LISTEN TO THE SNIPPETS HERE
 
 
Arghhh yeah and we're back in with a new Season of the Herring.
 
So my man Hakan Dougpark, a well known demo tape hunter and youtube poster hit me up with the Lord Dakim and the Mellow One demo tape from 93 and said: "Yo Bob, any chance of making this happen?".  It took a while but finally the producer Jerry (Ain't it Funky) Phillips found the OG tapes and this stunning EP was born. 
 
Peep the interview below to get more info on the crew. There were only 50 demo tapes ever, most of which ended up at radio stations and labels. No significant interest emerged, that is until 30 years later when Herring came along to make it happen. What can I say fisherman, it was definitely worth the wait!!!
 
 
There are 300 copies only in Full Colour Large Sticker cover.
Black wax only.
 
 
 
 
LISTEN TO THE SNIPPETS HERE
 
 
Here is a short interview with Jerry (Ain't it Funky) Phillips:
 
 
What are your earliest memories of the culture?
When I was in my early teens, we used to go to block parties, and DJs would be mixing records, and cutting up breaks on records like Good Times by Chic. 
 
Did you have an older sibling or cousins you learned about the culture from?
Naw, none of my family were into rap music, or even played an instrument. Some of them could sing but none professionally.
 
When did you start producing and how did you get into it?
Music was always being played in the house, my brother Barry turned me on to groups like Mandrill, Rose Royce, and EWF. I started playing drums in 1977 in Jamaica High School, and met my friend Mark who played bass. After High School Mark and I both went to Five Towns College, but I studied Music Business and Studio Recording. 
 
What was your first bit of gear?
My first multi-track recorder was two boom boxes or cassette players, I would record a drum beat, then play it out of the speaker and add a bass line with a Casio CZ101 keyboard, and record it on the other boom box, then repeat until all parts were laid.  
 
When and how did you guys meet up?
Mellow and I met in ’91.  I put an ad in the Village Voice newspaper for a rapper to try my hand at producing Hip Hop. The Voice was also where I met my wife of 35 years after placing an ad for an R&B singer. Dakim came through a friend of a friend, and so we had him come down to the studio and audition, and the rest is history.
 
Were you trying to get signed back in the 90s?
Of course, Mellow and I pressed a single prior to Dakim called “Go Wit The Flow”, we circulated it to College Radio Stations that played Hip Hop. Then, when Dakim came on board, we did a Black College Tour from all the noise we made on the college stations trying to catch the ear of record execs. Then one day we came up with an idea that could get us attention from label execs, so we published “Undagound Phunk Magazine”. The concept was that record execs don’t want to talk to you about your demo, but they love talking to you about themselves. We hooked up with a PR Firm named Double XXposure, my man Angelo Ellerbee, and he had us doing interviews for a lot of up-and-coming artists. We got invited to release parties and started networking. We had some interest but nothing substantial.   
 
Did you have a manager?
We turned down a few indie managers who wanted to represent us but their contracts were bullsh1t.
 
How was the demo tape received?
Honestly, we didn’t see a lot of buzz coming from the demo tape, remember the Internet was not what it is now. Then one day either I was searching YouTube or Mellow was, and we saw this dude Dougpark posting our music and he had 100,000 views of “Hit Da Mic”.  I started reading the comments and folks were like going nuts over our music. 
 
So, with the pre-Dakim joint that you mentioned "Go Wit The Flow" - what was the name of the artist?
Artist was The Mellow One, we pressed 100 vinyl copies at Disc-makers and sent it to college radio, DJ Pools, Magazines, and we did consignment with local records stores. The label was SMR Records.
 
What would you say about Dakim's involvement in the project and how it started? Where was he from exactly?
Unfortunately, we had already pressed the record before we found Dakim, otherwise he probably would have did some scratches on it. But, whenever they performed the song Dakim would cut it up live. Da was from around the way in Jamaica, Queens.
 
Where were the studios you recorded at? 
We did all the pre recordings at my crib, then we went into Manhattan to drop the tracks and record the vocals. Can’t remember the names of the studios though, but they were all located in the Music Building off 32nd Street, and like 8th Ave.
 
How many copies of the demo tape do you remember doing?
I think we did like 50 cassettes, we placed them in a pocket folder with a photo and bio, and mailed them to magazines hoping to get a write up.
 
Do you remember who you gave them to? 

Just magazines, radio received vinyl, and we didn’t have any representation to walk it up to labels. We mailed them, at that time I was working in a mailroom so it didn’t cost us anything. Back then you had to have a manager or lawyer that was known to take your stuff to labels.