OLD SCHOOL NEW SCHOOL YOU KNOW THE RULES....starring





Ricky Rozay

 



Chubb Rock









                         AS



Roxanne Shante'



Nikki Minaj







                                AS

DJ  Mantronik

Swizz Beatz

 The year is 1985  a year earlier the movie Beat Street made alot of noise for hip hop and an unknown actor Jon Chardiet played a character named Ramon "Ramo" that set the whole pace for the climax of the movie.

27 years later the actor is still unknown but everyone from that era can relate to the shout out in the theme song "Everybody say Ramo!" The actor definitely would have made the show "Where Are They Now?" In 1988 Brown University pre-med student Richard Simpson aka Chubb Rock drop out of college to pursue a career in rap. Who knows what impact Dr. Simpson would have made in the medical world, but to this day when "Treat Em Right" comes on people still hit the dance floor. His dancers Dinky and Hotdog formed a group called A.T.E.E.M  in 92 (everybody can't rap) Besides an appearance in Crooklyn Dodgers in 95 we haven't heard much from the Big Man. He did make an appearance in 2011 on the NBC game show The Marriage Ref with his wife and childhood sweetheart of 24 years KeKe "Diamond" Simpson. He did collaborate with Wordsmith on "Back In" in 2009 youtube it and you hear some of the story of the crooked promoters and label reps that left rap legends with pockets like ours. What guys like Chubb Rock and Heavy D. did was pave the way for big guys like Christopher "Biggie" Wallace and eventually Ricky Rozay.

                                                                                                                                                                     Loilita Gooden aka  Roxanne Shante' also had a career effected by "janky promoters". Throughout the legendary battles in her career the label left her with little to nothing in cash. Being naive and only 14 at the time of her first recording didn't help. She  paved the way for several female emcee's to follow in her footsteps. Shante' claimed in 2004 on the beef dvd that the label Warner Music payed for her to go to school but the claim was disputed in Slate magazine by journalist Ben Sheffner. What we do know is that she was fearless in her time to shine dissing everyone and entered the scene on a Marley Marl beat and took on the whole U.T.F.O crew in 1984 to a lyrical war that spawned numerous answer songs from all over the industry. 1985 brought the hit "Bite This' that dissed everyone from LL to Run DMC. The following year she teamed up with Steady B and Biz Markie in seperate tracks.  In 1988 she teamed up with Rick James in a song called Loosey's Rap. Oh yeah, how could we forget in 1987 "Have A Nice Day" where she said lyrical giant KRS ONE's name sounds like a wack radio station. The list of names of people grows longer as I did my research for this article of where are they now??? We all know where Steady B is and thats doing life for a botched bank robbery. Sparky D disappeared off the scene and probably got the same treatment from the labels Shante' got. Which leads us to the fact that Industry rule #4,080 record company people are SHADY. Obviously there is a need for a second part to this article where we will get to DJ Mantronik and a few others that meant alot to hip hop. And if anyone happens to see Ramo, Dinky, Hotdog or even Tracie Spencer yall let me know.

Peace and Blessings,

   ~DAJOURNALIST~