ham fisted theatrics

So we recruited the other two dudes from the Phantastic Four, plus their DJ, plus the DJ had a younger brother, and we became the Serious Seven. And they was there, the Frenetic Five, the night at Superfly Garage when we announced we was becomin’ the Serious Seven, and wouldn’t you know it, they left and when they came back to do their show they had gotten four guys off the street and become the Nine Wise Men. And the four dudes didn’t even know their routines! They could barely even rhyme! But it didn’t matter. It was strictly a numbers game at that point.

The next week there was a party at the gym of PS 27. Easy Roc’s cousin’s basketball team was practicin’ there beforehand. So we show up early and ask the whole team would they like to be in a rap group. And that night at the party we debuted as the Honeybee Twenty-Three. But I gotta give respect to those other guys, even if they was bitin’, because during the show they hijacked a crosstown bus and came to the venue as the Nine Wise Men and The So-So-Ill Thirty Held Against Their Will. That’s hustle! It was very hard for them to dance and keep guns trained on the hostages, but the crowd definitely gave them credit for trying.

So at this point we’re thinkin’ the beef is squashed because they’re in jail, but somehow they convince the judge to let ‘em out on bail awaiting trial, and they announce they’re comin’ to Zulu Regatta’s party at Disco Knights. But we figure we got ‘em licked because The So-So-Ill Thirty Held Against Their Will are at home safe with their families, so there’s only gonna be nine of ‘em, right? But just to be safe, we had Easy’s uncle, who owned a grocery store, offer fifty percent off one shopping trip to anyone who would show up and be in our crew that night, so that night we were rollin’ as the Serendipitous Sixty-Four, which was a number you have to respect, even if most of it consists of budget-conscious housewives.

But even then, man, that other group, they were hustlin’. Turned out they’d spent all their time between their release and the show on the New Jersey Turnpike with a sign that said “Honk If You Want To Be In A Rap Group,” and I guess a lot of people honked without thinking, but even still they were obligated to show up, so just by volume of so many cars passing, they got something like two hundred, three hundred people. They called themselves the Magnum Three Hundred and Fifty Seven. Some of them were still in their cars, which the club owner was not happy about. And that there would be exactly three hundred and fifty seven to allow for the “Magnum” name seems a little suspicious to me, but it’s all in good fun.

So anyway, both groups are at the club, so when it comes time to let the audience in, they can’t get in. Six hundred people waitin’ out front. And wouldn’t you know it, man, this dude BlockRockin’ Rick rides by with a bullhorn and talks real slick to the crowd and that’s how he got the Slick Six Hundred Plus One, dwarfing BOTH our groups. The leader of the Magnum Three Fifty Seven and I briefly talked about joining forces to become the Maximum Occupancy Crew, but nothin’ ever came of it.

So the Slick Six Hundred Plus One were the biggest rap group in New York City, in terms of size, which was everything at the time. They recorded a one-song triple-LP single, “Quantity Rappin’.” The radio edit was two hours long. They went bankrupt one night into their first tour because they had to rent eighteen busses to get to Hackensack. And that’s not includin’ the van for the DJ equipment.

But they still held the title as the biggest, until this guy Kool Kid Cool, whose brother worked for the government, got a very hard-to-understand box put on the 1980 National Census form where people didn’t know what they were agreeing to but checked the box anyway, but that’s how he formed the Furious Four Hundred And Fifty Million. People credit him with making the music accessible to all kinds of people, black, white, old, young, and by “make accessible” those people mean “unwittingly turn them into members of an actual group in the genre.” But he did, man, he’s a pioneer. They also hold the title of the only rap group ever subject to congressional re-districting.