RickyPedia

11/20/2017

So the year is 1986 and me and the boys spent a lot of time just chillin all day shooting pool in Detroit. All of a sudden one day this punk kid, must have been about 14 comes in and just starts hanging out. We all asked him why he wasn't in school and he explains that this rap music craze has moved him and he was dropping out to become famous, like a white dude could EVER make it in rap. Anyways he was shooting and busting rhymes and to be honest with you he wasn't that bad. The whole time he was playing he was chomping on skittles. After about a month he tells us he is going to an open mic and doesn't think Marshall Mathers is a good stage name. Just clowning around we tell him he ought to call himself Skittles.. About 6 months go by and we don't see hide nor hair of him when he pops back in. We tell him we thought he made it big and he tells us his rhymes were dope but something just didn't click. So he starts shooting pool and hanging out again and practicing. one day he runs out of his skittles and he looks at me and says he needs a sugar fix because he was jonesing. so I reach in my pocket and just like a slow motion scene in the movies toss him a bag of M&M's.. Anyways he goes into beast mode and is ready to try again, but thinks Skittles was a stupid stage name so well you can figure out the rest.

04/24/2017

01/07/2017

I have to admit I am a little miffed at Andre Young. NOT even one mention in his book! I met this cat in 1980 when he transferred to Freemont. It was a different era back then, you could pick and tease people without getting kicked out of school.. This "newbie" had what is know know as ADHD. Andre sat right behind me and when we had to pass in our assignments, I noticed he had trouble writing his name. He would mentally block out the A and the N and the get frustrated and start over again blocking out the A and the N but complete his first name, so every time he handed something forward instead of writing Andre Young, it read dr...dre... well being sort of a bully, I started teasing him that we should call him Dr, Dre... for some reason it made this kid feel comfortable and he eventually overcame his ADHD... I completely lost track of him, but later found out that he became famous, which is why I went out and bought his book, interesting read, although I am shocked he left this chapter out...

09/30/2016

Rich Gardner

05/16/2016

THE ORIGINAL DROP THE MIKE... Many may not know this but before he rose to stardom in Cheers, Ted Danson was the lead singer in our cover band Ted Zepplin. We had quite a following working the clubs in Queens until... Well they say rock and rool never die, but hip hop was slowly taking over. In 1980 for some reason music was evolving into DJ's mixing and what they called "rappers" using poetic licenses. Honestly still got no idea why it got popular. Ted was gifted to say the least. In between a part acting career, we would do a couple of sets at our friends bar. Since we really weren't pulling them in as they say, my buddy decided to let some of the neighborhood kids practice their "craft". We were baffled by this, they would have a DJ up there making noise by sctracthing the LP's and some guy would come up and do what they called "Mike Chanting".. Three of the kids, Joesph Simmons, Daryl Mc Daniel, and someone called Jay seemed like the most popular, actually to the point that we lost our second set to them. In fact they were calling us dinosaurs and telling us to hang it up. Ted was at a breaking point. after the third week of this, he snapped. We were to follow these kids and he looks at the band and tells us to just chill that he was going out solo. What happened next completely changed history. Ted goes out there and grabs the mike and freestlyes. He looks into the crowd and says that he is the King of rock and there ain't none higher. You sucker MC's should call me sire. To burn my kingdom, you must use fire. I won't stop rockin' till I retire.. A lot of people don't know this but Ted is a black belt and can totally lay out five or six guys at once. Those three kids I mentioned before were telling me they were going to clown on him when he came off stage. I looked at Daryl and said you better run D. I looked at Jay and said run MC.. Thankfully they did Ted simply dropped the microphone walked off stage never to sing again about two years later he landed a role in a sitcom called Cheers, those other kids decided to call themselves Run DMC and used Ted's rant to launch their career.

10/01/2015