It all started waaaaayyyyyy back in the 70's. Growing up in the "hood" I was lucky enough to have friends who had family in NYC. Sometimes their parents would invite me on weekend trips to NYC to visit family. On one of these trips in the summer of 1978 we were sitting on my friends uncles stoop and one of his cousins comes running down the block all excited. He managed to get copies of both flash and bambaataas mixtapes. We proceed upstairs to listen to the tapes and from the first cut and scratch I was hooked. At this time almost nobody outside of NY had heard scratching (including me). I asked my friend and his cousin how the dj was doing what he was doing but neither knew. I wasn't sure how, but I was gonna figure it out on my own. My friend made me copies of the tapes which I spent the next few months studying. It was the start of an amazingly crazy 40 year journey.. There's a lot more to the story but there's only space for 1000 characters so I'll stop there. Peace.