Interview: Black Mikey & San Diego Rap History, pt. 1
Black Mikey is an OG in the San Diego rap game with roots going back before anyone even knew that San Diego rap existed. Having recently gotten out of jail, he’s now risen from the grave and seems as ready as ever to rejuvenate the San Diego rap scene. Thankfully, Black Mikey took some time out first to school us on San Diego rap history. When you’re done, continue on to part 2 of the Black Mikey interview here.
SDRaps.com: How’d you get into hip-hop yourself?
Black Mikey: Honestly, I didn’t get into hip-hop, it got into me. I won’t even actually say what song. It was a number of songs that I could point you to that started me in that direction. But it was music in general that fascinated me from the gate. I didn’t even know anything about rap music until …… Fuck it, if we’re gonna be honest, I’m like a grandaddy in this shit anyway. 1978: “Rapper’s Delight” came out. I was like 8-9 years old. When it came on, I was like, “I could do that shit.” I started doing it and then evolved as it evolved.
But back then, we didn’t give a fuck about no record deals, contracts. All we cared about was fucking a motherfucker up in the hallways who had the hottest 16. Whether you could beat on your chest and spit your verse or if you read it off paper, you had to do away with your foes in the hallways and then it got talked about it and it exploded out into the streets after school. And then we were doing dances like the Jackie Robinson. All the YMCA’s and Boy’s Clubs in the area. A lot of us that are gang members now were breakdancers and pop-lockers and DJs, spray painting on walls and all kinds of shit, first. Everybody’s neighborhood got breakdancers, pop-lockers, DJ’s, beatsmiths, emcees, graffiti artists that’s still from their hoods and reptable. Hip-hop has kinda ingrained itself into the underbelly of Southeast San Diego as well.
SDRaps.com: You’re from San Diego right? Because I think most rappers not from New York got up onto it later.
Black Mikey: In all actuality, a lot of us used to try to say we were from New York. When we were younger, we used to try to watch the “Wildstyle” videos. Prince Whipperwhip used to come through here. It’s a military city. So a lot of dudes from the East Coast was from the military and was related to a lot of dudes that was in the game on the East Coast, from Chicago, from Down South. So with San Diego being a military city, we was open, directly networking with these type of people by nature.
Because we had 4-5 Park. Back in the days, DJ’s used to call my boy, Silky C–a blind DJ–they used to come DJ. They’d have booths, they used to sell food, dance contests, everything used to go on at this park. But by this being the place where a lot of people in the military hung out, it was all walks of life running through here. People from the East Coast, the West Coast, Down South, from outside the United States–it was like a conglomerate. And it circulated. So we got all of the music–the BLS, KIIS 98.7 tapes–from back then with Chuck Chillout, Red Alert, Mr. Magic’s Rap Attack. A lot of that shit was going on, we was getting that shit. When Faizon Love wasn’t Big Worm, when he was just Faizon with the kangol on and the fake “Faizon” name belt, rocking the Lee jeans.
And it was fun! We used to play the game, “Yeah, I’m from New York, son!” A lot of used to do it and we used to emcee like them. And then …… a new dawn came. And we started saying, “Shit, well maybe we can sound like ourselves.”
SDRaps.com: And when was that?
Black Mikey: I don’t know if it was Ice-T’s “The Coldest Rapper in the World” [ed. note: "The Coldest Rap"] or NWA that started it. But once we started sounding like us and we realized that we had a story to tell about where we come from, it took another turn. Because in that, you could tell a story about where you come from AND you could represent the neighborhood AND you could annihilate an emcee ALL AT THE SAME TIME. So we metamorphosized into more than just battle rappers. We became griots. We became oral traditionists. We spoke about things that went on in the past that we learned. We speak about things that’s going on now. And we speak about the future. So now, this hip-hop thing is taking on a whole different turn. But at the same time, we still didn’t know this. We didn’t know what we were. We didn’t know a million vampire-ass record companies is gonna latch onto the style ……
SDRaps.com: You’ve been here since the beginning, obviously. Can you school us on SD rap history? When did this scene really get going?
Black Mikey: Like I said, we was doing our thing in high school. It used to be me, a kid named Lucky, who used to make beats. He was San Diego’s Dre. Back then, he was a beast with the SP-1200. This was like ’86-’87, ’88-’89. In ’89: My boy Gangsta Ern really started making some noise. He dropped a maxi single called “Up Against It.” Another comrade of mine, Green Eyes, dropped a single called “The Struggle Is On,” which WC and them stole, remember?
