Extensive interview by Troy L Smith.

Mr. Hyde- They were incredible. First of all as far as Grand Master Flash there is no one musically that means more to me than Grand Master Flash. Nobody, he is a god in my eyes and even more so because of the way he handles himself. He’s just cool, he’s soave and he’s a gentleman. He’s always been great to me and his talent is unmatched in my eyes. You have Theodore, you have a lot of people, there’s no question about that. But Flash, just the name Grand Master, you know he is such a mythical figure. When we were growing up and we played them and Creole had the echo machine, (Mr. Hyde mimics Kid Kreole’s voice when using the echo chamber.) those n—— was out of here! We were looking at them like god damn! They were like the Jackson 5 or something.

Yo we thought they were the Jackson 5, they were, they were the Jackson 5 of hip hop. Like Cold Crush, all of them. Andre and I ran the streets but we weren’t running the streets like they were and their music reflected that. We thought we were hot and I think they thought we were hot too, but we had so much respect for those guys like even the Cold Crush Brothers and all of that, you know they were always really into it. Andre and I just looked at it as what can we get out of it, how does it serve a purpose. Not like this is life and death and this is what I am going to do for the rest of my life, we never looked at it like that and our careers after held testament to that because we always had one foot… especially towards the end of our career…one foot in the game and one foot out. That other foot was solidly planted on the road ahead. We didn’t know that hip hop was going to be anything but we certainly knew when this mother f—– was going to end and it is going to end for us but life is going to go on.