WICHITA HIP-HOP HISTORY LESSON #6 - IT'S TIME TO BRING DANOIZ!

So out of all the hip-hop groups that came out of Wichita one of the earliest that made the most noise (no pun intended) was Danoiz! 

 

 

 

I had first heard of them from a friend that I had back at Hadley Middle School.  He had knew I was into rap music and had mentioned that there was a local rap group that I should check out named Danoiz.  I hadn't heard of them, but I went looking for their music and couldn't find their cassette tape at Camelot music (after I was told I could find it there).  Not to long after that I started hearing more and more about them.  A year went by and I was watching Rap City on B.E.T. and a commercial come on for Connoisseur Records.  It wasn't until I started paying attention that the group that they were talking about in the commercial was Danoiz!  So I went to Music & More and grabbed two copies on their new 12 inch single.  I remember vividly that the commercial.  This was the first and one of the ONLY times that I have ever seen Wichita rap group promoting there music in a commercial on TV.

 

 

Frankly I don't know much about Danoiz, but I had heard that they started out as a rap group/crew called SWAT.  Below is one of there first videos of them performing at the Cotillion I believe.  This is a great video showing what Wichita hip-hop was like in the early 90's.

 



Later when I was in high school I started seeing and hearing more and more about their music.  I was able to get my hands on a copy of their Cadillac style album.  They totally embodied what is was like to be around Wichita hip-hop at that time.  Everyone was into lowriders, rolling around the North side, and hanging out at Riverside Park on Sundays.  Danoiz was the perfect riding music for that.

 

Danoiz was also the first AND ONLY Wichita rap group that I have ever seen on B.E.T.!  They had videos on Rap City and B.E.T. Uncut that aired late at night.  I can't tell you how cool it was to see people from Wichita getting air on a national platform.  The same people that were rolling around Wichita and performing at shows were on B.E.T!  Very inspiring to see.  Check out the videos that aired below...

  

 

They always used the term "Madwest" in their music which quickly became a term used by everyone!  No one can ever forget Danoiz and their contributions to Wichita's Hip-Hops scene.  To make it even better, they still make and work on music to this day!
Next week... a special guest ~ @RoyceOnTheRadio

TONS OF WICHITA HIP-HOP TALENT ON DISPLAY DURING THE 316 MUSIC UNITYFEST AT MCADAMS PARK

The 316 Hip-Hop community should up to support the 2nd Annual 316 Music Unityfest at McAdams Park on May 24th.  I do have to admit I was a little worried about the weather.  There was a short shower near the beginning of the vent, but the clouds parted and it was blues skies and dry for the rest.  I was able to catch up with some people who I had not seen in a minute.  Everyone was out not only to support the event, also to support one another.  Some of the acts I was able to see were the Kansas Boyz, Ak, Cash Hollistah, Mr. Relo, Buddy Roe, Bo Pessi, Sippi Bond, Comedian uncle Bam, Randall Rhymes and Cing J with DJ 3 and DJ Detroit hosting.  Also saw Kapela, SE Trill, TYN, Big Sam, Eighto, The Published Queen, Bub Love, Cortez Martin and many more.  Hype Magazine was doing interviews with quite a few of the artists.  It was also made family friends.  Kids were enjoying the inflatables and games that were there for them to partake in.  Really looking forward to seeing them when the issue comes out.  Overall, it was a great day for the local hip-hop scene.  Definitely something we need to do more of!  I didn't get a chance to get to many pix but check out some of the visuals below. ~ @RoyceOnTheRadio

I had to get a pic with these guys.  The WK Veteran - Cyril Foote Jr. Ak and Cash Hollistah.  Check out the blog post Wichita Hip Hop Lesson #1 to hear some of Ak from an old mixtape I had back in 1997!

Ak on the stage dropping knowledge with his lyrics!

Cash Hollistah performing Go-rilla!

Some of the crowd enjoying the show.

WICHITA HIP-HOP LESSON #5 - A TRIBUTE TO B-KAUTIOUS

So I was getting ready to post on the Wichita graff scene for the fifth installment of Wichita's Hip-Hop history.  I got a call from one of the graff artists and I am going to do an interview with him to really get in depth on some of that history so that will be coming in the next couple of weeks.  So instead I decided to write on one of the artists from Wichita who left this world way to soon.  I was cleaning my basement going through some old music and I came across the B-Kautious - Birth Of A Munsta cd.  I had known Brandon since 1994.  We actually went to North High together.  He was a couple years older than me and never really said anything to me since I was younger until one year in summer school.  I was getting something from the vending machines at North High and he was in the hallways with some friends.  I heard him call out "Mole!".  I didn't know who he was talking to so I got my candy bar and went on.  The next day I walked past him and I heard "Mole!"  By this time I figured he was talking to me.  I went over and said, " What's your name?"  I told him Royce and he said, "Naw man... your new name is Mole".  Apparently because he thought I looked like the animal.  Haha.  So from that day on, I was known as Mole around North, and some people still call me that to this day.  He was always into music and I vividly remember him beatboxing and freestyling in the hallways of North.  Music was in his blood!

 

Fast forward to 2010.  I get set up to cut a commercial at a radio station for a local rapper who wanted to put some album release spots on the radio.  The account rep set up a time and came and got me when the person who at the station for the session.  They told me on the way walking up that his name was B-Kautious, and as I came around the corner I heard "Mole!"  It was Brandon.  We sat and talked for awhile, and I asked what he was doing up there.  He let me know that he was up to cut a commercial for his new album and handed me a copy.  All I could say was.. "Whoa your B-Kautious?!"  It was great to see him again, and we talked about music and the high school days for almost 2 hours. 

 

I would see him around for the next year at events and we would chop it up.  The last time I remember seeing him I told him that way came a long way from North High.  He just smiled, and said "Damn right".  He passed away not long after that.  He had the heart, drive and talent to do great things, and it was a sad day when I found out he had passed away.  Definitely  a person that was gone to soon.  Below is the cd that he gave me that day when he came up to cut the commercial along with on of the tracks of it.  Enjoy!  Next week...  We will bring DANOIZ!  ~ @RoyceOnTheRadio

A GREAT NIGHT TO GIVE TRIBUTE TO J-DILLA WITH SLUM VILLAGE IN WICHITA...

People came out to the Abode Venue on May 20th to celebrate the life of J-Dilla with Slum Village.  I had a great time at this event, and once again saw quite a few people who I have not seen in years.  The hip-hop heads were definitely representing for Wichita!  Big Sam and Jessie Lives did the damn thing opening up for the show.  Also DJ Carbon had me dancing the entire night playing nothing but old school hip-hop, (I'm still reciting the lyrics to The Fab Five - Lefluer Leflah Eshoshka).  Slum Village came out and did a live mini-documentary about J-Dilla and how they me and formed the group.  Not only did they play all the great Slum Village tracks like "Fall In Love", "Selfish" and "Climax", but they also performed tracks off  J-Dilla's The Shining album and a track off the Jaylib album.  I was once again reminded how important hip-hop music is to people and how it brings people together.  It does my heart good to see events like this around Wichita.  Props to Naymlis, Kpush and Cloud 9 for putting on a great show!  Check out some of the visuals below!  Enjoy! ~ @RoyceOnTheRadio

  

 

DJ Carbon setting up and getting ready to rock the 1's and 2's



 

Saw so many great people at this show and Lawyer is one of them!  I haven't seen him in damn near 10 years!  This guy was a bboy (part of my crew IWC!) and one of the illest graff writers in Wichita.  There are still some DERO throw ups around the city! 

 

Big Sam got the crown on their feet and killed the stage!

 

DJ Carbon on the turntables!

 

The crowd was feeling Big Sam!  Mr.2000 enjoying the show! 

 

The Cloud 9 crew in the building! 

 

The crowd getting ready for Slum Village to hit the stage!

 

Slum Village's DJ getting the crowd hype!

 

Slum Village explaining J-Dilla's use of samples and how the sp-1200 played a major part in his sound.

 

One of the illest DJ's Wichita has produced1  DJ DVST8! 

 

Grant... One of the few true hip-hop heads that I went to high school with!   #NorthHigh

 

 

Slum Village on stage!

 

Told DJ Carbon I would take a pic of his t-shirt to show Troy that he was wearing it!  Lol  I got to grab one of those also!

 

Torin getting some great pix! 

 

Big Sam! 

 

Yo props to this guy for rockin the dashiki!  Mad style!

 

Slum Village owning the crowd. 

 

Chris from Notes & Noises enjoying the show. 

 

Antdilla was feeling it!

 

Antdilla, Sarah, Lawyer and grant enjoying the show. 

 

Slum Village!

 

Caught Mr.2000 off guard.  Lol 

 

 

Kyle and DJ Carbon chopping it up!

 

DJ Carbon closed out the show spinning classic oldschool hip-hop!

WICHITA HIP-HOP LESSON #4 - DJ HARD!!!

So let me start off by saying...  I really don't know much about DJ Hard.  Never met him, but he was one of the first local artists that I really remember seeing get love from ALL over the city.  Now I'm sure there were other artists around the city doing there thing, but for me it seemed like at the time DJ Hard really spread his music throughout the city, and if you didn't know him, you know his music!  It seemed like everyone had his tape around town.  I was at Hadley Middle School when his album Inhale My Flow dropped.  Seeing a rap album with someone on the cover reppin Kansas with KU gear on was major!  It was the first time I had really seen anyone do that.  DJ Hard made a huge mark on the Wichita hip-hop scene because to this day people still talk about him and that Inhale My Flow album.  My tape that I had unfortunately got ate, but I do hear of the tape still being floated around from time to time so there are still copies of it out there!  Below are two tracks "Inhale My Flow" and "The Master Plan".  Enjoy!  Next week...  the Wichita Graff artists!

WICHITA'S HIP-HOP HISTORY LESSON #3 - THE BBOY SCENE CIRCA '99-'01

 

Above is a picture of me from a Wichita Eagle feature about breakdancing in Wichita in late 2000.  I got into bboying in high school and never really met anyone else around Wichita who did it also until around 1999.  There was a group known as Many Nations that used to throw hip-hop parties at The Cotillion.  Imagine 1,000 people just vibing out to great music.  It was wonderful.  One of the DJ's who would spin was named Eddie.  He was a Puerto Rican from the Bronx who had moved here.  Also DJ Kulayde would spin and the first hour I would go on and do my thing.  I had been breakin for awhile, but not really taking it seriously so I was at the party just to hang out.  I went with a friend of mine named Jermaine who was one of the nicest emcees that Wichita has seen (Will have more on him and his group Supreme Unaltered in coming week.)  Jermaine and I began a crew called Infinite Wrecking Crew and this was one of the first events we went to rep at.  Back in those days I went by Kid Nouveau ( The New Kid).  I believe it was while Kulayde was spinning that Rapper's Delight starting playing over the speakers.  I remember seeing a circle to start form in the back and I saw about 5 people breakin!  I hadn't ever seen that many people breakin in Wichita before.  That night I met the BOK (Brothers of Koas - 2 graff heads who I will also talk more about in coming weeks).  There were also 2 other people brekain that night.  One was a short black guy named Chris but he went by Kawshin.  Also there that night was a young guy who I found out had a huge pashion for bboying and hip-hop culture.  His name was Pat... but most people know him as Paturn.  We battled for a bit and exchanged numbers and that began a new wave of breakin in Wichita's hip-hop history.

 

We began practicing quite a bit.  We would go to Evergreen Rec. at LEAST twice a week and sometimes meet up on the weekend to practice new moves and what we had learned.  We also started traveling to different events and meeting some of the different people who were into breakin and hip-hop culture around the country.  The word started getting out about these kids who were breakdancing at Evergreen and we started getting more and more people stopping by.  There was a crew known as the Floormasters who were the sons and relatives of the original Floormasters from Wichita back in the mid-late 80's.  I used to hear stories about the Floormasters winning the bboy battles that they had at Towne East in the 80's that were huge!  We decided it was time to throw our own event since nothing was really going on here in Wichita at that time.  Below is the flier for the very first bboy battle/session that Wichita had seen since the 80's.  It was July 1st, 2000.

There were a lot more events to come afterwards but the biggest was most likely one thrown by Paturn at Evergreen Rec.  The Wichita Eagle did a full story on it.  It was huge.  One of the best examples of hip-hop in Wichita in that have EVER seen.  There were DJ's, Bboys, local artists, and graff heads all there having fun.  Below is the article that was written about the event in the paper.

In the future posts about the Wichita bboy scene I will be actually posting video from these events so be on the look out for that!  Next week for Lesson 4 it's all about DJ Hard!  Until then... enjoy!
@RoyceOnTheRadio

YELAWOLF PUT IT DOWN AT THE COTILLION! 4/30/14

On Wednesday April 30th Yelawolf stopped by The Cotillion for a show.  I must say I was a bit worried that the turn out would be low for for a weekday show the crowd look pretty decent.   Some of the high lights were seeing Yelawolf put a kid on his shoulders and throw him out to surf the crowd.  Also getting to hear a new song from Yelawolf that will feature Eminem.  His DJ Klever put on a hell of a DJ scratching set that had the crowd going nuts.  However one thing that wasn't cool was the sound system!  Not sure if Yelawolf did a sound check or not.  At one point security literally picked up the guy trying to do the sound and threw him out.  Unfortunately Yela was getting pissed about it, but he kept the show going at high energy level.  Check out the visuals below...

@RoyceOnTheRadio

P.S. - For all my fellow Wichitan's his is why you don't run up on a stage at a concert...

