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Godfather Don – The Unkut Interview
Posted on March 7, 2024 by Robbie
It took me exactly twenty years to get Godfather Don on the phone, which makes sense now that I know that by the time I started this site he had already changed his focus to playing jazz. This being my first phone interview since the ill-fated Just-Ice session in 2016, I had no idea how it would go and wondered if I could keep him engaged in the conversation long enough to hear his whole story. Turns out he was happy to kick it, and we discussed everything from creating his first album (recorded at Power Play studio while Mob Style and Organized Konfusion were creating their own classic debuts in the other rooms!), the Hydra Entertainment era and why he decided to return to rap at long last.
Robbie: Were you interested in music from back when you were a little kid or did it start when you were a teenager?
Godfather Don: I was always interested in music. My older brother played guitar and he practised with his band in the house. Before that, my father played music as well – he played guitar. So I was always around it. My father had really cool records that he left me when he passed on, so I got started with a dope crate right from the giddy-up. [laughs] There was always instruments laying around the house and good records…there was always sounds, so it was just a matter of picking something up at some point.
So you weren’t concerned about what style of music you wanted to make?
No, I never think about style in terms of genre. That limits the direction of free expression. The ability to freely express is greatly diminished the moment you try to formulate a type, a style or a genre. Because then that means you’re using a prior reference, and that means you have to copy that reference, or at least simulate it to a point where you can say, ‘Hey! I’m doing this style!’ I never really thought about it like that. I just had a lot of ideas I wanted to express – a creative impulse just to make something out of nothing.
Were you a Brooklyn kid?
Yeah, in Brownsville, in the beginning when my brother and father were doing live instruments. Sneak a drumstick and bang on the cymbals – ‘Hey Oscar! Your little brother is…’ ‘Ah, leave him alone, let him be’. I’m thinking I’m in the band, hitting the stick against the sink. Bushwick is when I started being introduced to rap, but I still didn’t rap. At that point I was already starting to pick-up live instruments and the guitar, from my brother. He started getting more hip with dating girls and doing stuff, so he would leave his beautiful Fender Stratocaster just laying around in the house. I didn’t realise it was a Fender Stratocaster back then, I just used to play around with it and put it right back in the case before my brother got home from work. It was funny, I did that for a few years but I’m pretty sure he knew about it. My brother is super cool. He knew I was digging through his records – he knew!
When I moved to Flatbush is when my childhood friend, Sir Chic, had exposed me to the basics, cos he was already in a rap crew. At that time it was still the choreographed MC routines and I couldn’t do that well – when I tried, it always sounded like a Temptations revue, Sha Na Na Doo Wop, or a barbershop quartet! [laughs] Not to say that style wasn’t dope, but it was the dawn of KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane and Eric B. and Rakim – and it moved me!
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