We live in a golden age of podcasting. In hip-hop there are many great ones, including Ice-T’s Final Level, Peter Rosenberg and Cipha Sounds’s Juan Epstein, Shawn Setaro’s The Cipher and Jeff Weiss and Nocando’s Shots Fired. (Full disclosure: I’ve been a guest on the latter. Also, I still long for the departed Hypemen, featuring Jensen Karp, Jeff Rosenthal and Eric Rosenthal).
But arguably the king of the game is Combat Jack, whose weekly self-titled podcast kicked off in 2010 on an internet radio station, and is now available on iTunes and Soundcloud. The former lawyer from Brooklyn (born Reggie Ossé ) often hosts legends or as he prefers to call them “legacy artists” with at least a decade in the game, often with New York ties (think Damon Dash, Chuck D, and Marley Marl). But he also hosts a variety of folks, including younger rappers such as J Cole and Kevin Gates, and most of the interviews are compelling.
It’s one thing to get great guests but Ossé’s skill is his ability to get amazing stories out of them. He manages to be completely respectful and push boundaries at the same time in order to get guests to open up. The shows sometime go over three hours. If you’ve never heard the podcast, I recommend starting with the Best of 2014 episode, which is highlighted by Boogie Down Productions’s DJ D-Nice’s mournful account of how his crew mate Scott La Rock was gunned down.
Ossé relates so well to his guests because he’s hip-hop to his core. Born and raised in Crown Heights, the same neighborhood where he now lives with his wife and four children, he was a “first wave” hip-hop fan whose early idols were Grandmaster Caz and Melle Mel.
“Those were the first rappers I ever heard, before rap records, on cassettes of live shows that were taking place in the Bronx and Harlem,” he explains.
“Growing up in Brooklyn, that might as well have been from a different coast.” He had his own rap crew, called KTT, or Kings of The Turntable, and he and his friends made their own tapes off of instrumentals. Later graduating from Cornell University and Georgetown Law School, he landed an internship at Def Jam in the late 80s, as a legal intern hired to organize their outstanding agreements.
“I was amazed back then at how shitty the contracts were,” he remembers. “These were platinum rap stars, but it was like, ‘Jeez, this guy got this advance? And this royalty is so paltry.’” He later worked for Damon Dash and then Roc-A-Fella. Since giving up his law practice 11 years ago, he’s worked in a variety of roles, including as a blogger and as the managing editor of The Source.
But it’s on his podcast where he’s truly found his voice. His cast of colleagues have included everyone from Dallas Penn, his hilarious and unpredictable former co-host who departed the show last year, the producer Just Blaze, who was featured for about a year and a half, and Premium Pete, his current co-host. But while they’re all pros, it’s ultimately Ossé who makes the show hum. He evokes the sounds, feelings, flavors, and textures of early New York hip-hop, through the golden era and beyond. Just as important as the music were the fashions, the neighborhoods, and the crews, and on a weekly basis he brings all of it to life.
I asked him for his favorite podcasts he’s ever done, and he gave me six, in no particular order.
Damon Dash: Part One
“This is the first Dame Dash episode, where he gets into it with Just Blaze. It was a reunion of sorts. I’ve worked with Dame, and I know how difficult it can be. Just Blaze being so successful, he went into it, like, I finally got the upper hand. But this is Dame, and I don’t think anyone on the planet can win an argument against him. What made it such great radio is what they were arguing about was so silly, like Dame zeroing on Just’s so-called faux pas with regards to fashion. This is probably what went on behind closed doors at Roc-a-Fella.”
Damon Dash: Part Two
“Dame is always incredible with our ratings. Plus, I think this was the first time you had [an important] back and forth [debate] that was intra-platform. Funkmaster Flex was going at Dame on the most famous radio station on the planet, Hot 97, and then Dame was going back at him from a podcast. It was historic, and I was just so grateful to be a part of it.”
Touré
“We really got to discuss race, in a passionate and entertaining manner, with Premium Pete. It was great radio, I think. Touré is a polarizing individual, people love him or hate him. It was great to see him in a barbershop setting, blazer unbuttoned, ready to duke it out with the guys. He loves to spar in defending his brand. Premium Pete – here’s this guy of Italian descent, who has had a hard knock life, to some extent – talking to a guy he thinks is a privileged black guy. And Touré schooled Pete on white privilege in a way he and many of our listeners didn’t know existed.”
The Therapy Episode
“Here we were peeling back the wall, being very transparent about the dysfunction I was having with my team at the time, with Dallas Penn and Premium Pete and Just Blaze, figuring out how we get through this and have a brilliant episode at the same time. We brought in a therapist. In the black community, therapy and mental health is not really respected, it’s kind of like an afterthought. But if anyone needs therapy, it’s people who have been through so much for so long.”
DJ D-Nice
“He’s someone who’s been in the game for so long, taking a behind-the-scenes look. His story is just the quintessential story of overcoming obstacles and winning big. The ultimate success story is DJ D-Nice’s.”
Chaz Williams
“Williams is not an entertainer, but someone who grew up in the 60s and realized, as a black man, that institutional racism would prevent him from living the life he deserved. From a young age, he became a genius at robbing banks, and became one of the most famous bank robbers in the US. He became an expert at escaping from prison. Who does that? Later he learned the legal system and realized there were a lot of loopholes in his case, and whittled down his time. Upon his release, he was one of the first guys to manage 50 Cent and Foxy Brown. If it weren’t for institutionalized racism, how brilliant would this guy be? He might have developed a cure for cancer.”
