Music with balls! That’s what I call Mantronix’s brand of hardcore Hip Hop and I have yet to hear a music that sounds more virile and violent but oh so clean and perfect. The ultimate test being girls and no girl in the world could stand the killing sound of the two first albums of Mantronix or the incredible drumtracks of « Johnny the Fox » with tricky tee and « Back to burn » with t la rock. Compared to Mantronix, the so called gangster rappers of today sound like crooners for girlies. I discovered the music of Mantronix back in 1987 when I was a student in Paris, my brother and I were heavily into rap and I had just acquired some drum machines (YAMAHA RX5, ALESIS HR-16 and most of all the Sequential Studio 440) and a sampler (AKAI S900). Mantronix was touring Europe promoting their second LP for Sleeping Bag Recordings and in June of 1987 they came to Paris for a unique concert. Needless to say, my brother and I were in the front row cheering like crazy and reciting the lyrics to all the songs to the amazement of MC Tee and Mantronik who did an encore of fresh is the word specially at my request. Then we met them back stage and quickly became friends. Inspired by this encounter, a few months later I was in a studio in Paris recording an LP of my own music with the group I had created THE DMX BOYS, named after the legendary German drum machine OBERHEIM DMX (the first and most powerful drum machine ever used by rap groups). A year later I was in New York sitting with Kurtis El Khaleel in the basement of his studio at 33 Bond Street Down Town Manhattan giving him a copy of my album which he inspired and having autograph all of my collection of his records. But this is another story…

Kurtis Mantronik was born. Kurtis EL Kahleel on Saturday 4 September 1965, in Jamaica, West Indies, of a Syrian father and Jamaican mother, he then moved to Canada at the age of seven, then New York as a teenager. Mantronik is the creative force behind MANTRONIX the New York-based hip hop innovators, a multi-instrumental talent whose knowledge of electronics is instrumental to the band's sound. That sound, Electro rap in its purest form, as suggested by the band's name or "avant-garde" hip-hop as he once told me, was highly popular in the mid-80s. Kahleel's use of samplers and drum machines proved pivotal to the genre's development, not least on tracks like Music Madness, which used a snatch of Stone Fox Chase by Area Code 615 (better known in the British as the theme to The Old Grey Whistle Test). Indeed, the raps of MC Tee (born. Touré Embden) often seemed incidental to the formula. The duo met at Manhattan's Downtown Record Store in 1985, where Mantronik was mixing records behind the turntables and introducing customers to new releases. A few weeks later, they made a demo tape and started looking for a label. Soon afterwards, William Socolov, the astute founder of indépendant label Sleeping Bag Records, was in the store and was sufficiently impressed with the demo tape Mantronik played him to offer a deal. The group's first single, 1985's Fresh Is Word, was a huge street and dancefloor hit, as was their production of Tricky Tee's Johnny The Fox. In late 1985 they released their first album, the adventurous MANTRONIX, which included the hit singles Bassline and Ladies, and took the marriage of street rhyme and electronic studio wizardry to new heights. Mantronix further built their reputation with their production of Joyce Sims' All And All and 12.41's Success IsThe Word, before going on to record their second album, the competent but relatively disappointing MUSIC MADNESS. The duo were one of the most popular acts at the historic british Fresh hip hop festival at London's Wembley Arena in the summer of 1986, but were dropped by Sleeping Bag a year later. Mantronix appeared to have run out of fresh ideas and had been overtaken by a new generation of rappers/studio maestros. In the late '80s MC Tee (Toure Embden) signed up to the US Air Force, to be replaced by two stand-in rappers, Bryce Luvah (born in 1970 and cousin of LL Cool J) and DJ Dee (born in 1969 and Mantronik's cousin). They did hit the british charts with THIS SHOULD MOVE YA's promotional single, Got To Have Your Love. The latter featured the vocal sheen of Wondress, while the attendant album featured a cover of Ian Dury And The Blockheads'Sex And Drugs And Rock 'n Roll. The distinctive Mantronix bass lines were still inplace, though by now Kahleel was branching The out into soul and R&B horizons. Possibly their best material in this format is 1991's THE INCREDIBLE SOUND MACHINE, which saw the introduction of singer Jade Trini. Kahleel continues to produce for others, notably English vocalist Mica Paris.

Mantronix always were among the most musically innovative and rhythmically accomplished of the hip hop crew, and their raps among the least clichéd. "In Full Effect"their third album, confirmed that state of affairs. In fact, their scope had expanded, if anything, to include sampled big band swing and treated rock guitar riffs. Mantronix's big problem remains, as ever, the production of hit single and without a hit that can be pushed by a video all their musical adventurousness gets left in the shade, and with only Simple Simon(You Gotta Regard) approaching the pop jauntiness of their near-hits Who Is It? and Scream, the sidelines is, frustratingly, where Mantronix look destined to remain. Of course real fans like it that way, for it confirms that this music is not commercial but way to "avant-garde" like kurtis himself likes to call it.

Personally, I am convinced that Mantronik's relentless search for the perfect beat will one day be recognized as the greatest work ever produced in the 80’s and that was something really special in the world hip Hop which nowadays dominates popular music. When that day comes they will all turn to guys like me and Cheeba and start begging for our original vinyls.