Verse One
At this very moment, Caramel lounge inside the Bellagio might be the ass-shaking capital of the world. As the short hand slides toward midnight, hundreds of Thursday-night revelers are ready to party at the world-famous Light nightclub down the hall. Warm-up spot for tonight’s festivities, Caramel is about the size of a two-bedroom condo. It’s dark in here; illumination comes from candles and low-watt light bulbs, making it a prime atmosphere for people-watching—women sipping drinks, men downing glass after bottle after glass of the liquid courage they’ll need to get their Casanova on.
In the southeast corner, the ass-shaking is fiercest, nearly a dozen girls moving to the beat of Top-40 hip-hop songs. They’re led by a trio doing something called “the booty clap.” Equal parts dance move and strip-club come-on, it’s a feat of gluteal dexterity in which women with generous derrieres make their butt cheeks clap. To the sounds of 50 Cent’s “It’s Your Birthday,” a peach-skinned brunette in skimpy shorts demonstrates: knees bent, feet slightly wider than shoulder width, hands on thighs and gently rocking her pelvis. Alluring, though the expression on her face is strained—like she’s trying to squeeze out a fart.
It’s time to go to Light, so the ass-shaking brigade—some of whom top out at six-feet in heels—congregate around a 5’7”-ish white guy built like a high-school cornerback and possessed of a bald, sorta ovular head that, under Caramel’s dark lighting, looks perfectly spherical, almost like a basketball. If dressing to the nines is synonymous with style, tonight he’s in the two-to-three range: black jeans, black athletic kicks and a dark, monogrammed T-shirt hidden under a dinner jacket your dad might wear. He sports expensive-looking shades but no wrist or neck bling and carries a serious, about-business look most of the time. Life of the party, he isn’t. But he is somebody.
Every few minutes, important-looking guys dap him up and pin-up-worthy girls give him love: “Hey Shecky!” Bouncers at Light wave him and his crew through the VIP ropes, no problem. Watching him in action, he doesn’t schmooze as much as direct, his vibe a mix of hustler and Hefner: “I’m not really a club guy. But it’s a necessary part of my business.”
For nearly 20 years, Jonathan Shecter’s business has revolved around hip-hop. It’s a business that, he says, is three-pronged but global in scope. Prong 1: booking the world’s greatest DJs in Vegas nightclubs. Prong 2: producing music with the likes of hip-hop icon DJ Premier. And Prong 3: the most important, most lucrative and most Hefneresque of them all—expanding an empire built on T&A. Through his Game Enterprises (offices in Vegas and New York), Shecter has sold 500,000 copies (at $20 a pop) of his soft porn Hip-Hop Honeys and Game Girls DVDs. No doubt late-night viewers of BET and MTV have seen the commercials: lusty women of varying ethnicities in come-hither poses urging you to cop a DVD. In his mind’s eye, the DVDs are only the beginning. Cable, cell phones, the Internet, direct mail—he plans to conquer it all.
"Photo by: Benjamen Purvis"
Okay, so far this is quite the general song-and-dance—white guy makes mint off of hip-hop, which Rick Rubin did by forming Def Jam, and off of women (see: Hefner). But it’s not the second act either Shecter, or anyone familiar with him, figured would follow his inimitable first: Back in 1988, when hip-hop was exploding as a pop-cultural force—Public Enemy’s anti-government screeds, KRS-One’s philosophical musings, Eazy-E’s gangster tales—Shecter and fellow Harvard student David Mays turned the listenership of their Street Beat show on Harvard’s WHRB radio station into readers of a newsletter distributed from their dorm room. The newsletter eventually morphed into The Source, which would become the most influential hip-hop magazine in the world. The Source revolutionized hip-hop journalism, gave it resonance on newsstands and in the American psyche. At its height, it was known as the “Bible of Hip-Hop” and had an estimated 8 million subscribers worldwide.
Modeled on Rolling Stone, it was the place for music criticism and critical insight into the hip-hop culture; where you could read about the pernicious effects of mandatory minimum drug sentences or about why you should hate the new Vanilla Ice album. The music rating system (5 mics = classic) was highly popular—and controversial. It was doted on by fan and artist alike, a good review the musical equivalent of a Siskel & Ebert thumbs up.
Shecter at a Light event with Nani Nicole and Francine Dee.
Look at today’s crop of top hip-hop magazines (Murder Dog, XXL) and websites (allhiphop.com) and you’ll see innovations begat by The Source—uncovering unsigned talent (the mag’s unmatched track record includes Notorious B.I.G., DMX and Eminem), profiling newcomers, highlighting hip-hop in small towns, even space dedicated to gossip. Shecter ran the magazine for its first 60 issues, through 1994, arguably the height of its prowess and unquestionably the era in which hip-hop became a global phenomenon. In effect, he was editor-in-chief of a cultural movement.
