The Beginning

These tapes were often of poor sound quality due to the fact that they were copied several times from the portable tape players which were usually near the DJ's table, to the hundreds of kids who copied, traded, and sold them in the streets of New York. These tapes also circulated the boroughs by way of various car services such as OJ, Topaz, Godfather, and Touch of Class.

Harlem Hip-Hop head and tape collector Troy L. Smith has amassed over 300 tapes of live performances from first generation MC crews such as The Cold Crush Brothers, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5, and The Fantastic 5. Rock The Bells sat down with Troy to discuss his love of collecting, and what drives him to continue.

"I grew up in a house with a bunch of ladies - my mother, my grandmother, and my aunts," Harlem's Troy L. Smith says of his earliest introductions to music. "Bobby Robinson had a record store four or five blocks from us across 125th street, so they had all the latest 45's, albums and stuff like that.

I always remembered the album covers sittin' in the album rack. I remember my mother playing Bohannon, Millie Jackson, and Melba Moore a lot. She also played lots of Richard Pryor, so at a young age I knew all of his routines. My aunt loved The Jackson 5 and Sly & The Family Stone. Music was always in the house."

Troy says that it was the "courting music" by the likes of The Stylistics, Blue Magic, The Dells, and The Spinners drew him in the most. "I was like seven or eight years old with tears coming out of my eyes from how beautiful that music sounded," he explained. "Walking across 125th St., the records stores were always playing music from the speakers outside. There was always music around me, long before Hip-Hop. There was no such word as Hip-Hop at the time."

Greg Marius

Like many young New Yorkers, (and many soon to be MC's and DJ's) Troy enjoyed the Rock music played on New York AM radio station WABC. "There really was no separation at the time between music genres. If it was good it was good," he explains. "Records like 'Was A Dog A Donut' by Cat Stevens and 'Georgie Porgie' by Toto were just good songs. They sounded like R&B at the time."

Troy recalls 1977 as the year that he first heard Rap, and he says that it was the late Greg G of the Disco 4 (Greg Marius, founder of the Entertainers Basketball Classic, which became the legendary Rucker Tournament) who was playing it in a park. "Greg G lived across the street from my projects, and he used to play music at this place called Riverside Church," he remembers. "It's a world renown church. Martin Luther King gave his last speech before his assassination at Riverside."

Outdoor Jams

"At Riverside they had an after school program for teenagers and they would allow them to play music. They played regular R&B and Soul, stuff from the radio, then they let Greg come in and DJ. He had started getting his records from his cousin in the Bronx. He was playing these esoteric records that no one had heard, and eventually they started boppin' their heads to it.

I'd heard about what was happening in the Bronx as far as DJing, and in front of my building they'd bring out one record player and play records like 'Strawberry Letter 23', but when Greg came he took it to the back of my building and played on two turntables. Summer by summer it would progress in my projects, but Greg G was the first person who I saw bring it outside for us to see how it looks with two turntables put together with the mixer and big speakers. Greg played Hip-Hop for the first time for us in the Grant Housing Projects basketball courts behind my building 1295."

Troy describes witnessing the performances of MC's both in the streets of Harlem, and on tapes as electrifying, infectious, and something incredible to witness. "That culture was just something else," he says. "Something about it was this freedom, and just the courage and confidence that they had. When I heard JDL and Grandmaster Caz (of the Cold Crush Brothers) I thought that they were both 250 pounds of straight muscle, and that they were blue black because of how they talked. Then I saw them in person, and they were just two regular cool brothers..

He also describes early tape recordings of jams as extremely hard to find. "You would hear about tapes, and hear people playing them, but they weren't easy to own, almost like an urban legend. The easy tapes to get were usually the unknown cats, not legendary cats like The Cold Crush, Flash, or The Treacherous Three. I would get third and fourth generation copies of tapes, and even though they weren't clear, its like you could see the culture through the fog."

The Tapes

"There was something about hearing those beats. You didn't hear them on the radio or anywhere else," Troy says enthusiastically. "The whole time you're wondering why this beat isn't on the radio, not realizing yet that its a beat being repeated over and over.

My grandmother would complain, 'why do they keep messing with the record, playing the same thing over and over.'" Troy compares the early days of live tapes to finding a unicorn. "They were hard to find. You heard about 'em, and even the flyers. They would be passed around the class in junior high school, but I rarely saw them."

Troy recalls his first tape as 5th generation poor quality, and he doesn't remember exactly who was on it, but his earliest memories are tapes of the Treacherous Three and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5. "I remember Mele Mel was rhyming to BT Express (I Like It)," he recalls. "There was also a Cold Crush tape where they were doing their routines, and a Crash Crew tape that had Walter Cronkite's voice as an intro."

There were no double cassette decks, and jams were recorded with a portable tape player or boom box by the speakers. Troy recalls tapes where party goers can be heard talking over the music. "I had a Harlem World tape where you could hear this girl say 'Dota Rock (of The Fantastic 5) ain't no damn 19 years old.' Some of 'em were recorded just right with the box in front of the speaker. "

Troy explains that parties could last several hours, and in his collecting he has encountered several parts of the same parties recorded from different sources. Because tapes were 60 and 90 minutes in length, he has had to do the forensic work of piecing together different tapes that sometimes were all part of one jam.

