn’t down with us. We would come up there and just rock together making tapes.<\/p>\nTroy- Listen, I don’t want to go too far… Was Doug the very first person you heard do the human beat box in the lunch room that day?<\/h5>\n
Troy- Do you 100% agree that Doug was before Biz Mark and Buffy from the Fat Boys?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill030.jpg\")
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill032.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTroy- What is so concrete about you believing Doug was first?<\/h5>\n
Troy- I’ve got a Harlem World 1982 tape and Disco Dave is getting on Doug about spitting on the mic. So Doug does go way back with the human beat box. I have it recorded, but there are people still trying to say Doug wasn’t the first.<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill034.jpg\")
Troy- Right. People that don’t know think Michael Jackson did it first.<\/h5>\nTroy- (Laughing) Good point.<\/h5>\n
Troy- How did the people in Harlem respond to this when Doug first did it? I ask because I remember a brother telling me one day that Doug was at an outside jam and cats were booing him. He went so far as to say that somebody threw a garbage can in Doug’s direction. You know in Harlem it was just like the Sand Man at the Apollo: If cats are not feeling you, you will know about it.<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill036.jpg\")
Will- Sometimes when people do stuff and they don’t understand what’s going on, they are not as accepting of it because they, Doug in this situation, are like the first to do it. A lot of people accepted it because others accepted it, but if nobody co-signed this with you, then it’s like what the hell are you doing!<\/p>\nTroy- And in my mind I was thinking the first day he did that, he said, “I am the Human Beat Box.” But of course he had to work it out first.<\/h5>\n
Troy- Right.<\/h5>\n
Troy- So what was the response of the people that didn’t understand?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill038.jpg\")
Will- Well I don’t remember any boos, but I remember a lot of stares. And a lot of silence, you dig what I am saying? (Both laugh)<\/em> And Doug actually did it for Kurtis Blow. I think that was the time Doug got the most notoriety at that moment. We were at a street jam and Kurtis Blow was waiting for the music to come back up. While Kurtis was waiting, Doug started to do the human beat box for Kurtis Blow. I think after that Doug started getting a little reputation for that, and then it became something and people wanted to see.<\/p>\nTroy- Ain’t that something, because a couple of years before “The Show”, Kurtis Blow and Love Bug Star Ski were on stage at the Harlem State Office Building during Harlem Week and Kurtis Blow started doing the human beat box. I knew Doug was doing it and it was on the rise, but when I saw Kurtis Blow doing it, I was like this thing is really starting to pick up speed.<\/h5>\n
Troy- Right, off of that rap contest they won. (Makes you wonder if after Kurtis Blow saw Doug do it, maybe he later introduced it to the Fat Boys and told them that they should incorporate it into their act!) <\/em><\/h5>\n
Troy- Alright, so how did Barry Bee get on with you guys?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill040.jpg\")
Will- Me and Doug had already made a record with Bobby Robinson of Enjoy Records called “Just Having Fun.” Then we did another record with Vincent Davis of Vintertainment. At this time we thought Barry was good because Barry used to go up against Master Don and a lot of other really good DJs, and I have to say Barry was a lot better than me.<\/p>\nTroy- OK, I see why he switched over to you guys.<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill042.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill044.jpg\")
Troy- So once you and Barry became one, how did you two complete each other?<\/h5>\nTroy- I got you. Now how did that Barry Bee & Chill Will vs. Doug thing start?<\/h5>\n
Troy- So during the groups high point how was a typical show performed?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill046.jpg\")
So we try to hold people’s attention right from the beginning with the very first song. We also try to keep it exciting by not trying to just beat you in the head with records. We not going to try and hit you with every song we made. That’s not a show for us, for some people it is. Some people feel, “I just want to do all my songs and get off!” For us, we want to do songs, but we also want to bring you into other people’s songs. Our thing is more of a feeling. When you leave I want you to feel like, “Yo, that show was hot\u2026 I feel good!… I don’t feel like he beat me in the head with a bunch of songs, cause I could have flipped on my IPod and did that.” But I am going to give you something different. We are going to give you this, a little bit of that. We will even do one of Doug’s records off of another beat; like we will do La Di Da Di off of “Pop Champagne.”<\/p>\nTroy- I see.<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill048.jpg\")
