Photo courtesy of DJ Kenny Parker
Kenny Parker is most known for being the DJ and producer for the legendary group Boogie Down Productions alongside his older brother, The Blastmaster KRS-One. In recent years Kenny has become a social media personality with a successful YouTube channel where he tells behind the scenes stories from Hip-Hop’s golden era. DJ Kenny Parker also added “Author” to his resume with the release of his book “My Brother’s Name is Kenny: The Greatest True Hip-Hop Story Ever Told.”
My Brother’s Name is Kenny is not just a book about Hip-Hop. It’s a story of pain and perseverance, love and loss, tragedy and triumph. Kenny allows the reader to see two towering titans of Hip-Hop as they’ve never been seen before. I finished the book with the realization that KRS and Kenny are the living embodiment of the American Dream.
In what is probably my all-time favorite interview I talked to DJ Kenny Parker about his experience as a Division I basketball player, producing for BDP and Heather B, some of KRS-One’s lesser known battles, and his book, My Brother’s Name is Kenny.
TRHH: I just finished your book “My Brother’s Name is Kenny” and your story really resonated with me. I’m about ten years younger than you, but the stories of crime and bullying mirror what I dealt with in the 80s and early 90s. I think the average person with a childhood like you and KRS’ would end up being another statistic. Why did you and KRS’ story turn out differently?
DJ Kenny Parker: Absolutely. I ask myself that all the time. To set the scene a little bit, I’m talking about my hood, which was New York City, but it could apply to any hood in America that people grow up – the inner-city. And most of the people in those areas either end up in prison, strung out, or gone –a short life. I think it’s a combination of the way we were raised — early foundation. Our parents gave us an early foundation of what was right and wrong and it’s something that’s in you.
Even though me and my brother, KRS, I’m going to call him KRS, KRS-One for those that don’t know is my older brother, our temperaments are very different and we grew up in the same household with the same exact circumstances, but we process things different. And for me, a life of crime and thuggery just wasn’t in me. It’s something that’s in you. You could have people that grew up in a beautiful environment with a silver spoon in their mouth, but there’s something in them that causes them to search out the negative parts of life. Something about me, I don’t know what, caused me not to be attracted to the negativity that was surrounding me daily.
TRHH: That’s a blessing.
DJ Kenny Parker: Yeah.
TRHH: There’s so much I want to ask you.
DJ Kenny Parker: Let’s go! We’re here! Let’s do it!
TRHH: I never knew you were a DI basketball player. Those stories fascinated me. Was the issue your last coach had with you strictly defense or was it something else?
DJ Kenny Parker: I don’t wanna give away too much. I’m going to delve into some things. For those that didn’t read the story I want you to have something to check out. I think it’s a combination of things. A combination of my coach felt that my defense wasn’t up to par — I disagree. My coach felt that my defense wasn’t on the level of some people, and also, he recruited certain people, his guys, and I think that I got caught up in the old regime.
I had a coaching change in the middle of my college years. The old regime recruited me and then when the new regime came he brought in some of his players and he wanted his players to play. I believe that he was looking for a reason to try to say, “Well, Kenny, you know we gotta put somebody else in because of your defense.” If I made one mistake on defense it was like, “Ahhh, this is the problem!” To make a long story short, I think that was one of the main problems.
TRHH: You tell the story of the Melle Mel/KRS-One situation. I was heartbroken to learn the truth behind the battle. I always thought “I’m Still #1” was the rhyme KRS battled Mel with. Was that a rhyme written for Mel after the fact?
DJ Kenny Parker: I don’t know. I would assume it was written after the fact because the quote “Melle Mel battle” was a battle about to happen, but it didn’t happen. I always ask the question, at what point is it a battle? ‘Cause if one person goes and the other person doesn’t go, or if it gets cut short or something, was it an actual battle or was it a conflict brewing? For those that didn’t see it, it was a battle that was about to happen.
The happening was summer of ’87. By All Means Necessary and I’m Still #1 came out in the summer of ‘88, so I don’t know. It sounds like he wrote the rhyme after the battle or in preparation for the next time that they met or something like that. I don’t know for sure, but I feel that at the time that they battled those rhymes from I’m Still #1 did not exist.
