SIDE A
9 Introduction by Charlie Ahearn
11 Book One: 1973–1981
103 Book Two: 1981–1983
195 Book Three: 1983–1984
287 Book Four: 1984–1985
SIDE B
from artists like Positive K to Kanye West listed that borrow directly from their first record, High Powered Rap
Mike and Dave, the producers and party promoters, are worth noting in a more substantial way. Several rappers who I’ve been in contact with have mentioned this duo’s importance to early hip hop and it extends throughout the mid-’80s at least. There isn’t much in stone that I could find out about these gentlemen. I’m not even sure if I drew them correctly from the flyer I discovered, but I certainly am curious and would like to know more.
Pages 61–62
This group is one of my favorites in terms of the research involved. I was able to pull this strip together using four different sources for the world tour. I used a Kurtis Blow radio interview that I can no longer find online for the piece about Russell getting sick. I believe the book Yes Yes Y’all, Russell Simmons’s autobio Life and Def, and The Big Payback all covered different moments of the world tour. You can hear Russell Simmons’s famous “coke and pussy” story in his own words on YouTube if you search strategically enough. It occurred many times but the clip I’m thinking of is from a show called The Young Turks
Page 63
On the Kool Moe Dee episode of the TV documentary program Unsung, you get a fuller picture of how the Treacherous Three became a part of Enjoy Records.
Page 65
Dan Charnas’s book The Big Payback includes the part where Joe and Sylvia Robinson manufacture their own gold records for their artists, bypassing the gaze of the RIAA. One big flaw of HHFT is that I don’t illustrate Joe Robinson much. He was a more silent partner in Sugar Hill from my perspective, and sometimes it was hard to distinguish between decisions that he and Sylvia made.
Page 66
Yes Yes Y’all is chock full of great photos from the era that I cover in this issue. These Funky Four outfits in the second panel are seen in the 20/20 segment about hip hop from 1981.
Panel 3: Iron-On lettered/named garments in a Cooper font were a staple of early hip hop culture.
Page 67
Panel 1: The reference I used here for Spoonie was from his 1985–86 record, The Godfather.
Panel 3: TJ Swann was a very popular, cheap wine from this era. There were no less than two rappers calling themselves “TJ Swann,” the most famous being a sidekick to Biz Markie.
Page 68
This page is referenced largely from Charnas’s The Big Payback. I probably made Frederick (Rick) Rubin a bigger cunt than he was as an adolescent.
Pages 69–70
These pages are transcribed from a late ’70s to early ’80s bootleg tape of Grandmaster Caz destroying a guy in the crowd. The rhymes never made it to wax and needed to be shared with the public-at-large, they’re so good.
There’s speculation that the crowd loved this Grandmaster Caz pseudo-spontaneous routine so much that someone in the audience would inevitably “take one for the team” and heckle the Cold Crush Bros to have Caz perform the rhymes from these pages.
Page 71
Panel 1: Davy DMX was to be the first DJ for RunDMC. The Rhymes that Run-DMC are chanting here are from their Live at the Fun House recording.
Panel 3: The Sugar Hill Records session players were referenced from their later years in the band Tackhead because I couldn’t find pictures of their younger selves.
Page 72
Panel 3: Don Cornelius’s statement is a direct quote that I found online from this episode. You can find video of the Kurtis Blow performance, but not the interview portion. I really wanna see video of Cornelius being a dickhead.
Page 73
Panel 1: In the book Yes Yes Y’all, a running theme within the Busy Bee portion of the oral history was about how his mother would show up at the clubs to bring him home if he broke curfew. It’s such a rich part of the narrative that I had to include it as a running gag in my book as well.
Panel 4: Harlem World was ground zero to so much hip hop history and there is only one grainy pic that I was able to find of the venue. I feel fortunate to have found it for reference in this panel.
Page 74
Panel 1: I didn’t have good reference for Fat Man, so in my comic I substituted Willy Dynamite from the old blaxploitation film.
Panel 4: The Dick Tracy captions within the panel are lyrics from the Jeckyll and Hyde verses in the record “King of the Beat.”