Grandmaster Vic - 7/16/94
The King of Queens blend tapes gets busy for the Nine-Four.
“I’m Uptown chillin’, taking in this Grandmaster Vic blend.” - Large Professor, on A Tribe Called Quest’s “Keep It Rollin’”
Grandmaster Vic is one of Queens’ most legendary DJs. Not only was he known for rocking park jams and holding down the decks on tour with artists like Nas and others, but his blend-heavy mixtapes were some of the most sought-after in the streets.
Here’s an extended clip from our Do Remember! interview with a fellow mixtape DJ from Queens—Doggtime—who breaks down Grandmaster Vic’s importance and influence:
Doggtime: Grandmaster Vic is a Queens legend, but he’s a worldwide legend. Any DJ from Queens comes from Grandmaster Vic, we all learned from him. He could do his tricks and stuff, but the blends, rocking the R&B, and knowing how to bring records in—everybody learned from Vic tapes.
Vic started DJing for Nas, he DJ’d for the Lost Boyz. So Vic was on the road with a lot of guys over the years. Back during that time, it was park jams.
I would go to Vic’s crib and get tapes. That was pretty much just as a listener. If you wanted to hear a good mixtape, there was no better place to go than to Vic. A guy I went to high school with, he lived not too far from Vic, so he took me to Vic’s house and I would go there like once a month and I would buy my tape. I would listen to it just to enjoy it, but it got to a point where I started to study it.
I was like, “Man, I like how he brought that in, I like how he did that.” The more you listen to something, it influences you, so you start picking up a little bit of the style. It’s just natural.
And here’s Mr. Walt, one-half of Da Beatminerz and a former Music Factory employee at their Jamaica Avenue location, who included Grandmaster Vic at the top of his Do Remember! “Top 5 Queens DJs” list:
Mr. Walt: You've got to give it to the King. He's the pioneer. He's the guy. When you're talking about Queens DJ culture, you cannot not say Grandmaster Vic.
Now to the tape, 7/16/94, which is a couple months shy of celebrating its 30th birthday. Grandmaster Vic gives the people what they want with plenty of hip-hop and R&B blends, while also mixing in a few new cuts and ‘80s classics. For those of us who never had the privilege of seeing Vic rock a park jam, it’s tapes like this that allow us to understand why he was so revered. The flow is seamless, the song selection is sublime, and the blends are butter.
And most tapes like this didn’t circulate with tracklists. But when you saw the Grandmaster Vic name, you already knew it was a must-cop. As that Organized Konfusion “Stress” blend with The Lady Of Rage “Afro Puffs” drops in to set off Side A, you’ll hear why.
Stream 7/16/94 below, and stay tuned for more 50 TAPES posts as we celebrate the release of Do Remember! The Golden Era of NYC Hip-Hop Mixtapes, out now via Rizzoli.
Grandmaster Vic - 7/16/94