peace what's happening everybody i'm your host and executive producer
james craig's billings what i'm going to talk to you today is
about eric b and rock camp but it's not just me talking it's a
simple fact that has been overlooked now eric being rock him to me possess
the epitome of style cool dress and flavor
but their first album paid in full had some singles
that had a lot of controversy around them which were
check out my melody and eric b for president so a few years ago
when i was working on the untold stories documentary
that was featuring the garden sea i came across some
interesting information that i feel in the documentary
it was severely overlooked regarding the production
of one of the greatest rockham records ever made
check out my melody now the significance is unimaginable today
but back in 1986 eric b and rockham in this particular record
shifted hip hop music forever so for the first time
in six years since i had this dj maniac interview filmed i'm gonna play it
a portion of it uninterrupted because i believe there's a piece of
hip-hop history that the culture needs to understand and
digest now by no means am i ever trying to
discredit marley mall eric b or rock him but what i'm doing is
simply shedding light on one of the greatest rock chem records
that was ever made now i need you guys
to comment share and most of all subscribe to my channel
let's get into it the real story behind the record check out my melody
soon after that uptown harlem party kid wizard
would take on a new moniker embracing the five percent nation
and teachings of islam and would change his name to rakhimala
taking rap more serious would make a demo
after the demo was made a friend by the name of alvin tony
will introduce rakim to eric b eric b would take
that very demo to hip hop producer molly maul
one day i hear knocks at my window or at my door rather cause i lit out my
bedroom was on the second floor and i look out my window as rock him
he's by himself i'm like what's up he's like yo you got
to help me man act i got this melody in my head i gotta get
it out like you know how early it is man you know he was like act please i was
like all right came downstairs had my equipment set up
in the living room at this point let him in and he started humming this
melody instead of denominators melody he's like
can you play that i'm like of course i can play that i mean your brother taught
me how to play the keyboard so i said it goes like this
you know and i played bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam that's what
he was humming and he was like that's it so i said this
is easy so i put it to a beat and um i recorded the beat in the melody
because we did not have a four track recorder at the time
so i use a regular cassette player the trick is
once you record the beat in the melody and get a few minutes of that we stop it
take the tape out put it in another tape player
and then go to record that over that he was putting his rhymes
and while he was doing the rhymes i was doing explosions of
records and scratches things of that nature
and um that was the first check out my melody done in my living
room with scratches a boss beat machine
uh sound effects rock him wrapping over this echo chambers actual actual
echo chamber with a tape in it and uh and that was the first
check out my melody so after we did that he took the tape i guess he let his
brother hear it and you know they came back
and then rakim had a uh talent show at the high school
so they wanted to redo the melody by this time me and griff we had already
made this jazz tune that griff was uh griff had invented this jazz too he
taught me how to play this melody while he played the bass line and uh and
then he played some chords on top of that
while i added some you know dj stuff and it was a jazz when it was really hot
and while him came and laid the melody lyrics
over that jazz tune and we recorded that for his
uh high school talent show and i didn't go to the talent show i
should have went but um i don't know what happened at the
talent show i wish i could go back in time or record that
you know that would be archive but that was the second melon
so now the third melody was made with me griff and rock kim on the jazz
tune and um rakim took one of those tapes one of
those demos over to alvin tony who had eric b
with him and then rakim and eric b took one of those
demos to molly mall and i guess they made them
the uh the melody you hear on the radio uh from what me and rock him made or me
rock him in blast was really what me and rock kim made with the scratches
because i noticed that everybody copied all of my scratches too
did them a little differently but um it's pretty much the the same elements
they changed the sound of the melody i think i used a horn and they used a
whistle something like that i'm not really sure
but
the melody was made in my living room and um the second melody was made
in my basement with me griffin raw so rakim's influence
on the neighborhood started to grow um i used to be able to
battle rhyme with rob we would sit in a car
and we drink this this beer it was strawberry beer
from the from the beer house and wine dish
we used to drink strawberry flavored beer
or was it raspberry it was raspberry flavored beer we would drink
and sit in my mom's car and battle ron and um one day we were doing it you know
we did it often and one day we were doing it and he
actually tore me to pieces and i don't know how he did that but
from that day on i could not i could not hang with him anymore
uh i used to be able to run with him and i wasn't really a rapper but i could
i could do everything anything had to do with hip-hop i could do it
you know but he had done something man and he was
it was a different thing he was doing and he blew me away i could never
rhyme in front of him again after that um so he started to grow in popularity
in the neighborhood those tapes that i made were circulating
around the neighborhood and um at some point
i guess alvin tony ran into eric b um
freddy fox must have uh missed the boat because um the rumor
has it that he was supposed to show up at that meeting he didn't rock him
showed up and i guess he brought that tape of the
melody because eric b had here something so
they took that tape of the melody and brought it to molly
mall so molly moore
recreated the melody off of what i mean me and rock him made the melody
the melody that you hear is pretty much just about the same thing
um because uh eric we kind of copied my scratches and everything
because it was it was a pretty good uh recording
but um it wasn't good enough it was on a cassette tape so
molly moore probably did it a little more professional
uh and then they did um eric b as president
but uh yeah the melody was me and rock kim so when
we finally heard rock him on the radio the whole
neighborhood wine dance was just lit everybody was just crazy
and um even at that time we was happy to hear him
we did not know the impact that he would have
on hip hop but his rhyme style and uh the conversations all of us used
to have was on deep levels very deep levels and uh
you know he's a little younger than me but uh
he was very mature for his age and somehow the knowledge
that we all shared when we had these cyphers
all of us uh he eventually started putting that into his rhymes
and got more and more complicated using syllables
and uh metaphors
and using knowledge he was influencing people older than him
by the knowledge that he had based on his lessons
and the lessons we
i would say the lessons we learned growing up because um there were some
deep brothers around so he was influenced by a lot of good
brothers
and um and he had just had his own style with his with his word play
and like he'll tell you he got it from you know john coltrane and those sacks
riffs things of that nature and he put those patterns
probably that he got from his brother ronnie
and his brother griff he put those those jazz patterns into his rhymes
and um along with his syllables and his knowledge of self it was
it was something never done before there was people
doing it in their own way but nobody did it like rock him
so even then we didn't know the impact he was going to have
until uh i'm not sure the year but it was after
a few albums had come out after the paid in full album
it still wasn't clear it was clear that he made an impact
but it wasn't crystal clear what type of impact he made on the industry