I started in a group called Wounds, with Mickey Free, Shields, Jones and Chris Freeland. As a very young kid, Straight Outta Compton and Licensed To Ill had inspired me to rap, but Blowout Comb, Return of the Boom-Bap and Enter the 36 Chambers were our big inspirations as teenagers.
There were no laptops or phones around on which to make the beats. Our first beats were just live takes of us playing instruments into a cassette eight track. Our school had a computer lab with some MIDI sequencing programs. A kind teacher gave us a key to the computer lab and let us learn the ropes. As we got a grip, the beat-minded guys among us graduated to the Zoom ST-224, the SP-202 and eventually the MPC.
As we developed, we became early adopters of art rap. We had no knowledge of other people who were doing similar things across the country. The weirdness in our style came from being exposed to things like US Maple and Storm and Stress. Rap came to us through the TV, radio and The Source, and this was just our spin on the music we grew up hearing.