Image via Complex Original
Today is a sad day for hip-hop, particularly in New York City, as legendary DJ Mister Cee has resigned from his position at Hot 97. Cee volunteered his resignation, against the wishes of program director Ebro Darden, because, he said, he didn't want the radio station to have deal with his personal problems. He has been arrested twice in the past two years for soliciting male prostitutes, triggering a lot of scandal, and this morning, a recording emerged that allegedly captures Cee with a transvestite prostitute. "I don't want to put this station through more than what they've been through," he said.
For the past 20 years, Mister Cee has hosted the Throwback at Noon on Hot 97. The show became a regular feature of New York City culture (and an oasis of classic music in Hot 97's desert of relentless top 40 shilling), the kind of thing the tri-state area set their lunchtime clocks to.
Cee's resignation sucks. Because you can't help but think that if it was female prostitutes that he had a penchant for picking up, we wouldn't know about it. Hearing a person in such obvious pain as he was in today broke our hearts. We wish he didn't feel the need to resign, we wish he could go on throwing us back into a hip-hop reverie everyday at noon for years to come. So to remind everybody what's really important here, what we're losing for a stupid reason, we made a list of some of the important things Mister Cee has done for rap music over the years. Here are 8 Great Things We Should All Thank Mister Cee For.
DJed For Big Daddy Kane
Mister Cee and Big Daddy Kane both attended Sarah J. Hale High School, a school for cosmetology. "Kane got kicked out from another practically all-girls school, a school for cooking," Cee told Jay Smooth in 1995. "He got kicked out of that, got into Sarah J. which is a school for cosmetology." After the two met, Cee became his DJ, although he was working full time after high school for Airborne Express, a messenger service, up until the release of Big Daddy Kane's debut, Long Live the Kane. (On that album, Cee was featured scratching on "Mister Cee's Master Plan.") "Then the Juice Crew, all of us, we went to London overseas for the Juice Crew tour, and then like my supervisor at Airborne, he was like, 'Yo.' I wanted to take a leave of absence cuz I wanted to have a job and still do the record thing. My supervisor was like, "you got to pick one or the other." and I was out." Cee was known primarily as Big Daddy Kane's DJ for the next few years, as Kane became one of hip-hop's biggest stars.
Produced 4 Songs on Master Ace's Debut Album
Mister Cee is thought of primarily as a DJ—whether through his tapes, his legendary work with Big Daddy Kane and Biggie, or his years spinning on the air. But he was also a producer. While the bulk of Juice Crew legend Masta Ace's debut was produced by Marley Marl—who worked on the bulk of the beats for the crew—four tracks were actually produced by Mister Cee himself, including the catchy "Street Life"-sampling "Postin' High."
Brought The Notorious B.I.G.'s Demo Tape to The Source
Mister Cee was going on tour with Big Daddy Kane in 1991 when a DJ named 50 Grand asked him to listen to a new young Brooklyn rapper. Cee said he'd listen when he returned. The same day he arrived home, 50 was there, knocking on his door. After Cee heard Biggie rapping over The Emotions' "Blind Alley"—the same sample used for Kane's "Ain't No Half Steppin'"—he was converted. He and 50 rerecorded and professionalized the demo. Cee shopped the demo to The Source magazine, where writer Matteo Capoluongo highlighted Biggie in his Unsigned Hype column. A young A&R named Sean Combs read the column, and quickly took a meeting with Big—and Mister Cee, who would go on to say he thought Biggie and Combs would make a good team. Cee would end up with an Associate Executive Producer credit on Biggie's debut album Ready To Die. The rest, as they say, is history.
One of the First to Drop 120-Minute Hip-Hop Mixtapes
In a 2003 Billboard article on the legendary Beat Street record store, Mister Cee spoke of shop's importance to his own career. "I can't think of another record store whose impact compares to that of Beat Street on the hip-hop DJs in New York and throughout the world," Cee said. "It was the first store to sell my 120-minute-mixtapes," he continued. "That led to more people hearing about me." One of those people was DJ Evil Dee of the Beatminerz and Black Moon. "One day I go downtown to the record store, and I see a sign in the window: "Mister Cee, 120-Minute Tape," and I was like No! Whoa, 120 minutes?," Dee said in an interview in Hip-Hop In America: A Regional Guide. "Cause I was doing 60 minutes. Mister Cee was dropping 120-minute mixtapes, and was winning. I give him credit, because Mister Cee made me step my game up. When I seen his sign, I was heated. I was like, 'This guy, he DJs for Big Daddy Kane. He don't need to be making tapes!' But he changed the game. He was the first one to drop a 120-minute mixtape."