"Parties could be six hours or more, but tapes are only 60 or 90 minutes," he explains. "I also have several tapes with pieces of multiple parties." He asserts that his collection of over 300 tapes represents less than ten percent of the parties that actually took place from 1977 until 1983 or so. "People say to me that I have all the tapes, and my reply is 'are you kidding?' There were parties every night at many of these spots.

I have probably less than nine percent of the partes that happened from that time period. I remember Busy Bee doing an interview years ago, and they were playing his tapes in the background. I didn't have any of those, and I'd never heard them. There are so many more tapes out there. Just like archeologists making discoveries, there's so much more out there."

Troy says that he still has the same enthusiasm to hunt for tapes that he's had since he started collecting. "I'm actually about to make a power move now," he says with a slight grin. "Im connecting with my man who is a DJ, and I usually bring four tape decks to his house. Of course a fair exchange ain't no robbery, I give him tapes too. We get together and just start recording. I go through spurts where I may go a year without getting any tapes, then the floodgates open and things start popping up."

Euphoric is how Troy describes getting a new tape that meets and exceeds his expectations. He describes buying a dozen or so tapes from Bronx tape collector Ran Dee (who he credits as supplying him with some of his earliest tapes) in the mid 1990's and amongst them was a live performance of "Flash To The Beat" by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5. "That was the first tape that I played, and I swear I got high," he explains. "I hadn't heard it in more than 20 years, and it still sounded as fresh as the first time I heard it. It was a performance at T-Connection, and I had that tape before, but I lost it."

Busy Bee -VS- Kool Moe Dee

The legendary battle between Chief Rocker Busy Bee and Treacherous Three frontman Kool Moe Dee caused a paradigm shift in Hip-Hop. Prior to this faceoff Rap battles, or MC contests as they were most commonly referred to consisted of solo MC's or crews performing their various rhymes and routines, with the crowd's response determining the winner.

After Moe Dee's extremely personal surprise attack, battles became more focused on the weaknesses, failures, and even dress code of competing MC's. This approach to battling is still alive and well four decades later, specifically in the many organized battle circuits that exist today. Troy reveals some little known facts about that battle, which became one of Hip-Hop's most circulated tapes.

"Moe Dee and Busy Bee actually battled twice," Troy revealed. "I believe the first time was before Christmas, and the second time was a few days later, right before New Year's day. The one before Christmas is the one that everybody heard. Nobody has the second battle. Charlie Rock of The Harlem World Crew might have it, because he says that they had mics in the ceiling.

Even Biz Markie said that he has it, and that he got it from Randy of Harlem World. Doug E Fresh's DJ Kev Ski was there, and he was trying to record it, but was having issues with the tape deck. That's why that tape isn't floating around. I've never heard anyone play it. Biz said that he had it, but he never played it for me.

At the second battle The Treacherous Three came late, in fact they got there just in time to not be eliminated. Moe said basically the same rhymes as the first battle, and he mimicked Busy's voice in slow motion, suggesting that he was saying the same rhymes as always. Even Kev Ski says that he knew what Busy Bee was gonna say, but he still wanted to hear it. Cold Crush and The Force MC's were there too.

The first battle was declared a draw, and people from Harlem questioned how anyone could judge it that way. It was suspected that they were milking it to get another show out of it, and that's just what happened. That second show was billed as a rematch.

Lots of MC's from that period thought that Moe had written his rhymes for the first battle in advance. It was the baddest rhyme at that time, and it was hard to believe that it was off the top. The next day at Brandies high school everybody was talking about it. They were going crazy quoting it, and I hadn't heard it yet. When I did, I just stared at the radio. He was going' off!"

Troy's passion for the music, and for collecting is obvious, not just from his story, but from the frustration that he shares when he experiences fellow collectors who fail to come through with trades. "There was this one time when JDL of the Cold Crush Brothers hooked me up with someone who supposedly had tapes that I was looking for," he explains.

"This guy shows up to my projects wearing a full doctors uniform, complete with a stethoscope, but he wasn't a doctor, and didn't work at a hospital! In fact he'd just been released from jail. He pulled out his tapes, and from the writing on them, they weren't what we discussed, although he insisted that everything was on the tapes. We did the trade, and the tapes weren't what we discussed. It's really frustrating when cats don't come through."

Troy is very active online seeking trades, and he leaves his contact information on his YouTube page. As a result of his presence online in chat rooms, on message boards, and social media he's sometimes recognized in the streets of New York and asked about tapes. "I was in the train station on 42nd street and the local train pulled up, and the conductor said, 'Hey Troy what's up?' Then he asked me about a tape.

I asked how he knew who I was, and he said from the internet and asked about more tapes. This is 42nd street in Times Square, so you know that its crowded. People on the train are looking at both of us, and I told him we could discuss it later because the people on the train were waiting. He replied, 'Man forget them.' He asked about more tapes, and I told him to call me later, and he closed the doors and left. That was crazy"

Troy says that it was Ran Dee who aided him in regaining his entire tape collection, after he lost it in the early '80s. "I lost my whole collection in the early 1980s about 25 tapes," he says. "Around 1995 I found Randy selling tapes at Fatbeats and I brought over 50 tapes in six months. After that I was on my own trading with people all over New York and the world to make my collection what it is today."

Troy's dedication to Hip-Hop, and his passion and determination to chronicle it with his writings, and curation is a testament to his love for the culture. He continues to do the archeological work required to fill in the missing pieces that will bring about a more accurate timeline. Troy can be reached for tape trades at 212-361-9822. Also check out his YouTube channel.