This is the story of young artists in Richmond who were some of the first to call themselves rappers, along with the music industry that grew up around them in the late 1980s, before the term “hip-hop” became mainstream. Many of them released their music to little fanfare and are still considered obscure, except to collectors of “random rap” who will pay hundreds of dollars for original pressings of the music. Part of Richmond’s storied music history, these artists created their version of a new kind of music that would eventually dominate American pop culture.
One sign of hip-hop’s growing appeal beyond its niche audience in the 1980s was a 1984 novelty recording by John Small and John Small Jr. with Barry Ware, a group of musicians who may have have released the first local rap record. The recording, issued on a 45, is a version of an English drinking song called “Seven Drunken Nights.”
“[It] always was weird that … technically the first rap record out of Richmond … has to be like a novelty record,” says Marty Key, a collector of Richmond-based music. ”It’s actually not a bad early rap record, I mean, for the most part.”
The Smalls and Ware may have beaten every aspiring rapper in town to wax, but their one-off recording followed a line of comedic, halfhearted attempts at mimicking rap that were plentiful during that era. Comedian Rodney Dangerfield, producer Mel Brooks, bodyguard-turned-actor Mr. T and the Chicago Bears all released “raps” in the early 1980s, most of them best left unheard. Like their celebrity counterparts, the members of the Richmond trio weren’t connected to the hip-hop scene that was building momentum around the city.
The artists who would make the first real rap records locally were influenced by hip-hop’s pioneers, artists such as Kurtis Blow, the Treacherous Three, Grandmaster Flash and other New York City-based acts. The first hip-hop record by serious Richmond artists was by M.C.I., short for Masters of Conversation Inc., on the T Port Factory label, based in Richmond’s North Side. The group, consisting of AMC, J-Ski, Everlasting and Kevi-Kev, benefited from a connection to the late Eric E. Stanley, a local DJ known for supporting a variety of music. Their 1985 recording “Commandments b/w Think About It” is a solid slice of electro hip-hop with melodic elements and braggadocio rhymes typical of the era. Released in 1985, it’s now a valuable collector’s item.
A year later, a record label called Style, based in Richmond’s South Side, emerged, dropping a series of singles from artists such as M.C. Rockwale, American Express, Mahogany, La Rich and the Dream, and others. The label was run by local musician, producer and provocateur August Moon, who started another label called Urban Beat with many of the same artists, as well as rapper Cool Carl. Both labels are known for the quantity of their releases, rather than their quality, with some exceptions.
Run-DMC visits one of the first radio stations to play a majority of rap music, Richmond's WKIE. (Photo courtesy Brad Johnston)
Another local musician, named Lil’ Walter, known for fronting the band Lil’ Walter and The Average Black & White Band in the 1970s, decided he wanted to enter the rap game as well. He ran late-night advertisements on television looking for rappers, and then he waited to hear back. Jermain Hartsfield, known as Jay Quan, and his partner, Divine, called the number on the screen, and the duo, known as the Too Def Crew, auditioned for Lil’ Walter the next day. They would record two songs, “Jay” and “Slow and Mellow,” for the Hopewell-based Think Tank label; they were released on a 45 in 1987. The single got the group some regional attention and put them on stages opening for established groups such as Heavy D and the Boyz, Just-Ice and Public Enemy. The songs may be obscure now, but there is a high demand for the recording.
“As far as the value of the record now … the highest I’ve seen it sell was for $600,” Hartsfield says. “It’s mostly ... international sales in Japan and Helsinki, Finland, and places like that. They have a genre over there, what they call ‘random rap’ … rap that just didn't make it. It is very obscure, and the rarer the better. So ours is ... very rare because I know there’s not more than 1,000 copies.”
Too Def Crew also benefited by being label mates with another rap duo, Z Rock. The two members of the group, El Bravador and DJ MC Fresh, would alter the Richmond radio landscape in 1987 with a rap-heavy format broadcast at the far end of the AM radio dial, on 1540 AM WKIE.