TRHH: You said something else in My Brother’s Name is Kenny that also hit me when you said, “College is about learning how to handle deadlines, pressure, completing tasks, and meeting people from different backgrounds.” College teaches people about life, but there is a conservative movement in America that believes college is brainwashing people. What do you say to those folks that believe college is used to indoctrinate people?
DJ Kenny Parker: First of all, I think different strokes for different folks. College is not for everyone, but if you choose to pursue higher learning I don’t think it indoctrinates a person to a certain style of thought. I think that they have a curriculum – a base curriculum that everyone has to take — a baseline. And then after that, you can take whatever you wanna take. You can take a course, you can ask questions in that course, you can challenge your professor, you can go to the library and read alternatives. All the alternative information is there and I’m talking about when I was in college before, this was before the internet. But when I was in college whatever alternative information that you could think about in your field was also available in the libraries if you wanted to study, and you could study whatever you wanted.
So, I see the movement. A lot of people are saying college is a scam and it’s all about money. It is a business, let’s not get it twisted. They are trying to make money, but I also believe it’s a place where like-minded individuals come to learn, and all of the information was gathered in one point. There was no internet, there was an encyclopedia. If you wanted information you gotta go get an encyclopedia. Remember you had to buy volumes? It cost like thousands of dollars! Nobody that I’ve ever known had an encyclopedia collection. Ever in my lifetime. I’ve never been to anyone’s home and they said,” Look at my encyclopedia collection.” Never in my life. So, if you wanted information there were certain sources that you had to go to get information and one of those is college. Nowadays you can learn things online, but online is filled with misinformation, people’s opinions, AI, agendas. I think the internet is probably worse than college, in my opinion.
TRHH: Way worse!
DJ Kenny Parker: Yes, I would say way worse, but some people feel like they go online, Google something and it’s the same as a college degree. I disagree with that, but to each his own. To answer your question, there is a movement saying that college is indoctrinating people, I totally disagree. All the information is there for you.
TRHH: What did KRS-One think of My Brother’s Name is Kenny?
DJ Kenny Parker: It’s a funny story because when I first decided to write the book I said I have to speak to him before I do anything. Because the story that I wanna tell, probably no one in the world knows the real story. KRS-One has a very crafted image, so I didn’t want to say anything that might do something to hurt his image. So, I called him and I was like, “I wanna tell the real story of how we grew up. What do you think? His exact words, not to be frank, his exact words were, “I don’t give a fuck! Tell it all!” That’s exactly what he said verbatim [laughs]. And then he said, “Don’t forget this, don’t forget this, and don’t forget this.” There were certain things that we talked about on the phone where he said, “Make sure you tell them that this happened, this happened, and this happened that people don’t know.” So, once I got his blessing I was like, okay, I’m gonna let it all hang out.
After I finished the first draft I sent it to him for him to read and I was like, “Do you see the way you’re being portrayed in the book?” He was like, “Yes.” I told him, “I only have two requests; you can’t change anything. This is my perspective of what’s going on. Only thing you can change is if you want something out of the book that you think would hurt your image I’ll take it out.” He didn’t. I wanted it to be a BDP source material, so people that want to understand BDP and what’s going on they can pick up my book and say, “Kenny said this happened in the book,” and you can use that as source material. So, I said, “If there’s anything that I talked about in the book that is not accurate, let me know and I’ll fix it.” Those are only two things that I would let him change, he didn’t change anything. He said, “Everything that you wrote in there I consider factual and I’m not changing anything.” So, the book came out exactly how I wanted to tell it and he gave me his blessing.
TRHH: I personally wanted to know more about him scholastically because he seemed to struggle with school. I wanted to know a little bit more about that. Maybe he’ll tell that story on his own. Also, I was shocked that he allowed the bed wetting stuff because you reference it a lot.
DJ Kenny Parker: Not only did he allow it, he told me to put that in there. The reason why I put it in there was because I wanted to show just how psychologically damaged he was as a kid. I’m a psychology major in college and for those that study psychology, there are certain telltale signs of a kid that needs some kind of counseling. And one of them is bed wetting at a later stage. The reason I put it in there is I was trying to show just exactly where we were. I want to show you rock bottom, so when I show you the come up you understand just how crazy the come up was considering where we was.
