Serch actually knew them before I did and then through the affiliation with our dancers we just started hanging out with them. Subroc at the time wasn’t even rhyming, he just had his drum machine and was programming beats. Doom ( Zev Love X) and Subroc were very young at the time when we first started out, and then they were doing their own material and writing. “Well, our dancers Ahmed and Otis, who were also known as Thing 1 and Thing 2, they were from Long Beach, New York and were all down together in the Get Yours Posse with KMD. What was 3rd Bass’s connection with KMD at the time you were recording “The Cactus Album”? I mean, there weren’t too many people who looked at Hammer as being a legitimate artist at the time anyway.” So that really came out of our respect for Run DMC and was our way of saying that you couldn’t just come out and talk s**t about your founding fathers and be in the position that Hammer was in. We told Lionel Martin to get us a big hammer and that we were going to have Run DMC kick the hammer down (laughs). Now, this was very close to the time when we were recording the “Gas Face” video, so Russell had told us that all of them were going to come to the video, but actually only DMC and Jam Master Jay got out there. But our beef with Hammer, aside from when Serch had that little altercation with him at the celebrity basketball game dance contest, was that Hammer had actually come in and totally dissed Run DMC at one point. I know it was his brother Louis who was the one who called-up Def Jam just flipping out when the record came out. Then to top it off they said that Serch said it, so Serch ended-up taking more of the heat for that when I was actually the one who said it. But Hammer’s brother took that and just went nuts with it. It really all came from the song “The Cactus” where I had thrown out the line, ‘The Cactus turned Hammer’s mutha out…’ Obviously I wasn’t talking specifically about Hammer’s mother it was just a play on words based on the title of his single. So it was definitely something the record company weren’t taking lightly. We had security who had worked with N.W.A. We definitely met with him out there and talked to him at the time. “From everything that we were told it was serious and was apparently real because we had to go through some channels with Russell with some people that he knew like Mike Concepcion who was like a kingpin out on the West Coast. How seriously did you take that particular situation at the time? The album will always be remembered for the beef between 3rd Bass and MC Hammer which culminated with a hit being put out on the group when you were touring on the West Coast. I think he dropped us off a tape with the beat first and then once we heard it we were just like, ‘Let’s go with that one.’ I mean, the album version was really just like an album track, but that remix really turned it into a single musically. ![]() I mean, we were cool with Marley Marl as it was, so to have grown-up listening to his radio shows and then have him want to remix our music, that was just a no-brainer. ![]() ![]() I remember when we had different producers who were presenting us with ideas and then we heard that one. “Of all the remixes that were done off that album, that was actually my favourite. One of my favourite tracks off the album was “Product Of The Environment” but the Marley Marl remix that was released just took that record to a completely different place in terms of its sound and mood… So you couldn’t even compare where we were at then to where we ended-up. I mean, to put it in perspective, when Slick Rick’s first album came out in 1988 there would be promo copies up at Def Jam, and Serch and I used to steal those and sell them on the corner for ten bucks so we could buy pizza from this place that used to be right next to the label offices. We were just hoping that someone would pay us to let us make music, so to go gold was a massive achievement. “It definitely felt like we’d accomplished everything we wanted to when we went into the studio and even way beyond that. How did it feel to see “The Cactus Album” go gold approximately just six months after it was released in 1989? ![]() In this third part of my in-depth interview with Pete Nice, the former 3rd Bass member discusses recording the group’s two classic albums, beef with MC Hammer and almost starring in one of Spike Lee’s most iconic movies – check Part One and Part Two.
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