The Fat Boys were among many rappers who came by WKIE in the late 1980s. (Photo courtesy Mikki Spencer)
Itchin' for a Scratch
Radio ruled in the late 1980s, as it had in years prior. On the AM band, there were two stations playing R&B and soul music, WANT and WENZ. On FM, Richmonders could pick up WPLZ, an urban contemporary station that broadcast from Petersburg. An arcane sunset law forced the AM stations to sign off before dark, while FM stations could rock all night. Rap music wasn’t a big part of the stations’ playlists — you might hear a hip-hop hit here and there, but most radio programmers were generally frightened by the aggressive sound of rap and didn’t want to offend their listeners with what seemed to them like people yelling over noise.
Mikki Spencer, now known as the Virginia Lottery “Draw Show” host, was the program director at WKIE. She says she realized that if the station wanted to stand out, it needed to make a change.
“It was pretty calculated,” she says of the decision to shift to a hip-hop format. “We couldn’t compete playing the same music.”
The switch came a few months after the Z Rock Crew, often joined by DJ Sir RJ, started their rap radio show “Scratch,” which aired on Sunday afternoon for four hours on WKIE. The show’s focus became the new format for the station, making it one of only three in the country that played a majority of hip-hop. Spencer says the switch wasn’t an easy sell to the consortium of African American doctors who owned WKIE.
“They had no interest in us playing hip-hop and rap,” she recalls. “I mean, they were like, ‘Nobody wants to hear that music. Our people want to hear jazz and R&B.’ And we're like, ‘Yeah, but our people aren't listening. So let's go in to the people who will listen and garner some numbers and make some money from sales.’ So we had to sell them on it. But we got them to come around.”
El Bravador and Fresh became the brand of the station. Of course, it didn’t hurt that El Bravador’s brother, a disc jockey known as Chocolate Chip, already worked at WKIE. If you tuned in to the station back then, you’d hear songs from artists like Boogie Down Productions, Jungle Brothers, Big Daddy Kane and MC Lyte, as well as music from local artists in Richmond’s growing hip-hop scene. Even without social media, it wasn’t hard to tell the crew was having an effect in the city — and beyond.
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From left: LL Cool J, WKIE Program Director Mikki Spencer and Eric B. on a visit to the station (Photo courtesy Mikki Spencer)
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Spencer today (Photo by Jay Paul)
With WKIE being one of the few stations playing mostly rap music, record labels took notice. They started sending their artists down to WKIE’s Wilkinson Road studio for interviews. LL Cool J, The Fat Boys, Run-DMC and Eric B. stopped by. Spencer had become a part of the male-dominated hip-hop industry and was often the only woman in the room when rappers and their entourages would hang out, but she never felt like she didn’t belong.
“Well, I was very comfortable, because, quite frankly, I was in charge,” she says, laughing. “When the record companies knew that we were playing hip-hop, we got a lot of attention, a lot of availability of artists, because we were the only ones in town playing the music.”
The moment of truth came when a concert was planned for the Richmond Coliseum, the WKIE Rap Attack Show, featuring MC Shan, Heavy D and the Boyz, and Salt-N-Pepa. It was promoted almost exclusively with commercials on WKIE.
“We just about sold out the Coliseum,” says El Bravador, who held the position of announcer/on-air DJ. “We knew we had something.”
Hip-hop was something other stations weren’t ready for.
“They didn’t know how to take it. They were a little afraid of it,” El Bravador recalls. “You know, we put a dent in Magic’s [WPLZ FM’s] number, and being just a daytime AM station, we put a dent in their number.”
It wasn’t long before the corporations that owned the stations on the FM band figured it out, though, and slowly began to add rap songs to their playlists. The Z Rock Crew and the all-rap format, faced with competition from stations who stayed on the air all day with stronger signals, were gone by the end of 1989. WKIE switched to reggae music and went off the air a few months later. But the station hasn’t been forgotten by people who were influenced by the groundbreaking efforts of its employees.
“WKIE was definitely influential,” says local DJ Lonnie B., who recalls listening to the station on his back porch while playing Nintendo. “Just in my love and knowledge [of] hip-hop, because, you know, that was probably one of the first to play as much hip-hop as they did. All those guys are legendary to me. They're all pioneers.”