My brother, I’m not going to say there was something wrong with him, but I think we both needed some kind of counseling. I think it was showing in his bed wetting and some of his behavior in school, but it never got dealt with. First of all, a lot of that stuff wasn’t even talked about period back in those days. And in the hood you needed money. There was no money for counseling! We come from the ‘walk it off’ generation basically [laughs]. I definitely put that in there, and not only did he tell me to put it in there, but after he read it he was like, “Leave it!” So, he understood why I put it in there.
You talked about school, which was another thing. It was one of those themes that I was trying to get across in the book about how the experts can put you in a box as one thing, but that’s not necessarily the case. I was screaming from the top of my lungs that my brother does not have a learning disability. This guy is really smart. Something about this environment is not coinciding with him as a student, but he’s very smart. The teachers and everybody had him pegged as ‘learning impaired’ and as we see later on that wasn’t the case at all. But that was one of the themes of my book that I was beating; that just because people say that you’re this doesn’t mean that you have to be that.
TRHH: So true, so true. You talk about becoming the DJ for BDP in the book. I saw you on the Edutainment tour in 1990 with X-Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers, and D-Nice. Kool Rock Steady, I mentioned this to you on your chat a couple of times. You probably don’t remember…
DJ Kenny Parker: Vaguely.
TRHH: Kool Rock Steady who released a diss track about KRS-One, rest in peace to Kool Rock Steady. He was a Hip-House guy and Chicago is big on house music. He dissed KRS-One out of nowhere and KRS-One called him out on that night.
DJ Kenny Parker: I remember that.
TRHH: I was just shocked that KRS knew who Kool Rock Steady was, because he was just a local guy. Do you have any memories of that night and did any of the crew talk about the Kool Rock Steady thing?
DJ Kenny Parker: I don’t remember how Kool Rock Steady got on our radar. When you book a show you probably book it two months in advance or whatever from the time you get there. We had people in Chicago that we dealt with every time we went there, so maybe some of those people in Chicago relayed it back to us. I don’t remember, but I do remember that when we were going there we were ready. KRS-One had some rhymes written for Kool Rock Steady. I had a beat and we had a little routine that we were going to do. I think he said something like, “If Kool Rock Steady is here come on out!” We were ready. I don’t remember how we were ready, because I don’t remember how it got to us, but somehow it got to us we got before we came to Chicago.
TRHH: How did you transition from deejaying for BDP into producing?
DJ Kenny Parker: That’s interesting. First of all, I sat in on a number of sessions for BDP before I was even the DJ. I sat it on the I’m Still #1 remix, I sat it on some Ghetto Music sessions. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but I was just sitting there watching KRS make records. And then when I started becoming a DJ during the Edutainment album I was there for a lot of the recording, even though I wasn’t producing. The Kenny Parker Show, KRS produced the record, but I saw him make it and I started to understand like, “Okay, they’re sampling, and they’re taking records, and they’re putting different records together.” I started going through KRS’ old collection of records and finding records that he used to make certain songs and listening back, trying to understand how he made the records.
Once I got that understanding it took me about 6 to 8 months of deejaying for BDP and I was ready to delve into production. KRS was like, “Okay, you wanna make some beats? Here’s an SP-1200 drum machine.” That cost $2000! This was in ’90. Two thousand dollars in ’90 is probably like five thousand dollars now. He just handed it to me, “Here’s the machine, here’s the book, go!” I had to learn how to do it and everything, so I just started making tracks. I felt like it was just a natural progression for me from being around him watching him make records. And my homegirl Heather B was the person I experimented on with a lot of my beats.
TRHH: Do you know who J-Zone is?
DJ Kenny Parker: No.
TRHH: Okay, J-Zone was a rapper. He’s a drummer now and he goes by his real name, Jay Mumford. He’s from Queens and he put out a bunch of records in the early 2000s. He’s got like 11 independent albums.
DJ Kenny Parker: Geesh!