Troy- Alright, let’s step back. How did that beef go down between Doug and Master Don & The Def Committee?<\/h5>\nTroy- He damn sure did when you listen to the tape of the battle.<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill050.jpg\")
Troy- I hear you, because Pebbley Poo told me that Don really dug Doug. So it was nothing personal.<\/h5>\nTroy- During the battle, when Gangster Gee gets on the mic, he cracks that Doug has on corduroys in the summer. Did Doug get back on and do his thing? I ask because on my tape of the battle there is no rebuttal from Doug.<\/h5>\n
Troy- OK, during the early stages of your record career, do the three of you guys battle any one?<\/h5>\n
Troy- Ok, but did Doug and Busy Bee have any quarrel? I ask because I have a tape where Doug wants to battle Busy!<\/h5>\n
Troy- OK, did you play the night that Doug was at the Savoy Manor with the Force MCs and the Crash Crew?<\/h5>\n
Troy- Ain’t that something. And that’s your tape of all that which has now been around the world and back.<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill052.jpg\")
Troy- Now how or why did Doug feel it was necessary to put Slick Rick on board?<\/h5>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill054.jpg\")
Will- Well me, Doug, and Tito of the Fearless Four went to the Cadet Center in the Bronx. And it was a rap contest and we were special guests. We went to hang out, we weren’t in the contest. And that was the first time we saw Rick, and he won the contest. That night him and Doug connected and they started talking. And Doug said, “You should come uptown one day and let’s hook up and maybe we can put something together.” Because Doug was like, “Yo, that cat got something. That’s going to be something right there!” Rick was like “Alright,” and they came to my house.<\/p>\nTroy – Like Damon (Doug’s cousin) and James? (Doug’s close friend from childhood)?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill056.jpg\")
So we started putting stuff together and then we went to Teddy Riley’s house. Doug and Rick is sitting there making up the beat. Mostly Doug was putting the track together. Teddy Riley played the Inspector Gadget part and all that stuff. So we putting all that together and Doug is liking the beat so much with the Inspector Gadget beat going in and out that he put it on a tape for the entire side of the tape. Like a 60 minute tape, and 30 minutes of that whole side had just that track.<\/p>\nTroy- How did Dennis Bell get on with you guys?<\/h5>\n
Troy- So Doug was the one that thought up the salt shaker sound effect on “The Show”?<\/h5>\n
Troy- So now on the final product, Teddy Riley really had nothing to do with it, just helped out in the beginning?<\/h5>\n
Troy- So now once you guys put it down on wax, and you heard it for the first time, how did you feel about the record?<\/h5>\n
Troy- So when did you get that thought, “Oh man, this is getting bigger than I thought!”<\/h5>\n
Troy- I was just thinking that. So listen, the record is now following you home? \u2026Soon as you come out the train station, until you go to sleep at night, the record is played everywhere in Harlem!<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill058.jpg\")
Will- “La Di Da Di” and “The Show” are being played crazy. If I don’t hear one, I hear the other. I heard “La Di Da Di” more in people’s cars than I did on the radio. But then we made a radio edit, and then they started running “La Di Da Di” on the radio, because back then there wasn’t really any radio edit. Back then they wasn’t really beeping out or fading out. If you didn’t have a radio edit, they just wouldn’t play it. But the record just got completely out of control. We started doing shows back to back. We would play The Fever, then the next day we would be at the Fun House, \u00a0then the next day we at The Red Parrot. It was like we were on tour in New York!\u00a0\u00a0 It was crazy.<\/p>\n<\/h1>\n
Troy- So how did your family, as well as the pioneers of hip hop, respond to it?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill060.jpg\")
As far as the pioneers, it felt good because these were the cats I looked up to coming up, and now we are on that level. People are looking at me now the way we used to look at them. And not for nothing, there were times when cats were unapproachable, or you couldn’t talk to certain people, or whatever – and now we are in the mix, and in the same room, and everybody is introducing themselves to me. Cats be like “How you doing, I am so and so,” and I be like “Oh yeah, I know who you are.” –\u00a0 Guys like The Treacherous 3, Furious 5, we became friends\u2026 Cold Crush, \u00a0Busy Bee, we all becoming cool. What really took me over the edge was New Edition was out and we became cool with them.<\/p>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill062.jpg\")
Troy- Yeah, B Fats told me they used to always be up in Broadway International.<\/h5>\nTroy- So you guys toured for two years strictly off of “The Show”?<\/h5>\n
Troy- How far did you go across America?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill064.jpg\")
