Mister Cee; Cold Chillin' Records; Warner Brothers

From the personal collection of Mister Cee

Abrams, Jonathan. “A Gumbo of Magnificence: New York City, 1979-1988.” In The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop. New York: Crown, 2022.

Born and raised in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bed-Stuy, Calvin LeBrun—Wallop King, the Finisher, DJ Mister Cee—started his journey into Hip Hop culture when he was a student at Sarah J. Hale high school in Brooklyn with fellow student Antonio Hardy, the future M.C. Big Daddy Kane.

In Jonathan Abram's The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop, Mister Cee reflects on the first meeting between the two future collaborators:

"When I first met Kane, we in [sic] high school, in Brooklyn. He pulled out an old-school ELI mic out hi inside pocket of his leather jacket and was battling the kid. The mic not hooked up to nothing. He just pulled it out of his pocket. I'm like, 'Holy Shit.' (Abrams, 155)."

Growing up in Lafayette Gardens with a DJ uncle and neighbor with in-house turntables, Mister Cee was no stranger to the early rumblings of the nascent genre that would rapidly grow into the art form we know as Hip Hop today. But when a young Kane pulled that mic out of the inner pocket of his white leather jacket in the Sarah J. Hale cafeteria, he knew his own future lay in the Hip Hop scene as well.

Fast-forward to 1988 and Mister Cee is the DJ behind the turntables on Big Daddy Kane's debut, Long Live the Kane on Tyrone Williams' and Len Fichtelberg's Cold Chillin' Records. Long Live the Kane was Cold Chillin's first release following their five-year distribution deal with Warner Brother Records, a deal which lead to the production of the piece on offer here. Featuring both Cold Chillin' Records and Warner Brothers logos, this jacket was presented to Mister Cee and other members of the Big Daddy Kane crew upon the release of Long Live the Kane.

At the start of the 1990s, it would be Mister Cee who would record Notorious B.I.G.'s first demo tape after the young rapper and fellow Bed-Stuy resident came shyly knocking at his door, inquiring about the studio gear he heard Cee might have behind his brownstone doors. Mister Cee would launch Biggie Smalls on air, first at 91.5 WNYE and then at Hot 97, Mister Cee's longtime radio home. Today, Mister Cee is one of Hip Hop's most beloved DJ's and longest running radio hosts—known for his affectionate on-air memorials of Hip Hop's fallen greats, a schtick he started following Biggie's assassination in 1997.