TRHH: Yeah, he got so fed up with rap that he quit. He wrote a book called “Root for The Villain” that is so impossible to find now, but it was so good! I don’t know if it was the book or in my conversations with him, but he talked about how Sex and Violence was his favorite BDP album because of how angry KRS was.
DJ Kenny Parker: Wow [laughs].
TRHH: In the liner notes he listed all of the people that weren’t down with the crew anymore like, “So and so is not down with BDP.” I always thought that was funny. He also sent shots at certain people on songs like “We in There.” What was the vibe like creating Sex and Violence?
DJ Kenny Parker: Whoa, that’s a good question. There was like three things happening at the same time; internally BDP was going through a change, like you saw all the names on the back of the album. Internally a lot of the people were leaving the group and only three people really remained – me, KRS, and Willie Dee, rest in peace to him. That was inner turmoil. Then there were a lot of people taking shots at KRS in the past year and a half since Edutainment had dropped. Since Edutainment dropped in ’90 there was like a year and some change gap where we didn’t put out any music. In that time a few people took shots.
I’m just going to name people; X-Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers didn’t take a shot, but there was some conflict with them that I feel was KRS-One instigated. I’ve never met Ice Cube, never spoke to him, don’t know him from Adam, but in his defense, he always said KRS-One took what he said the wrong way, but on his album, he said, “Some rappers are heaven sent/But Self-Destruction don’t pay the fucking rent.” You gotta understand Self-Destruction is KRS-One’s pet project. That is practically a BDP song featuring other people. D-Nice did the track, everybody from BDP is on it, our boy Just-Ice, who is practically BDP is on it, all KRS’ friends – Chuck, Stet, MC Lyte, these are like family. So, for Ice Cube to come out and say ‘that stuff is wack, I’m trying to get money’ basically, KRS took that personal.
That wasn’t so much beef. We didn’t have a beef with Ice Cube, it was just like a little tension. They ended up meeting later on and talking about it and it was all good. I was not at that meeting. I was not privy to that meeting. That was above my pay grade [laughs]. I heard that they spoke and it was water under the bridge, but at the time this was going on, and X-Clan, and the P.M. Dawn incident was kinda like the final straw in a bunch of people dissing. I did a whole breakdown on my YouTube channel about the P.M. Dawn incident, people could check it out about what happened.
All of this was going on leading up, so KRS was angry. And he had just put out the Human Education Against Lies project a year before, that’s why there was a gap in between BDP albums. People were saying, “KRS is soft now, he went too far into the Edutainment, he can’t really battle no more.” It was that grumbling mixed with internal BDP discourse, and people dissing that led to Sex and Violence where KRS just let it out, “Aghhhh!!” and said everything he had to say. I thankfully got to do a bunch of production on that album.
TRHH: I dabble in production, I have for a long time. When I first bought my MPC I didn’t know what I was doing. The guy at Guitar Center was like, “Buy this!” Okay, I’ll buy it! All the MPC had was the disk with the stock drums. I remember posting on Okayplayer.com asking people, “How do I get my drums to sound right?” Everybody played dumb or ignored me, but Questlove from The Roots chimed in with great advice and one of the things he said was to use the 808 from the end of the instrumental version of “We in There.”
DJ Kenny Parker: You’re lying!!!
TRHH: No, I’m not! He said when Willie Dee is going, “South, South Bronx, Ahhhh,” then BOOM! Sample that.
DJ Kenny Parker: You are killing me right now!!
TRHH: That’s what he said, I swear [laughs]. So, you had no idea that your drums are being sampled?
DJ Kenny Parker: My drums have been sampled before, but I had no idea. That’s my 808! You’ve just blown my mind right now. My head is blown, I had no idea. I don’t even take for granted that other artist even listen to my music. I’m still a huge fan of Hip-Hop. So, whenever another artist even says, “Yo, Kenny, I like this track you did,” I am extremely appreciative of those comments. And to hear Questlove who is the Hip-Hop drummer basically, and he knows every percussion sound that there probably is, for him to say sample the 808 off of We in There is crazy to me. That is crazy to me!
TRHH: This was probably 2002. It was a long time ago, but that’s what he said. I was like, “I know that’s Kenny Parker,” because you did like five beats on that album. So, it’s probably more people than me that used that 808 [laughs].