Troy- Alright, so now you guys are growing by leaps and bounds, but on the low you got other groups making unfavorable records about you guys. Salt -N- Pepa made “The Show Stoppers”. How did you guys respond to that?<\/h5>\nTroy- I got you. Ok, what about Mikey Dee and his girls, The Symbolic 3, who made “No Show”?<\/h5>\n
Troy- You’re right, because I never heard of it until this year and someone had to point it out to me.<\/h5>\n
Troy- Right, but I did an interview with Mikey Dee who was a pretty danm good MC. Now what about The Bad Boys with K Love and their “Inspector Gadget”?<\/h5>\n
Troy- Alright, now before you guys can put the second record together with Slick Rick, he breaks out. What was that all about?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill066.jpg\")
Will- Well the thing that a lot of people didn’t know was we weren’t a group, you dig what I am saying? We weren’t like Salt -N- Pepa. People thought because the first time they seen us, Rick was with us, so we were all together. Rick wasn’t actually in the group, he was a solo artist.<\/p>\nTroy- So even while you guys were on the road nobody wasn’t thinking, “Yo, you guys should stay as one.” Or did Rick always act ambitious to do his own thing?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill068.jpg\")
When you got four people with four personalities, everybody is pulling different ways. But when it’s just you, it’s yours. Like when he did “Children’s Story”, it came out just like he wanted it to be.<\/p>\nTroy- So it is easier to say that Rick was just ambitious to do his own thing, as opposed to, Rick and Doug had some type of serious beef which lead to their separation that no one likes to talk about?<\/h5>\n
Troy- No, I understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. I never heard it that way, but always through the years cats would say “Yo, something bad went down, but nobody wants to talk about it.”<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill070.jpg\")
Troy- Well I am glad you said it the way you did. You explained that they were just two solo artists that just happened to come across something legendary.<\/h5>\nTroy- So while you guys were on the road were you trying to make that third cut to go towards the album?<\/h5>\n
Troy- Damn, ain’t that something. Why was he taken off?<\/h5>\n
Troy- So Rick actually laid down the rhymes, but he wasn’t happy with his part. Damn, so he could have been on “All the Way to Heaven.” That would have been beautiful. The song was tremendous with Doug by himself, but you could only imagine greatness with Rick also included.<\/h5>\n
So how did you feel about Rick’s work even though Rick wasn’t feeling his own part?<\/h5>\n
Troy- But the same melody and beat was there right?<\/h5>\n
Troy- Damn.\u00a0 Good stuff Will, real good stuff.<\/h5>\n
Troy- So did the three of you guys sit in that room and say, “Listen Rick, is there any way we can negotiate for you to stay here with us instead of going solo.” Did anybody try and keep Slick Rick with you guys?<\/h5>\n
Troy- Back to England?<\/h5>\n
Troy- So what was your feeling when you heard Slick Rick’s first album?<\/h5>\n
Troy- You’re right, it was hot.<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill072.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTroy- What was the story with “The Show” having something to do with not believing in God?<\/h5>\n
Troy- Man, I would not have even imagined that one.<\/h5>\n
Troy- Right. I got you.<\/h5>\n
Troy- Damn, who said that? I never got that impression, nor heard anyone say that. Ain’t that something?<\/h5>\n
![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill074.jpg\")
<\/h5>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill076.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill078.jpg\")
Troy- But didn’t you guys get that from the movie Phantasm?<\/h5>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill080.jpg\")
Will- Well the label owner wasn’t giving any of the label rights away because when anything happens, he still gets money. Like if we do Soul Train awards, and we do that song, he gets money. If it comes up in a movie, say like the Wesley Snipes joint “New Jack City”, he got paid from that also. But if he gives that up, he is going to lose all of that.<\/p>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill082.jpg\")
Troy- How did you and DJ Stevie Dee get so cool?<\/h5>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill084.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill086.jpg\")
Troy- So you guys never thought about going over to Def Jam with Russell Simmons?<\/h5>\n![\"Chill](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/chillwill088.jpg\")
What’s amazing is when you see the part in “Krush Groove” where LL busts in the room with his radio for Russell and them to hear him, well we did that before the movie. That came from us. Only thing is we told Russell we were coming. When we got there I put my radio on his desk and we played the song and Doug was doing his routine along with it. Then we later saw it in the movie. I don’t know if he got it from us, it could have been from anything, but we did that.<\/p>\n