Spoonie Gee & The Treacherous Three

The Treacherous Three are amongst the most influential and talented acts from the first generation of recorded MCs. They released music on the Enjoy, Sugar Hill and Easy Lee record labels and appeared in Wild Style and Beat Street. Although they released more records than many of their contemporaries at both Enjoy and Sugar Hill, The Treacherous Three never achieved huge success with their recordings. Some point to lack of promotion as the primary reason that the group didn't enjoy success with their recordings, while others blame their advanced vocabularies and poetic techniques as the reason that they didn't enjoy commercial success. In other words, the Treacherous Three may have been too intelligent for what was a rudimentary art form at the time.

There were groups that were poetic and stood out from much of the nursery rhyme stylings of the early '80s, but the Treacherous Three were definitely at the top of the list of intelligent MCs. Their biggest recording was "Feel The Heartbeat," an interpolation of Taanya Gardner's 1981 smash hit "Heartbeat."

It would have been easy to take the safe road of call & response and simple rhyme flow over such a perfect sound bed, but group member Special K spit: "I'm Special K not a doctor but I'm gonna prescribe/ gonna rock - send a vibe to rock ya whole tribe/a traditional custom when I'm in the place/ somethin' that you enjoy no matter what ya race/ I'm like a reoccurring myth but all I am is a man/ like a well known brand always in demand.

No one was rhyming like that on Rap records in 1981. While The Furious 5 and The Funky 4 seamlessly passed the mic to one another, and successfully transferred the energy of live routines to records, The Treacherous Three are truly among Rap music's first technical wordsmiths.

At the root of The Treacherous Three is the friendship between front man Kool Moe Dee and L.A. Sunshine. The two go back to elementary school as best friends in Harlem in a neighborhood that encompasses a three to four block area called The Hill (Moe Dee references The Hill on his solo song "The Wild Wild West"). Of the three or four active DJ crews on The Hill, Moe Dee latched onto DJ Reggie Reg and L.A. Sunshine connected with DJ Easy Lee. This four man group would call themselves the Fantastic Four before joining with Harlem MC Spoonie Gee and renaming themselves The Treacherous Three.

Spoonie, who was the nephew of Enjoy Records founder Bobby Robinson, released a record in 1979 on Peter Brown's Sound of York label titled 'Spoonin' Rap' without telling L.A. and Moe Dee. Kool Moe Dee told The Foundation that the group didn't think that he released an official record. "When he said he made a record, we thought that he meant some 'boardwalk in the booth' shit", he explains. Spoonie Gee told The Foundation that when Peter Brown asked him to make a recording, he looked for the rest of the group so that they could all record together.

"If I found them it would have been a Treacherous Three record, but I couldn't," he explains. "Once the record got so big I started doing shows and I took them with me, and I let Special K take my place and it became Spoonie Gee and The Treacherous Three. I went solo not long after that."

The New Rap Language

After Kool Moe Dee's Bronx classmate, Special K, replaced Spoonie Gee in the Treacherous Three, the group signed with Enjoy and released the Pumpkin produced "The New Rap Language'/'The Love Rap" in 1980. "The New Rap Language" is an important record, as it introduced what Moe called "fast rap" which evolved into the triplet style which is so popular today. Moe says that he developed the style after listening to a rhyme by Kid Creole of The Furious 5.

"I was on the toilet which is one of my favorite places to write," he says. "I had listened to a routine by The Furious 5 where Creole said a rhyme and he almost went into this flurry, but he stopped. I always said that he should have kept going, so I did and the 'fast rap' was born."

"Love Rap" with Pumpkin's "Squib Cakes" drum pattern marked the first time that a Rap record actually became a breakbeat with DJ's buying double copies to spin behind their MCs. "Love Rap" would be sampled dozens of times throughout the decades, but almost any rap tape of live performances from 1980 until '84 will contain it in some form.

"We did 'New Rap Language' together and 'Love Rap' was me solo," says Spoonie Gee. "The Treacherous Three did the intro and I did the rest of the song and we agreed to just split the money because I was really a solo artist at this time."