DJ Kenny Parker: I forgot that it was even an 808 on there. I forgot all about it. I forgot until you just brought it up.
TRHH: That’s crazy. That’s one of those songs, man. And “Like a Throttle.” You did that one?
DJ Kenny Parker: Yes, yes, we did that song in like 45 minutes-an hour. Whole song, done!
TRHH: Wow! That song is so good. I love that album.
DJ Kenny Parker: Thank you. I appreciate that. You know “We in There” was the first beat that I gave KRS-One to listen to. He gave me the SP-1200 and like six months later he comes back and he goes, “So, what do you got?” It was like school. I had no intentions of working on Sex and Violence. I didn’t even think I was on that level. I was still trying to get my feet wet messing around with the SP-1200. He came like, “So, what you got?” I said, “I got this.” I played a few beats. If you listen to We in There there’s two beats; there’s the intro beat and it changes to the main beat. I played those for him separately.
KRS said, “Here’s what I want you to do, take both of those beats and combine them. I’m going to use the first part as an intro and then I’m going to use the second part. Put some drums behind it.” Because when I played it for him it was those two loops, no drums. He said, “Take those two pieces, put it together, put some drums behind it. I’m going to get me something to eat and when I come back we’ll finish the song.” He left me in the studio, just me and the engineer D-Square, shout out to D-Square. I’m in the studio, he went to a diner to have dinner and left me in there to put the pieces of the song together and that was the first song I ever did with him. In six month’ time.
TRHH: That’s crazy.
DJ Kenny Parker: That is crazy thinking about it.
TRHH: That’s like a quintessential KRS song. I’ve seen KRS perform a lot and he never really does that song.
DJ Kenny Parker: His catalog, he has so many songs.
TRHH: Yeah, but he needs to dig into that album a little bit. Maybe he’s got personal feelings about it, I know artist sometimes don’t like to touch certain things.
DJ Kenny Parker: Well, there was controversy around that album because it didn’t sell as much as the previous albums. So, Jive was not happy with that album. I basically took the blame for that album. They were basically saying, “KRS needs new production and his brother should’ve never even been on the album.” That’s what Jive was saying to KRS. I’ve told this story, but let me tell it real quick; KRS-One was on a roll. He had four gold albums in four years. That’s like a historic run. There’s like maybe a handful of groups ever in music history that had a run like that! Criminal Minded, By All Means Necessary, Ghetto Music, Edutainment, he was on a roll! Then Sex and Violence comes out and it didn’t go gold. It sold about half; 250-300,000 — gold is 500,000.
Right around that time I was hanging with this producer from another group named DJ Premier. Premier was my guy from Gang Starr. I remember being in his car and he had the Sex and Violence album. He was playing it for me saying he liked this beat and that beat and I was like, “Thanks Preem.” He had only done Gang Starr at this time. He said, “I got a song I wanna play for you that I just finished in the studio.” And he pulls out DWYCK! I’m like, “Oooohhh!!!” After I heard that I ran back to KRS and was like, “Yo, that DJ from Gang Starr, you gotta work with him.” I was talking to people at Jive like, “Yo, the DJ from Gang Starr is dope. If we can get KRS on some of those beats that Guru got, it would be great.” They just blew me off. Even KRS was like, “Word? Whatever, cool.”
Fast forward like eight months KRS comes to me and he goes, “Sex and Violence didn’t sell the way the other albums sold, so we’re getting all new production. So, basically the next album coming out you will not be on the album.” So, I got that gut punch. At the same time, he said, “We’re gonna do some work with this guy DJ Premier.” At the same time, he’s telling me I’m no longer gonna be on the next album, but this guy Premier is gonna be on the album. I’ve been screaming at the top of my lungs telling you guys! He was telling it to me like they discovered Premier out of nowhere. I was screaming saying, “Yo, this is the guy!” I will never get any credit, but I was screaming at them that this was the guy.