I’ma give y’all a little history. What happened was somebody put some PCP–whether it be Crazy Toones or WC–dumped some PCP in Green Eyes’ drink and they stole the beat to “The Struggle Is On” and used it on a movie soundtrack. And for everybody that knows this song, I’ma just sing a part of it: “Now he’s all tied up with duct-tape, Dub mothafucking safe, baby!” Y’all know what I’m talking about too. But that’s another story.
At that time, another cat hit the scene: my boy Cricet. He was down with a dude named Zig, they had a group called The Crush Foundation. And I used to battle them. I used to battle them like a motherfucker. We’d battle from school and it poured out into the streets. I used to go to his hood, he used to come to my hood. We’d battle, battle, battle. They dropped a song called “Executioner’s Style.” I dropped a song called “Understand Me.” And it was just back and forth, we was on one. Kinda like some YZ against PRT (Poor Righteous Teachers) back in them days of the Yo! MTV Raps era or some shit.
What ended up happening is we ended up friends because some shit happened. I ain’t really get into what went down. But it forced me and Cricet to be the first Blood and Crip EVER–I don’t mean just in San Diego, I mean EVER on the face of this earth. Before the Big June and Brotha Lynch song as well. EVER to win a contest together, to tie the flags together, stop the set-tripping, we fucked up the whole contest. Had all our neighborhoods mad at us. The Bloods wanted to get me. The Crips wanted to get Cricet. We had to sneak inside Fam Mart, buy our CD–I take that back, a tape–buy our tape, split our money, and he’d keep the tape one week, I’d keep it the next. Or until I got my dub. But this is the type of monumental shit that we did. We did shit and we didn’t even give a fuck about the history that we was making. Because we didn’t know that it was gonna be any history. We didn’t even think that motherfuckers would give a fuck.
SDRaps.com: Is this the same Cricet that was all over The Wrongkind Gang Yellow Tape?
Black Mikey: Exactly. The one that produced the same Mitchy Slick Triggeration Station, the first album that Slick dropped. Cricet, my partner. And like I was saying, me and Cricet did that contest and we won that contest.
And around that same era, I can’t say Cricet without saying Steve Vicious because they’ve been a team since Steve Vicious left One Nation. Steve Vicious, Kutfather, Jimbo, Jinx, a couple other dudes was a group called One Nation at one time, a crew. Dope as fuck too. Steve Vicious used to do beats for me and a certain individual named Big June in ’89-’90.
So between Lucky and Steve Vicious, we got super slappers. We was just really putting it down in San Diego and doing shows and not even caring about a record company until my boy Gangsta Ern started up with “Up Against It.” Then he pulled me, another homie–they was from a crew called The Nation Rappers at one time. I’ma call him by his old school name, Rude Ron D. But it’s my partner in rhyme and crime, Damu. Gangsta Ern pulled us together and we started a crew called the Street Soldiers. We started doing shows at Club Excess in TJ with the likes of the South Central Cartel. And a gang of people in this industry started coming and messing with us. The likes of Blood Alone. And a few other people. But in those times, they really started coming and messing with the label we had formed called Break Mine Off Records. I was in prison. Then in 1992, while I was in prison, my boy Gangsta Ern gets killed. So from there to 1993, me and Damu, we do our thing. The same individual that put the energy behind the Gangsta Ern “Up Against It” project was behind us. And we do our things, in and out of trouble.
Fast forward until about The Hound Foundation time. Or I’ll say a little bit before that. I get with Filtered Souls. We formed a group. It’s a dude named Elo and a dude named Sheisty. Two good dudes. I don’t got nothing bad to say about none of them. Through them I ended up putting out my first single which was called “The Exorcism” 1996. Through them, I dropped my next single which was “We Drop Bombs,” which led to the Skyline Records deal, which led to the video you talked about me in the strait-jacket, “Rubber Rooms.” From there, I dropped a song here and there, did some shows but never really dropped an album out because I stayed in trouble. …… I caught a case. I ended up catching an “Assault with a deadly weapon.” And I had to go sit down for 81815.
In that time, I thought it was pretty much a wrap, me being the age I am and some other things. I even tried to be like, “Fuck it, I quit!” But it’s a trip how, like I told you, I didn’t get into it, it got into me. I had dreams. I would literally wake up with a mic in front of my face, in my cell, rapping. My celly would wake me up and be like, “Homie, you are literally rapping in your sleep.” I threw away songs and I could not forget them. I just ended up writing and writing. And over the whole time I was gone, the 7-8 years that I did, I was gone, I wrote. And y’all just got like one peel of the onion, one layer so far. And there’s so many layers. I got so much shit to tell y’all.
Read on to part 2 of this interview with Black Mikey, in which Mikey delves further in San Diego rap history and also tells us about the projects he currently has in the works.
Reading be fun though:
