![]() I finally came face to face with Butcher T in the summer of 1984 at Trenholme Park in NDG. ![]() I became obsessed with this mysterious local DJ who was rocking all the parties and was considered the best in Montreal spinning this rap thing.īutcher T brought the art of looping break beats to Montreal after seeing the technique at a party in Queens. The local legend cut up the records, as we said in hip-hop.īy 1983, Montreal hip-hop heads like me were fiending for one of his mixtapes. My friends Larry, Winston, Jason, Carlise and the entire block of homies on Sherbrooke Street between Benny Avenue and Cavendish Boulevard all had been bitten by the hip-hop bug.Īnd there was that name, Butcher T. We wore Cazal designer glasses, ski masks (I still haven't figured that out), bomber jackets or sheepskin coats with the matching Yosemite Sam hat, as well as Kangol hats that resembled the lid Sherlock Holmes wore. Lee pinstripe jeans got you a bonus in the fresh department. Adidas shell toes were worn with no laces at all. I wore suede pumas, in whatever colour I could find on trips to New York City, with fat laces. These pioneers helped shape Montreal's hip-hop scene.I dove into hip-hop culture with my friends like it was our very own punk movement. It wasn't two weeks into Grade 4 that almost everyone knew the lyrics word for word. What really astonished my parents and me about this funky ditty was that it was 15 minutes long. In jazz hipster talk, it meant just that, to talk. To rap was old Black American jargon dating back to the 1930's. Brown, Pigmeat Markham, The Last Poets and Isaac Hayes all rapped on some of their records. ![]() Having gone to James Brown concerts at three years old with my parents who were young and hip, we were used to hearing rhythmic talking over music. The song is regarded as the first commercially released rap record.īut we weren't in awe because they were rapping. Rapper's Delight by New Jersey's Sugarhill Gang came on the radio and my parents and I were in awe. "Now what you hear is not a test, I'm rappin' to the beat, and me, the groove and my friends are gonna try to move your feet." It was 1979 and I was driving with my parents from my great-grandmother's house in Montreal's eastern Tetraultville neighbourhood back to our digs across the city in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. This First Person piece was written by Duke Eatmon, a music columnist in Montreal.
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