In a 2005 interview for hiphopdx.com, former Source music editor Reginald Dennis recalled the magazine’s importance: “I am not exaggerating when I say that in that moment the course of my life was forever altered. This was the first time that a magazine ever spoke to me in a meaningful way. I had read a lot of good writing on hip-hop—I was always looking through the Village Voice and Spin—and sometimes even Word Up and Fresh, but The Source was the only place where the music and culture were being discussed in the proper context and with the proper enthusiasm. And it just got better.
“1990 to 1994 was the zenith of The Source. Back then, it was felt that if The Source didn’t cover certain things, then perhaps no one else would either. So that was the biggest influence the magazine had. We were in a position to sell water to people who were dying of thirst in the desert. The circulation was low in those days, maybe 40,000 copies printed. If you weren’t at the record store when it arrived, then maybe you didn’t get a copy that month. There were riots in prisons all across the country because inmates were literally fighting over copies of the magazine. There were fist fights in record stores when cats simultaneously tried to grab the last copy on the rack.”
Which is why it’s strange that this child of old-school, ’80s-era rap, bred on Run-DMC and LL Cool J, possessed of encyclopedic recall of classic hip-hop tunes and friends with cultural luminaries such as KRS-One, is currently making his bones off of boners.
Verse Two
Game Las Vegas’ headquarters are on the second floor of a strip mall directly across the street from UNLV’s continually expanding student union. Unlike most of the businesses in the strip mall, Game doesn’t have any windows, and the door is black and made of metal, not transparent glass. You have to knock to get in.
The operation is small. The front area features a desk, boxes and Game-related ephemera everywhere. A few more steps and you’re in a room with computer equipment and recording gear. Walk out and to the left and you’re in a lounge area with three couches, a TV, stereo gear. And there’s ass all around—in the form of a small stock of the five-set series of Hip-Hop Honeys DVDs and posters of the busty beauties. A petite Asian girl, who looks similar to one of the ethnic beauties on the DVDs, sits in on the interview.
Shecter (he prefers Shecky; if you slip up, he’ll quickly and sharply, though not angrily, correct you) moved to Vegas shortly after 9/11. He lived several blocks away, watched the towers fall, choked on the polluted air and felt the same paralyzing fear that gripped the country. Though hurt is evident in his voice, connecting the attacks to what he’s doing now comes off as reaching.
It’d been seven years since he left The Source over disenchantment with its direction and his fraying friendship with Mays. That began with Mays taking editorial license with stories and ended when a large chunk of the staff walked out in 1994, angry that Mays inserted a complimentary article on his friends, Boston-based Almighty RSO. Shecky, 38, prefers not to dote on his magazine days, nor to comment on the sad state of affairs since his departure—lawsuits, allegations of violence and sexual harassment, bankruptcy.
Leaving The Source hurt but unbowed, he hoped to make it as a producer and label-owner. Of the 16 independent records produced through Game Recordings, two are notable in hindsight because the rappers would become superstars. Bad Meets Evil paired him with a young Marshall Mathers, whom the world now knows Eminem. He also produced a track for a young Curtis Jackson, later 50 Cent.
With no platinum plaques to show for it, it was time to reassess. Recreating The Source wasn’t an option, so he revisited an idea he’d had in the late ’90s: a Playboy magazine for the hip-hop set. But he wasn’t sure about the market; magazines aren’t cheap pursuits. Something with DVDs seemed like a prudent move. They are easy to mass produce, mass market and mass sell. Bingo. Soft-porn DVDs! Add original music from such hip-hop luminaries as the Alchemist and guest appearances by folks like Redman and Method Man and he could marry the music with its eternal muse. Shecky envisioned high-quality DVD productions—lots of cleavage and suggestive dancing but absolutely no money shots.
“We spend lots of time making these DVDs, probably too much time, but that’s what makes them quality,” he says. He pops in the DVD with Red and Meth. The rappers are having a good time around the honeys. And he’s right: It’s no more graphic than a striptease at Spearmint Rhino.
“I draw the line at porn,” he says, trying but failing to sound principled.
Verse Three
The balcony of Shecter’s 28th-floor loft at Panorama Towers allows a bird’s-eye perch of the massive cultural undertaking that is MGM Mirage’s $7 billion Project CityCenter. To him, it’s an “inspirational” view; the Strip, he says, is like an ocean of endless activity, something “you can stare at forever.” Inside, the trappings are modernist—a low-slung couch next to a low-slung coffee table, sleek black appliances that look new.