Dropped the Classic Tape Kingz Best Of... Mixes of Biggie, Redman, etc.
Ian and Stephen (last names hidden by request), also known as the Tape Kingz, were two hip-hop heads who helped to distribute mixtapes in New York's market, then nationally. "Where else would a kid in San Francisco get a Mister Cee tape?" they bragged in a 2004 Vibe profile that talked about the rise and fall of tapekingz.com. They weren't kidding about the importance of Cee's tapes on the legacy of the artists he highlighted. Cee's releases for the Tape Kingz—like, say, The Best of Mobb Deep or The Best of Redman—were classic compliations that curated artists' loosies in a knowledgeable and comprehensive way, creating a one-stop-shop for the tracks that might not make the official record (Like, say, the Prince-sampling version of "Young Luv").
One of the most significant was his mix for Biggie, which helped make the case for the rapper's canonical status even before the release of Life After Death, bringing together pre-Ready To Die tracks and a variety of remixes and singles. While Biggie's two albums are a document of his relationship with his label, Cee's mix captures the broader essence of the rapper's importance to the era, the feel of how he filled the radio waves, better than any single release.
Recorded and Popularized the 1993 Biggie/Tupac "Where Brooklyn At?" Madison Square Garden Freestyle
If Mister Cee never mixed a record and never made a meeting with Puffy happen, he would still have this as a lasting legacy, and that would make him more important to hip-hop than anyone you follow on twitter this side of @BrotherMob. "Mister Cee had pressed this up and put it out on bootleg because he's the one that actually recorded it at the Garden at the Budweiser Superfest," Cipha Sounds once told us. "We used to always play Biggie's verse and cut it off when he says 'smacking babies at they christening.' Right there was a perfect spot to throw in another record, 'cause there's a little gap. One night, Mister Cee was DJing, and he kept playing the record to the 2Pac verse—which some of us didn't even know was there. And the crowd went fuckin' crazy. From that point on, the 2Pac verse always played."
Furthered the Discussion of Homophobia In Hip-Hop
Make no mistake: This is a dark day for hip-hop, and if this country were a less homophobic place—one where straight people didn't think they could or should dictate the terms of a person's relationship to their own sexuality and the wider world—this wouldn't be happening. But while the controversy over Mister Cee has shined a light on a lot of the negative, backwards stereotypes still present in hip-hop, it's also created an opportunity for some artists to take stands against the reactionary, bigoted attitudes still present in our country, and shown that we all can still take strides together.
When news first broke about Mister Cee, two of New York hip-hop's most hardcore artists challenged outsider stereotypes of the culture. Prodigy from Mobb Deep was one: "That nigga loves Mobb Deep and always shows us love, and plays our music all the time on the radio. He's one of the only ones that does that...That nigga call, we always going to pick up like 'What's up? You good?' If he wants to do a party, whatever. Whatever Mister Cee wants to do, we fuck with Mister Cee. That's what it is." Another was 50 Cent, who spoke up in support of the DJ and said he would make Mister Cee his DJ "any day."
DJed Hot 97's Throwback at Noon
While Cee had a two-hour slot on Friday nights, he was primarily celebrated for his Throwback at Noon sets on Hot 97, which many saw as an oasis of incredible music in a radio environment that wasn't exactly friendly to the classics. New York hip-hop might not be at its peak these days, but Cee's mixes made certain that the city's entire history was never far from the airwaves. And it was basically a given that if a legendary figure passed on, they would be memorialized on Cee's program. His Guru tribute mix and, more recently, Aaliyah tribute mix were celebrations of the lives of artists who'd passed on too early.