So, they started working on Return of the Boom Bap. At that time, it wasn’t called Return of the Boom Bap, as a matter of fact Boogie Down Productions was still together, it wasn’t KRS-One solo. If people don’t know this, the first song that they did together was “The P is Free remix.” Premier was hired to do five songs. The first song that they did was The P is Free remix and they put it on the Menace II Society soundtrack. So, if you look at that soundtrack it says “Boogie Down Productions – The P is Still Free.” Because at that time it was still Boogie Down Productions. I think the next song they did was “Outta Here.” By the time Outta Here happened it was now a KRS-One solo project — no more BDP. Really Preem was doing the new BDP album, it morphed into the KRS solo album. The last thing I worked on with KRS was “Black Cop.” We did Black Cop together and they threw that on the CB4 soundtrack and they eventually threw that on Return of the Boom Bap. Technically I wasn’t on Return of the Boom Bap, but I had a little piece because I worked on Black Cop. But I was not on that album.
I hear people saying that they liked Sex and Violence and it’s bittersweet for me. I’m really appreciative because I worked hard on it, but it’s also painful because after that album Jive was like, “We don’t want him nowhere near the studio!” Jive hated me! The only reason that I got to do remixes and stuff later on was because KRS forced the issue. He basically took my beats and produced them himself. That’s how I got on. If it was up to Jive I would’ve never done “Hiphop Vs. Rap” or any other stuff that I did after that. They didn’t want nothing to do with me. It’s cool, I get it. So, thank you for liking Sex and Violence because it hits personal when you say that.
TRHH: Bro, I was 16 when it came out. That’s all we played in the car. Me and my buddies would go to play ball and that’s all we played. You did the intro too, right?
DJ Kenny Parker: Yeah.
TRHH: Man, that album is so dirty!
DJ Kenny Parker: That was the goal, but it might have been too dirty. Hip-Hop was kind of changing. It was kind of a changing of the guard a little bit. KRS had been out since ‘86 — South Bronx, this is ’92. So, in Hip-Hop and dog years he had been out like 20 years!
TRHH: Old school.
DJ Kenny Parker: Right. At that point he was old school.
TRHH: Rakim too, Kane.
DJ Kenny Parker: Yep. Everybody from that era. Return of the Boom Bap was very important for KRS because it was almost like a rebirth for him that he could still make hit records and put up numbers, but it was shaky for a second. I took a lot of the blame – a lot! You’d be surprised.
TRHH: I am surprised because you weren’t the only producer on that album. That doesn’t make sense. Prince Paul was on that album, right?
DJ Kenny Parker: Prince Paul, Pal Joey who did “Love’s Gonna Get’cha” also did “Duck Down and “13 and Good.” He did like four songs on Sex and Violence. He was banished too. But they didn’t really single him out. They were like, “We’re getting new producers, we’re going with DJ Premier, and Kenny for sure don’t come to the studio.” Word [laughs].
TRHH: That’s crazy [laughs]. One thing I love about your production is how hard your drums are. What’s your secret to making your drums smack?
DJ Kenny Parker: Thank you. Picking hard drum sounds. People ask me how I make my drums so hard, I’m just listening for kicks and snares that’s hitting! You can take the same beat, just take the kick out and replace it with another kick and it changes the whole thump. I’m looking for thumping records. If I’m making an R&B song per se I might try to find some drums a little softer. You can have the same pattern, but just a little softer drums. But for Hip-Hop I want it to really thump in the truck. I’m always listening for those type of drums. Some people think it’s the EQ’ing, it’s not so much the EQ’ing, it’s the sounds that you pick that make the difference.
TRHH: What about when it comes to bass? Do you play a lot of the bass or is it just a sample?
DJ Kenny Parker: Both. I’ll get a bass sound that I like and then I’ll truncate it in the drum machine and then I’ll make a bassline how I like it. I’ll play around with a bassline until I find a bassline that I like. But the initial sound is also something that has to be chunky! like a real chunky bass sound. I could be listening to a whole record and I might just hear “Womp!” I’m just going to take that and make it a whole thing. Once again, I like dusty, chunky bass sounds. It’s just a matter of picking.
TRHH: Takin Mine is one of the grimiest albums from a man or a woman. Do you think it’s slept on and it is your crowning achievement as a producer?