The Too Def Crew were among the first rappers from Richmond to release a recording. Their single “Jay / Nice and Slow” on Think Tank Records dropped in 1987. (Photo courtesy Jay Quan)
The Roots
The Z Rock Crew also propelled the local hip-hop scene, which continued to develop during their era. In 1988, a young trio called the Awesome Threesome put out a single titled “Looking Good,” and they later signed with RCA Records, becoming one of the first groups from Richmond to land a deal with a major record label. Their sole release, “Nice and Slow,” would be marred by a pressing mistake that omitted certain songs from most copies of their 12-inch record.
Dr. Mixx released a three-song EP on Force Records in 1989, featuring music from C-Love, Devastatin’ D, and Shrlock and the JVC Rocks. The record is a valued collectible, known for its “paste-up” cover of the Richmond skyline, one of the first local rap discs to have something more than a white cardboard sleeve.
Also in 1989, the first regional hit from Richmond’s hip-hop scene dropped. Based around a James Brown sample, “Funk Motor” by Mr. Melody is remembered for its irresistible beat and rhymes that shout out “North Side, yeah, Richmond,” as well as the song’s producer, “Mad.” Unlike other local rappers, Mr. Melody, aka Michael Braxton, didn’t align himself with established artists to put his music out. He paid his own way and sold records out of his trunk.
“I was the financier,” Braxton says. “What was I doing at that time? Probably much more of a hustler than anything.”
The record got so much attention that Braxton found himself at the home of Russell Simmons, then the head of Def Jam, one of the top labels for hip-hop at the time, who considered adding Mr. Melody to the Def Jam roster.
“Russell listened to all of the production stuff that we had and told us, ‘Nice music, kid, but the South will never be jumpin’,’ ” Braxton says and laughs. “Look at what the South is doing now!”
Mr. Melody signed with a label out of Philadelphia that distributed the record. He performed on the strength of the single for more than a year, opening shows for R&B singers En Vogue, rappers Masta Ace, Big Daddy Kane, Craig G and others.
Braxton credits a high school classmate, known as Grandmaster Jay, whom he remembers as a “great, great rapper,” for getting him interested in hip-hop. They both attended John Marshall High School.
“At the end of the day, between Run-DMC and the Richmonder by the name of Grandmaster Jay … [they] inspired me and gave me that bug,” he says. “El Bravador can back it up. We watched him. I carried his turntables. This guy was supposedly from New York and living in Richmond. He had all the stuff from New York. He had that authentic stuff.”
“Russell Simmons told us, ‘Nice music, kid, but the South will never be jumpin’.’ Look at what the South is doing now!” —Mr. Melody, AKA Michael Braxton
Grandmaster Jay, a DJ group called Royal Sound Crew and many others were influential in the early days of hip-hop, even if their music didn’t make it onto records during that time. In recent years, Grandmaster Jay has pursued other interests, garnering considerable attention. (See below.)
While Mr. Melody kept “Funk Motor” running months after its release, another act entered the scene, backed up by dancers, an energetic stage show and a well-known promoter, Steve Branch. Richmond had seen nothing like M.C. Ruf and Obsession. They were decked out with their chests out, had their own stage show and were the first group to put their images on the cover of a local record, posing around a luxury vehicle outside of Virginia Union University for “Can Make You Dance,” released in 1990.
M.C. Ruf brought showmanship and style to the local hip-hop scene, with danceable music, fly gear, attitude and marketing muscle. (Photo courtesy Marty Key)
“He didn’t have the greatest talent, or the greatest gift for rappin’, but he was persistent and continued to hone his craft,” Branch says of Ruf. “Because when he first came to me, as a barber, he couldn't rap, but he wanted to be a rapper. And he learned how to become a rapper.”
Branch, who owned the bygone popular nightclub Ivory's Uptown Lounge, saw the rise of hip-hop at the local level and took advantage of the opportunities this presented. He started promoting shows with rap acts and reaping the benefits. He wasn’t the only one: Promoter Hosea “The Great Hosea” Fox brought “The Fresh Fest,” one of Richmond’s first rap concerts, to the Richmond Coliseum, featuring Run-DMC, Kurtis Blow, Whodini, the Fat Boys and Newcleus in 1984. The first show Branch held in 1984, called the “Funkathon,” was at the Arthur Ashe Center and featured Run-DMC.