Here, away from the office and hours before it’s time for him to hit the clubs, Shecky reverts to Jonathan Shecter, the kid born in Philly to Jewish parents (dad’s a lawyer) who scrimped and saved to send their son to Harvard (bachelor’s in English) but never understood his fascination with hip-hop, the music from the other side of the tracks. Never understood what was so intoxicating about Sugar Hill’s Gang’s 1979 classic “Rapper’s Delight” and 1982’s “Planet Rock” from Afrika Bambaataa.
Shecter is more introspective than Shecky, and more expressive. Short answers become dissertations, his Harvard brain flipping a question every which way but loose. Guy’s got a memory like an elephant, too. Helpful in storing reams of rap lyrics and equipped with near-total recall of conversations. If he can’t call you about something, he’ll send a text. Dude’s an obsessive e-mailer, PDA always at the ready for him to thumb out random thoughts, things he forgot to say, updates on what he’s doing, clarifications on what he’s meant or, in this case, misgivings about a reporter’s approach to his profile. He’s “uneasy” about packaging it as an I-came-to-Vegas-to-start-over tale. Nor, he says, should too much ink be spilled on his Source days.
Okay on the first one; but his magazine experience makes Shecter who he is.
Without The Source, he’s no different from other white guys for whom hip-hop was the soundtrack of their adolescence and young adulthood. Likely he wasn’t the only white kid who broke his neck to catch vaunted New York acts when they came to Philly. Who wanted to have a career in black radio, which he did as a teenager working at Power 99 in Philadelphia in 1985. Who wanted to rap. Who moved in hip-hop circles in his town: He knew Will Smith before he was the Fresh Prince.
“That [The Source] was 12 years ago,” he says.
Flash back to 1988, his freshman year at Harvard. He and Mays, who was from Washington, D.C., Shecky recalls, are into go-go music. They live in the same dorm and bond over their love of urban culture. They land a radio show, which gives rise to a spunky newsletter, The Source, home to music critique and criticism. Landing an interview with LL Cool J marks its arrival. The newsletter is part and parcel of their plan to inject urban culture into lily-white Harvard.
He relates a tale of luring his idol, KRS-One, for a speaking engagement. Picture the image for a second: white Jewish guy worships hip-hop’s premier racial thinker and gets him to come to campus. Fear coursed the campus, Shecter says. “People were worried about violence and negative recriminations from having a rapper on campus.”
When a black student group balked at the idea, he simply won the support of a group of blacks in the Kennedy School of Government’s graduate school. The speech was packed. Late but well worth the wait, KRS-One counseled and cajoled. When one lady asked if it was acceptable for two white boys to be running a hip-hop magazine, Shecky says KRS shot back, then why aren’t you doing it?
Says Shecter, whose unofficial senior thesis at Harvard was “1980 to 1990: The Decade In Rap”:
“I’ve always felt comfortable being white in a black art form. I watched the whole ‘wigger’ phenomenon [whites acting ‘black’] come about. I actually enjoy [VH1’s] The White Rapper Show because these white rappers who want to blow are forced to learn the history of hip-hop from its pioneers and to respect the art form, not to bastardize it.”
Perfect set-up for the big question. Doesn’t Hip Hop Honeys denigrate the culture you helped build?
Shecter, when he’s in deep thought, shifts around. His head and hands seem tied together by strings, as if body movements help drive home a point. He talks in a stream-of-consciousness flow that, though hard to follow, eventually meanders back to the question. This is the only time the supremely confident Shecter appears unsure of himself. Five minutes pass before the gist of a response spills out. Final answer: What he’s doing isn’t going to score points with feminists, but he’s not taking advantage of the women. Through the DVDS, heretofore unknown females—drop-dead gorgeous but nameless to the masses—are given voices, even careers. One woman’s exploitation is another woman’s empowerment.
Francine Dee is an Asian beauty whose lithe frame recalls features of a department-store mannequin and whom Shecky discovered working as a model. Her resume includes videos for Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent and an appearance in the horribly acted Soul Plane. She says the Hip-Hop Honeys DVDs have been a great career boost.
“We met in Beverly Hills; Jon told me about his past at The Source, and he gave me the first DVD. His work was self-explanatory; he wanted to keep it sexy,” says Dee, who grew up in Los Angeles listening to Naughty By Nature, Dr. Dre, Tupac. “Since I’d been in Playboy, nudity was not a concern. The videos were done in a tasteful manner. The shoots are very professional. I’ve met a lot of people in the industry who are full of hot air, but Jon is a quality individual. He’s aware that keeping to hip-hop’s roots is important. But he also is a businessman. The DVDs are lucrative for him and a lucrative way for me to build our brands. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.”