DJ Kenny Parker: That’s a great question. What does it mean to be slept on? Is slept on that it didn’t sell or is slept on more people should have heard it? Because sometimes things don’t sell because they weren’t supposed to sell — it sold what it should sell. Sometimes things should have sold more, it’s just that enough people didn’t hear it. I’m gonna go with the second part, I’m gonna say that enough people didn’t hear that album or even was aware that Heather had an album ‘till later on. I’m gonna say that album was slept on.
I remember we did a song on there with M.O.P. called “My Kinda Nigga,” excuse my French. It was playing on all the mixtapes and I saw Redman and he was like, “Yo, that record with M.O.P is banging. You should put a whole album out on Heather!” I’m like, “That’s on her album!” That song is on a whole album [laughs]. So, when Redman said that to me it let me know that the type of people that needed to know she had an album out was not aware that she had an album out. “All Glocks Down” was a big single for her. That came out almost a year before the album. It’s a whole story behind that.
We were supposed to drop then, but there was some record company drama that pushed us back almost a year. We kind of lost some of that momentum, she comes out with new stuff and it didn’t have the same impact as All Glocks Down, it didn’t get the promotion, blah, blah, blah. So, I’m gonna say it was slept on in that sense that I don’t think the promotion was there. If it was promoted to the people a certain way, and it didn’t sell, that just means that it didn’t connect with the people. But if you don’t know it exist, then that’s another whole story. I’m using what Redman said to me as an indicator. Somebody like Redman, that was our audience we’re going for – a guy like him. If he likes this song and is not aware that there are more of these songs, then that’s a problem.
Was that my crowning achievement? I think my crowning achievement is writing the book. It was therapeutic and it was a whole lifetime in the making. It did well when it came out originally. It was number one on Amazon and everything. I consider that my crowning achievement, but musically Takin Mine is my crowning achievement. We did the album in ‘95 and it came out in ’96. At that time that was where I was at musically and also Jive was saying, “Kenny is horrible.” If it wasn’t for me being able to work on that album I probably would’ve had no outlet for my music, because at that time I was mostly BDP. I wasn’t venturing out, I was a BDP producer that can’t produce for BDP [laughs]. So, what am I gonna do? Heather’s here? She’ll take my beats.
Even All Glocks Down, I’ll tell you a quick story about that, and I’m dissing Jive on here, but hey. When we first did that song, we pressed it up on our own. We pressed that record up at a pressing plant and sent it out to DJ’s. We had no record deal. We sent it out to DJ’s and in New York City all the DJ’s on the major stations started playing it. Funkmaster Flex was playing it, Premier was playing it on BLS, Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito was playing it on WHUR, Red Alert was playing it on KISS FM, all of the main stations were playing it on their mix shows. We had no record deal! We were like, “Yo, we gotta get somebody to pick this up!” We’re shopping, we’re shopping and people aren’t really biting. I went to Jive, and this was in 1994 after they said I was trash. I said, “Yo, we got this record, it’s playing on the radio. Just pick it up and put it out, it’s already playing. You have artists on your label that’s not getting as much play as this song is right now and we have no deal. Just pick it up.” They took the meeting, they listen to the pitch and they came back and said, “We’ll pass.”
So, they even passed on that song. Fast-forward a year later and it comes out on EMI and Heather’s doing Soul Train. They loved it, Heather is performing on Soul Train and I see the Jive representative who told me, “We’re passing.” The song went to number one on all the rap charts and he said, “Yo, that All Glocks Down, I thought I would see you up there on Soul Train. You should have been up there! That’s a hot song!” He’s talking to me like I didn’t just bring him this song a few months ago! We were literally begging. We didn’t want a big budget or nothing. Just take it and put it in the machine. They said no and the same guy is telling me, “Yo, it’s dope! I thought I would see you on Soul Train!” I’m just looking at him like I can’t believe this. Takin Mine album with Heather is probably my crowning achievement as a producer. I’ve worked on other stuff, working with KRS, my brother, that’s another whole mind blow! Coming from where we come from and our story, that’s another whole thing. But that’s probably my crowning achievement, yes, and it was slept on.
Read: Part 2 of A Conversation with DJ Kenny Parker
Purchase: My Brother’s Name is Kenny: The Greatest True Hip-Hop Story Ever Told