Cut Master D.C. Interviewed by Jayquan, August 2014
When I asked D.C. had he ever seen the legendary Grandmaster Flowers spin, and was he really as good at blending records as his reputation suggests, D gets intense: “I’ve actually played with Flowers, and it’s not that he can just blend well. Flowers was the first cat that I know who made a science of finding which records worked well together. Not just the tempos, but the grooves. He knew which records were mastered with low volume, and which mastering houses had the hottest mastering (hot meaning loud). He was a total scientist with it without question; from the equipment to the vinyl itself”.
D had mastered Djing and Mcing, and had 2 records under his belt by 1984, so the next skill to acquire was production. “I didn’t really like either of those first two records. I always had a good ear for what would work, and when I did That’s Life; Run D.M.C. had just dropped It’s Like That/Sucker Mc’s. I knew that was gonna be the new sound, and that what I was doing couldn’t compete with it. I was tired of rappin’ over other peoples wack beats, so a brother by the name of J.P. Edmund that used to manage Salt N Pepa back in the days taught me how to program the DMX drum machine and from that I took off. I took two years off from recording and the first beat that I did on the DMX became You Don’t Really Wanna Battle, but I didn’t have access to the DMX when it was time to record; so I re did the beat on a EMU Drumulator. I hated how that record came out! Chris Lord Alge was the engineer and he gated the kick and snare and it sounded like Let The Music Play by Shannon or On The Upside by Xena. My record is Hip Hop, not pop – I hated that!. I complained to the president of the label and told him that I didn’t want anyone else in my sessions with me. I wanted to mix my own records. He told me that I could, so later that year The Night Before Christmas/ Brooklyn’s In the House 12” dropped”.
