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"Living by ideals hip hop pioneers instilled in me"

"True Original B-Boy Apostle"

I started b-boying in 1983, at age 12, and continued through 1986. During that time it became my mission to find new music to break to. I started buying compilations and soundtracks and from there albums of the artists I was familiar with (Run-DMC, Grandmaster Flash, Fat Boys, LL Cool J). "Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" was the first hip hop song I heard but it was Run-DMC's King of Rock LP that really made me a hip hop junkie. So I spent my high school years surrounded by the sounds of Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, MC Shan, Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Audio Two, Kool Moe Dee, Doug E Fresh, Slick Rick, Sir Mix-A-Lot and all the other golden age rappers. I tried my hand at MCing in high school but was never particularly good at it. In college I DJed a lot of house parties which led me to a degree in broadcasting/journalism and a hip hop radio show in 1995-1996. I also hired out as a party DJ during that same time, but was disillusioned because people in the Midwest wanted to hear country and classic rock, not hip hop. In 1996, I moved to Chicago and tried to get into the music industry, but a series of deals with shady people led to everything falling apart. I designed web sites from 1997 to 2000, and spent my time mourning the death of real hip hop (except for Black Star!). In 2000 I started working as a freelance magazine and web site writer and taking care of my kids at home. In early 2003, my CD and cassette collection was stolen. I was crushed, but I used the insurance money to buy back most of it on vinyl. Then I started buying hip hop vinyl to resell on eBay. Within a year I had customers from Japan, Australia, England, Austria, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Italy, France, Norway, Poland, Brazil, Finland, Greece and many other countries. My customers started schooling me about their hip hop scenes, I'd buy or trade some records from them and, in August 2004, I started my World Hip Hop Market web site. Now my passion is finding great international hip hop music and making it available to a U.S. audience. To that end, I launched World Hip Hop Radio to bring the best of international hip hop to America. I still follow underground hip hop in the U.S. and revel in the brilliance of hip hop of the 1980s and early 1990s.