Bobby Simmons: The first hip-hop show the Latin Quarters gave was Heavy D and The Boyz, at least on a Friday and Saturday night. After that, Boogie Down Productions, Scott la Rock and ‘em came and did ‘South Bronx’. That’s when the MC Shan and KRS battle was going on. Everybody was in the house. That was the same night that Grandmaster Melle Mel challenged to battle KRS-One. KRS-One was coming on his heels and Melle Mel was supposed to have been king back then! He was in the movie Beat Street, he had the hottest record out – ‘White Lines’. I have to be honest, KRSOne smoked him! He was young, he was fresh. That was also the night Melle Mel called Biz Markie ‘Magilla Gorilla’! Melle Mel was goin’ after people! [laughs]Public Enemy did they first show at the Latin Quarters on a Wednesday night, and nobody liked them. They were booed. Again, here comes Melle Mel! All the new groups that was coming out, ain’t nobody was taking his spot. Melle Mel was takin’ shots at Chuck and that whole group. The audience was quiet, ‘cos nobody knew what they were doing, and he screamed out at the S1Ws, ‘You fake G.I. Joe dolls!’ A guy like LL Cool J was willing to challenge everybody ‘cos he took the time to stay on his craft as a writer lyrically and style-wise. Mel didn’t do that. Mel figured, ‘I’mma get up there and do the rhymes we used to do back in the days. I ain’t got to try to polish nothing!’ But hip-hop was changing and cats was coming different. He didn’t drown, he just stayed in the water, floating, and he gave cats the opportunity to take shots at him.
Bobby Simmons told me that Melle Mel always used to hang out there and diss all the young dudes coming up.
Paradie Grey: He was trying to intimidate them, until one night KRS stepped-up. Melle Mel was calling, ‘Any of y’all new MCs you know you aren’t shyt. Come up here and I’ll smash you!’ He looks to his left and – boom! KRS is standing there – [in] a b-boy stance. KRS-One did one rhyme and dropped the mic and said, ‘Who won?’ The crowd said, ‘You did!’ Melle Mel was mad as hell. He was like, ‘I didn’t get to go yet!’ So I grabbed the mic and said, ‘Let the man say his lines!’ Melle Mel said one of the most incredible rhymes I ever heard in my life, but it wasn’t his time no more. The crowd said KRS won. Destiny is one day a young lion is gonna challenge you and you are going to lose, because age and time are not gonna be on your side.
I’ve been told stories of how Melle Mel used to berate the new generation during the Latin Quarter era. It’s an interesting snapshot of a king who refused to pass on his crown.
Harry Allen: Melle Mel is one of the pillars of our culture, but he has not aged gracefully at all. There are some artists who have not done this, for professional reasons or personal reasons. A lot of his statements these days have a kind of ‘Get off my lawn!’ quality.
Like the lead character from Gran Torino.
Yeah, he’s like the old man screaming for the kids to get off of his lawn. It’s unfortunate, because that doesn’t play well, historically. In other words there’s nothing to write about. People whose only story is, ‘I did it, and everyone else sucked!’ Those people don’t tend to be written about very well, because there’s no story there. And he’s greater than that. What he’s done is greater than that. I had the pleasure of one night, a bunch of us being in a diner, saying to Mel, ‘Your lyric “Italian, Caucasian, Japanese/Spanish, Indian, Negro, Vietnamese/MCs, disc jockeys, all the fly girls and the young ladies.” That’s one of the most devastating ways to start a record I’ve ever heard.’ That’s art, the way he did that. That’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard. I haven’t quantized that yet. I haven’t figured out that lyric yet. So this is a great man.
It’s a tough situation for him.
Yes, and it’s one that creative people of a certain temperament find themselves in. Sometimes they navigate it well and sometimes they don’t. Artists are really sensitive people, and often incredibly insecure. A secure person doesn’t talk that way about other people, especially people he doesn’t know. I know Mel personally, a little bit, so I don’t want to psycho-analyse him here, but I would say that he’s greater than that, and I hope that he changes his mind. There’s a thing I’ve taken to saying on Twitter that ‘I don’t want to see any Greatest Of All-Time lists that don’t have Melle Mel on it, and if I see a Greatest Of All-Time list that doesn’t have Melle Mel on it, I know you’re just a child.’ If you’re a person who has to put Melle Mel on a Greatest of All Time list, that’s a lot more work than you’re willing to do, because that means you have to figure out why he’s there! And you may not have any idea. The hardest thing to write about is the future, but the second hardest thing is the past in that people often don’t have a feel for it. At one point, if you entered film school, you needed to know all the films of the sixties. Now if you enter film school, you have to know all the films of the nineties and the aughts. You have to also know about Howard Lloyd and Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin if you’re gonna be thorough about this
