This excerpt was taken from an interview of Marley Marl by Ali Shaheed Muhammad Frannie Kelley
of Microphone Check
MARL: You know who my hero was before I even got into hip-hop? I just gotta lay it on the line: Giorgio Moroder. I was into Giorgio like you would not believe. See, I was into electronic music. I was into triggering bass lines and making it sequence — I was a sequence head. That's how I beat people in hip-hop early because I was already sequencing. I already knew what a trigger was. I knew how to trigger anything off of anything.
The whole "Bridge" — my
song I made with MC Shan — all that was trigger music, triggering samples from a
808 with
separate samplers around the room. The pulse from the 808 would go into my
sampler and make it react. Once I made that discovery at Unique, guess what I
did? I went right around the corner to Sam Ash, bought myself three little cheap
samplers. I went home and started experimenting, taking all my drum sounds.
Matter of fact, what I would do at that point, I went to my reel-to-reel. I
would have leader, snare, leader. Leader, kick, leader. Hi-hat, leader. On the
reel.
So I would sit with the
artist and say, "So you want to make a song today? Pick out your kick and snare
you want." Now this is before disc; that was my disc. I still have that reel,
and that is the same drum reel I lost it in Power Play Studios and they made "The Bridge Is
Over."
MARL: Of course that's a true story.
KELLEY: Tell the whole thing.
MARL:
Well, one day I was in Power Play Recording Studios in Long Island City — it's
so funny that I say Long Island City which was like a Queensbridge studio, up
the street from Queensbridge and — did you know "The Bridge is Over" was made in
Queensbridge? That's crazy. But anyway — and off my drum sounds. That was the
day Mr. Magic met BDP.
For years I was always
wondering, "Why these guys are so mad at us? We killing the game right now.
C'mon, what are you talking about?" I never understood. "Who are they?" So one
day I was looking at KRS-One's bio and he said, "One day it all started when Mr.
Magic dissed us at Power Play." I was like, "I don't remember that." Cause I was
with Magic all the time. Then I started remembering: I remember a crew that he
dissed because they was nice and waited and said, "Oh Mr. Magic could you listen
to our stuff? It's the hottest stuff, come in the room." And you know Magic was
arrogant so he was like, "Alright, alright I'll give you a shot. Let me go and
listen to your s—-."
So we go in there and they bumping it and everybody's jumping around like
it's the s—- and Magic goes over to the knob and just turns it down while
everybody's dancing. And everybody stops. "Oh you like it?" And he's like, "Yo,
this is garbage."MUHAMMAD: Wow.
MARL: "Straight garbage." He looked at them and said, "Yo, you want real s—-? Marley Marl. MC Shan. Roxanne Shante. Mr. Magic. Y'all suck." And he just straight walked out the room. I remember that was the day I was trying to get up out of the studio because he made somebody real mad, and getting out of the studio so quick I lost my drum reel. I thought I misplaced it in my crib or something, I didn't realize I lost it at Power Play. "The Bridge Is Over" came out, and it still didn't hit me — hearing the record it still didn't hit that that was my drums.
Later on, an engineer
told me — I found my drum reel about six months later, at Power Play, on the
manager's desk. "Yo, Gary, what the f—- is this doing here?" He said, "Oh, you
left this here. I was gonna give it to you." It's like six months later and then
one of the engineers told me, "You know Ced-Gee found you
drum reel?" I was like, "Yeah." He said "Yeah, when he made 'The Bridge Is Over'
he put your drum reel up. I was there, I seen him do it." I was like, "For
real?" Then I went back and listened to the record. I was like, "That's my kick
and snare pitched up one on the SP-1200."
MARL: Yeah, Lesson Number 1: Don't lose your drum reel.