“The biggest factor in starting UBB was when we did ‘Fusion Beats’ – the Bozo Meko records, Lenny did that. ‘Fusion Beats’ is a pause tape done by [Afrika] Islam and the recording of ‘Flash To The Beat’ was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five‘s infamous beat-box routine. The 12’s did alright, but when we out the ‘Champ,’ the ‘Get Up and Get Involved’ and the Dyke and the Blazers it seemed like people really wanted that. The Super Disco Brakes had already been released, but because Disco Brakes were inferior to everything else it was less appealing. So we decided to release the Octopus Breakbeats, which were the bootlegs we created. We released what we called the ‘foundation beats.’ – ‘Funky Penguin,’ the ‘Mary, Mary,’ the ‘Black Grass,’ the ‘Gibe It Up Or Turn It Loose,’ the ‘Apache,’ the ‘Got To Be Real’, the ‘Pussyfooters,’ then later on with volume 9 we used ‘Big Beat’ and ‘The Mexican,’ the ‘Midnight Scene.’ These were the Foundation Beats for the new generation that were coming out in the early 80s. There’s two tiers to the way hip-hop evolved, from the early 70’s to what I call the ‘Rap Record Era,’ when the ‘Rapper’s Delight’ came out. What started to happen was a lotta people started cutting up rap records instead of regular breakbeats, so we had to facilitate the original foundation breakbeats.”