The Body Rock

Spoonie Gee would go on to release music on Sugar Hill Records and later Tuff City, while the Treacherous Three released a string of classic and influential records on Enjoy including "At The Party," "The Body Rock," "Feel The Heartbeat" and "Put The Boogie In Your Body" — all produced by Pumpkin. 1980's, "The Body Rock" is perhaps more popular and important today than it was when it was released more than four decades ago. It was the first Rap record to contain rock guitars which was a departure from the Disco heavy Rap records which had been released until that point.

"Body Rock" has been sampled almost two dozen times with the most popular being 1997's "Honey" by Mariah Carey, produced by Diddy. L.A. Sunshine says that "Body Rock" opened new doors for them.

"We knew that we were doing something that hadn't been done," he remembers. "The cat playin' guitar, we let him go where he was goin'. It didn't sound like Rap, and because of that record we did shows with The Clash and we played the Mud Club and other places that we would have never played."

Sugar Hill Records

In 1982, The Treacherous 3 signed to Sugar Hill Records and released "Yes We Can Can," 'Whip It', "Turning You On," "Action," '"Santa's Rap" and "Gotta Rock." "Santa's Rap," which was titled "Xmas Rap" on the Sugar Hill release, was also included in the movie and soundtrack for Beat Street, and it was the introduction to Doug E. Fresh for much of the world outside of New York's boroughs.

"Yes We Can" was an interpolation of the popular Pointer Sisters hit that is also a foundational Hip-Hop breakbeat. The song was also the first Treacherous Three record to tackle social commentary, specifically Reagan era policies and their effects on urban America. "Whip It" was the group's remake of the Dazz Band's 1982 smash "Let It Whip". Kool Moe Dee explained an odd pairing on "Whip It" to The Foundation.

"Sylvia [Robinson, Sugar Hill CEO and founder] put Phillipe Wynn of The Spinners on the bridge of the record," he remembers. He was signed to the label and released an album and a few singles. "We were against it, but she kept saying how no one believed that 'Rappers Delight' and 'The Message' would work, but she knew and she was right. She also asked me to 'do that fast rap thing' at the beginning of the song which I was also against, because it was really old and played out by '82."

By 1985, Sugar Hill Records had merged with MCA in a distribution deal, and they would be closing their doors soon. The house band had left the label and the Treacherous Three's last self produced recording for the label, "Gotta Rock/Turn it Up" would be pivotal for both the group and especially Moe Dee. "Gotta Rock" was a declaration of sorts, especially Kool Moe Dee's verse. Moe spit: "You ducks keep imitatin' me/ 50 percent of rappers are clones of Moe Dee/tryna use big words so they can seem smarter/ deepen their voices so they can rock harder/ but to be a connoisseur there's much more to it
and outside of me not many can do it/ so imitation rappers that I've proven your soft/ why don't you give me a break and just get off/because no matter how hard you try you'll see/ although you might be cool, you're not Moe Dee/because it's gettin' out of hand and I can't ignore it/in '85 I'm not going for it!"

Kool Moe Dee was reminding the class of '85 that his DNA flowed through their styles. Ironically, the song that ushered in the "big word" style that Moe referred to was 1984's "It's Yours" by T La Rock, written by his younger brother Special K. K told The Foundation in 2000 that he wasn't allowed to record the song for Arthur Baker's Streetwise Records and Rick Rubin's newly formed Def Jam production company because he was still contractually bound to Sugar Hill Records.

"I was still with Sugar Hill, so I wrote it and gave it to my big brother T La Rock," he says.

"Gotta Rock" is a master class in lyricism and Special K's abstract, nonlinear verse remains one of the best from that time period and beyond.

Because of internal issues between group members and dissatisfaction with Sugar Hill Records, Moe Dee is the only member to appear on "Turn It Up." This song effectively launched his solo career, which would include hits such as "Go See The Doctor," "Do You Know That Time It Is," "Wild Wild West," "How Ya Like me Now," "Rise N' Shine" and "They Want Money." The group would reunite in '94 on their DJ Easy Lee's label with Old School Flava, and the group still performs at reunions on The Hill.

Their imprint and influence within Rap music still looms large as the group that influenced the influencers.