The crowd getting amped up as Yelawolf hits the stage

DJ Swayd representing hard at the show!

Big Mike from The Big Boyz selling that merch!

Yelawolf on stage controlling the crowd...

I caught Manish Law chopping it up with his Buckhead fam.  Expect some big things coming from him soon!

Big Will clownin!

Lucid enjoying the show...

Polar controlling the crowd after the show...

Got a quick snapshot with Polar from The Big Boyz!

- @RoyceOnTheRadio

WICHITA HIP-HOP HISTORY - LESSON 2 - YO WHO IS PHATKAT?

As I was going through some of my old stuff I came across an aircheck tape from 1997. I wasn’t sure what was on it so I decided to give it a listen and as soon as I heard it I knew it was the perfect subject to post on for Wichita Hip-Hop Lesson 2! It was early 1997, I was a senior in high school and for me personally these were some of the best years for hip-hop in this city. There were fun parties going on, shows were starting to come through and the scene was just all good. I had been getting better at Djing and was actually getting to spin the first hour for parties that Kulayde was DJing at. I was sitting in class one day at North High (Go Redskins) and I heard about a party that was going to be happening. A friend of mine got a flier from somewhere and it said that it was being held by a guy named “Phatkat”. We went to the party and had a great time. I kept hearing the name “Phatkat” pop up more and more. I kept think, who is this Phatkat? Nobody at North really knew who he was, but over some investigation I did find out that he went to Heights and that he was a DJ! I remember one of the Phatkat parties I went to (which I believe was at the Indian Center), I noticed he was DJing and tried to see who he was but could never really get close enough to get a good look. Plus he had a hat on pulled down low so you could never really see his face. It was actually pretty cool, because on his fliers he had a logo of cat with a low brimmed hat so that you counted see his eyes. It started to became a bit of a mystery on who Phatkat was. So one Friday night I’m rolling around with some friends and there a playing a mix on the radio. It was sounding great and one thing I noticed was they were playing some hip-hop songs that they usually never played on the radio inside the mix. As we are rolling around the DJ comes on says, “Yeah this is Phatkat...” I couldn’t believe it! It was the same Phatkat who was throwing and DJing all these parties. At this point I knew I had to find out who this guy was. Every Friday I made sure to tune into to the mix to hear Phatkat on the radio. As luck would have it I found at that Phatkat went to Heights and I had family that was going there during that time so I asked them if they had heard of Phatkat. They didn’t know him personally; however they did know that his name was Anthony and that his dad was AJ Jones from the radio! AJ jones was on KBUZ and KDGS during its early years. He would always sign off by saying, “Angie baby… I’m on the back roads honey”. It was great! So finally I got the info on Phatkat but I still hadn’t got a chance to meet him. It was a new semester at North and usually there are new students that come from other schools. The first day of the new school year I noticed this person who I had never seen at North before. He was dressed in Tommy Hilfiger and Polo, totally prepped out with his collar popped up. Nobody at North had a style that looked like that. He also looked like he didn’t know too many people there. Later that day I was heading to English class. I got my seat and about 20 seconds later the new kid walked in. I remember this like it was yesterday because I had on my Wu-Tang Clan t-shirt and my camo pants on and as he walked by he said, “Ahhhh snaps what you know about Wu-Tang Clan?” I knew his taste in music was good so we talked about the Wu for a bit while the teacher did roll call. I heard her say,” Anthony, Anthony Jones”, and the new kid raised his hand to let her know he was there. Then I started putting everything together. This guy was Phatkat! The next day, same class, we were talking music again and I asked him if he was Phatkat. He just smiled and nodded his head. Crazy! Over the semester he was one of the only people at North that I could really talk hip-hop and music with. Over our talks I found out later that his dad and my uncle were very good friends and used to throw parties back in the late 70’s together. To this day the Phatkat parties are some of the best I have EVER been too. The vibe, music and feel to his parties were just great. Everyone came to have a good time and dance. You can’t mention the Wichita hip-hop scene without mentioning Phatkat aka Anthony Jones aka Antdilla. The aircheck I found was of one of Phatkats’s mixes that I recorded. Posted below is 11 of the 45 minute aircheck tape that I have. Also it was cool to hear Power 93.9 when it was known as K-DOGS. This was from September of 1997, and this is what radio sounded like while rolling around on a Friday night in those days. K-DOGS was the last real urban station in Wichita until 107.9 Jamz came along almost 10 years later. When talking about Wichita hip-hop it would be insane of me not to talk about all the elements of it. Graff, Emcees, DJs, etc. So next week I will be focusing on Wichita and bboying. Until then enjoy the selection below! - @RoyceOnTheRadio