The Showboys – “Drag Rap“

from Drag Rap (Profile, 1986)

Alright grown ups, in betweens, children and babies, I’m back with part two of the Mannie interview. Here Elvis Freshly talks about a record that he himself sampled dozens of times, New Orleans Bounce archetype (by way of Queens) The Showboys’ “Drag Rap (Triggerman)”. Click here if you missed part one of the interview.

When did “Triggerman” first catch on in New Orleans?
I guess from the release date of that song. It always was a hot song in New Orleans. I want to say Memphis, as well. Memphis and New Orleans. It was just one of those songs that was embraced. And I guess what made it so hot around New Orleans was just the 808, you know it’s two different drum sets in it. You got one with a hard kick, a hard snare and then it just breaks down into this 808 beat. And you know, down south that’s been the favorite drum machine for forever, the 808. And they’re some New York cats, but nobody ever knew they was from New York. And the whole way the song was formatted – it’s story rap and it’s got that southern feel to it.

What do you think it is about that record that makes it so frequently sampled?
I mean, really it’s just the history of it. I ain’t gonna say it was the first bounce beat or whatever, the first bounce beats was really drum machines. Before bounce came along, DJs used to do… (and this is kinda how I became a producer just to give you some history on it) we used to do like a one hour set with just an 808 and some Moog keyboards or whatever. That was at the time when anything that came out with an 808 that was close to that sound, everybody loved it. And that sound right there was close to what we were doing at parties. A dj would breakout with an 808 and play some basslines over an old analog keyboard, that was just some hot shit down south. I ain’t gonna say everywhere, but in New Orleans, that was the highlight of a house party. Just like “oh the drum machine and the keyboards… dude!” And when that song came along and it had that exact same sound, it had the 808 sound to it. That’s why I think it’s so loved. And generations grew up on that song. Just to give you a history of what are the hot, hot songs in New Orleans – “Peter Piper” Run DMC is still a hot song. Because it’s an 808 song. “I’ll Take Your Man” Salt N Peppa is still a hot song, it’s an 808 song. Anything that’s got an 808 b beat to it – LL Cool J “Rock The Bells”, songs like that. That’s just our feel. They’re still hanging around. It’s not just “Triggerman”, “Triggerman” is just one of them songs that stands the time. It was always a saying that if you wanted to get a party started get two “Triggermans”. If you could a DJ that could backspin them… It’s just been heard so much that it’s just programmed in you. A party ain’t a party without “Triggerman”, not in New Orleans.

What kind of response would you get, even today, if you were to throw that record on?
Right now, lets just say you a hot emcee and you open up in New Orleans and you just hear that first little crash on “Triggerman” where the DJ would catch it from, the crowd would go crazy, dude. Like “that’s my favorite emcee, rocking ‘Triggerman’”. The repsonse is just straight crazy. It’s like me going home, haven’t been to New Orleans in a long time and I start my show out with “Triggerman”. Really bounce music is just get the party started music, it’s chant music, it’s the basic element of hip hop, kind of like how hip hop got started. I think that’s why people love “Triggerman” and an emcee that can rock it like that.

So you guys were up on that back in ‘86 or whatever?
Oh yeah. Dude, I was DJing.

Because when I talked to the Showboys they had no idea that it was a hit down there until much later, they were up in New York.
I’m probably sure they told you I was the first dude to tell ‘em that. When you talk to them, when I met dude. I was like “homie, they love this song in New Orleans” and that was after the song was dead and buried. And they were like man, come on, you gotta be lying. I’m like, for real, this shit is a hit in New Orleans.

When did you meet up with them?
I think dude [Orville "Bugs Can Can" Hall] was working for Adidas. I think he still works for Adidas and I met him doing some promotional stuff and then he told me “I had a record out, I was in the Showboys” and i was like “The Showboys?!” I was like “dude that shit is phenomenal in New Orleans. They had to reprint that song and rename it.” And dude was like “What you mean?” “They don’t even call it ‘Drag Rap’, they call it ‘Triggerman’ in New Orleans.” Somebody booked them in Memphis first, they did it in Memphis and the crowd went crazy. And they eventually worked their way to New Orleans and did that show and was like “oh my goodness”. And keep in mind that by then this song was probably six or seven years old. Think of the release date. That song was released in the 80s. It’s 2007 and that shit is still a big impact right now.

Did you catch any of those performances when they came through?
No I never seen them perform. I mean shit, in all honesty me and dude and them cool. I used the song so frequently that they sued my ass.

Ha. They didn’t tell me about that.
We settled out of court, we still cool, we remain friends. I wouldn’t blame ‘em. At the time I was a young producer, I didn’t know no better. What happened was, all the songs that I used it in, really none of them amounted up to nothing. It was pre-Cash Money. Really all them songs was local and somebody told them that dude had used your songs and there’s probably millions of dollars out there. And I’m like “nah homie, it ain’t really that”. They just some local songs.

Yeah they seemed a little frustrated when I talked to them. I guess they don’t even see money from it when it’s sampled today.
For real, for real, I can understand that, but I mean dude I have songs like that. That’s a part of hip hop. You gotta think back to around the 80s, it wasn’t none of that. It was the creativity. Nobody wasn’t saying “you know what when you scratch a song you gotta clear it.” We turned this into a business. I wish it wasn’t that. I’m not gonna say it’s alright to steal my songs, but some elements still should be cool to use in hip hop. Sometimes you gotta take the bitter with the sweet. They gotta honestly think about what they got away with in they songs. There’s elements of that song that don’t belong to them – the little Old Spice whistle, the Dragnet song. In [that] era hip hop was free, dude.

It’d probably be a lot more interesting today if it could still be that way, huh?
Yeah, dude, it would be some hot shit. That’s why I say, certain elements, even in my songs, certain elements of the songs should be… Dude, it’s hip hop culture. If you didn’t outright just take my song and just did some shit with it, if you took parts of my song and you turned it into your own creation, then I can’t get mad about it if you rocked it better than me. That’s all in hip hop.

There has been some debate as to which was the first bounce record to take that Showboys beat – T Tucker or Jimi?
T Tucker was probably the first one to record a bounce record. Bounce was going on before that happened, but they was the first ones to say “okay, we can sell this shit”. This was going on in the 80s, dude. DJs was doing 808 beats. If you ask anybody in the history of New Orleans who grew up in the 80s, they would be like “yeah Mannie Fresh would put on the 808 drum machine, put the keyboard on it and rock the party for about an hour.” We would play Fred Sanford [theme], anything that was a hot bassline at that time. “Axel F” or whatever against an 808 beat and rock the party. At hot emcee, somebody that got the party started would just rock it [with] crowd participation and just go on. The cats who didn’t know how to program drum machines or didn’t know how to play keyboards, that DJ had “Triggerman” to back him up. He had the 808 beat that came from that.

What’s your most successful record that sampled “Triggerman”?
My biggest song, I guess the elements of it, I didn’t actually sample the song, I just copied the format of it is “Back That Ass Up”. It’s got that “Triggerman” feel, the same tempo. If you listen to the breaks and everything in “Triggerman” that’s been a break in the south forever. Whoever programmed that song, I was like “he got to be some dude from down south.” Because the song sounds exactly like what we was doing at house parties. And when it came out everybody took it as [if] these dudes gotta be from Florida or somewhere. Nobody could’ve thought that they would’ve been from New York.