“We sold it out with 6,000 people, and in that time frame, we paid Run-DMC only $3,500,” he says. “Two to three weeks later, we was trying to line up four or five more dates to take them on tour. Thirty days later, they were getting $100,000 a night, selling out arenas and coliseums all around the country. They never looked back. Hip-hop and rap was going out of orbit.”
Branch had three record labels, the names of which referred to his nightclub: I.U.L., Ivory Star International and Ivory. Another artist under his wing was G.Q. Vocalist, whose single “Funky Music” made use of Wild Cherry’s hit “Play That Funky Music” and was popular in the Hampton area. But after a few years, Branch shuttered his labels and moved on. M.C. Ruf died in May of last year.
“We just had a vision and a dream,” Branch says of Ruf. “And he would not be denied as far as what he wanted to do. And regardless as to how someone may have looked at his talent, before he got polished, he was determined that he was going to be a successful artist.”
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Mr. Melody (bottom) and crew (Photo courtesy Brad Johnson)
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Mr. Melody (aka Michael Braxton) today (Photo by Jay Paul)
The Saga Continues
Hip-hop music is a contemporary art form, built on the sounds and cultural artifacts that existed at its creation, but past works often go unacknowledged. Today, some of the names of Richmond’s rap pioneers are better known among clusters of record collectors overseas than in the neighborhoods where they grew up. But as leery program directors learned decades ago, hip-hop isn’t going away.
Some of Richmond’s early rappers were part of a 2017 documentary, “Hip Hop Legends of Central Virginia,” produced by El Bravador. The DJ is preparing a remixed version of the project, which includes interviews with artists and producers from recent years.
An exhibition opening May 22 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, “The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse,” will include artifacts from Richmond’s Mad Skillz, the rapper who boosted the profile of the city and state with his 1994 debut, “From Where.”
From novelty item to museum exhibition, the story of Richmond’s hip-hop scene is still being written.
Grandmaster Jay with the NFAC at a demonstration for police shooting victim Breonna Taylor in Kentucky (Photo via Getty Images)
The Grandmaster Plan
A Richmond rap pioneer now leads a 'Black militia'
Grandmaster Jay, the DJ who inspired some of Richmond’s rap trailblazers years ago, isn't revered by much of the hip-hop community at large, as he is known for pretending to perform while another DJ’s recorded mix played.
In 2013, Grandmaster Jay, aka John Fitzgerald Johnson and John Jay Fitzgerald Johnson, appeared in a video demonstrating equipment designed by a company called Beamz for use by DJs. The clip went viral after hip-hop fans noticed that Grandmaster Jay’s mix was actually a recorded performance by DJ Jazzy Jeff that included the voice of Richmond’s Mad Skillz, who toured with Jazzy Jeff for several years. The video was later deleted, along with Grandmaster Jay’s Wikipedia page, which shared questionable claims about his DJ career. If he had wanted to achieve notoriety in the music industry, he succeeded, as his “performance” and alleged hip-hop achievements were discredited by true pioneers like DJ Jazzy Jeff, who confirmed that it was actually his work being copied, and Grandmaster Flash, a DJ in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, who said he had never heard of Grandmaster Jay, despite Johnson’s claims of being one of his contemporaries.
Unable to repair his reputation in the music industry, Johnson turned to politics, repurposing his ability to get attention and influence people. He ran for president in 2016. A few years later, the Army veteran founded a paramilitary organization known as NFAC (Not F---ing Around Coalition), which he has referred to as a “Black militia.” The Atlanta-based group has marched in Kentucky, Louisiana and Georgia demanding accountability for deaths at the hands of police and the removal of Confederate monuments. Some reports say the group has a membership in the thousands.
In January, Johnson, 57, was arrested at his Cincinnati home and charged in connection with an incident in Louisville, Kentucky, where it is alleged that he pointed a rifle toward police officers, according to reports. If convicted, Johnson, who was not detained, could face up to 20 years in federal prison.