Verse Four
His government name is Christopher Martin, but to music fans he’s the incomparable DJ Premier or Premo, one the greatest talents to ever step behind a turntable. Famed for two-bar breaks and scratching in choruses, the Houston native has been as instrumental as any turntablist in defining New York’s hip-hop sound, much of it while teamed up with Guru from Gang Starr. In addition to blessing the likes of Jay-Z and Common, he’s collabo’d with non-hip-hoppers such as Branford Marsalis, Christina Aguilera, Craig David and Limp Bizkit.
Premo was in Texas when The Source starting blowing up. What Premo liked about The Source was its breadth of coverage—articles on how the Rockefeller drug laws impacted the urban culture alongside coverage of a fire-breathing underground rapper who could be the next big thing. Following the Beastie Boys’ success, he says, hip-hop fans were checking the skills of other white acts. So he bought a record from two Harvard cats known as BMOC (Big Men on Campus), “to see if it had substance.
“I used to pick on Jon about BMOC,” Premo says over the phone from New York. “BMOC had Harvard pullovers and Harvard baseball hats pulled down on their heads. They weren’t really good, but they still represented hip-hop, knew their history and had scratching and cutting on the album. Shec had the best lyrics. Ask him to spit a few verses.” His needling also extends to the Shecky persona—making fun of the Shecky-mobile, his Cadillac with jet-black tint, and I’m-too-sexy-for-my-shirt fashion attitude.
Premo sees symbiosis, not hypocrisy, in his friend’s new life peddling sexy DVDs: “Hip-hoppers love porn and sports,” he says
It was just damn smart to come to a hip city like Vegas, Premo says, and introduce world-class DJs to a fertile nightclub scene. Shecky is credited with luring DJ A.M., Mark Ronson and Stretch Armstrong to Vegas.
Not only that, says Jake Saady, marketing director of the Light Group, one of the nation’s premier nightclub operators, but Shecky also brings in the freshest DJ talent from all over the country, helping catapult careers. Spinning at the Bellagio, he says, is a big deal for an up-and-comer. Shecky’s industry contacts give local clubs a leg up on fierce competition from London and Amsterdam: “He’s definitely someone that you want on your side—plus he’s always surrounded by beautiful women.”
Co-owner of hiphopsite.com, radio personality and nightclub DJ Warren Peace has grown tight with Shecky over the years. They share similar backgrounds, in that Peace hosted a hip-hop show on KUNV in ’87, and some of the same friends, i.e., Paul Rosenberg, Eminem’s first manager. Peace’s company actually created Em’s first website, thanks to a hook-up by Shecky. So you’ll get no badmouthing from Peace about Shecky’s Hefnerian exploits. People evolve, Peace says. Hip-hop DJs produce rock songs. Graffiti artists show in galleries. What’s he supposed to do, re-create The Source?
“Besides,” Peace says, “it’s more exciting to do something else.”
Verse Five
Premo and Shecky usually play this game when they meet. One will toss out a line from a classic hip-hop song, and the other will have to finish it. “Shecky’s knowledgeable,” Premo says. “Test him.”
Okay. The hip-hop S.A.T. goes down inside Game headquarters.
It’s a like a jungle sometimes ...
Shecky: “... that makes me wonder why I keep from going under ... that’s Grandmaster Flash.”
A purified freestyle ...
Shecky: “... lyrics of fury, my third eye make me shine like jewelry ... that’s Eric B and Rakim.”
I’m your idol, the highest title, numero uno ...
Shecky: “... I’m not a Puerto Rican but I’m speaking to that, you know ... that’s Special Ed’s ‘I Got it Made.’”
When I leave, believe I’m stompin’ ...
Shecky: “... but when I come back, boy, I’m coming straight outta Compton ... that’s ‘Straight Outta Compton’ from N.W.A.”
This one or that one, the white one or the black one ...
Shecky: “... pick the punk and I’ll jump up to attack one ... that’s KRS-One.”
Next is a quick game of match the rapper with the group, which he also aces. For the first time in three meetings there’s no trace of Shecky the hustler or Shecter the overthinking brain. It’s just Jonathan, and he’s having a blast. “This is fun ... keep going.”
The other time Shecter gets going is talking about his collection of old-school memorabilia “About 2000 pieces of vinyl from 1979 to 1994, including some real collector’s edition stuff like the original pressing of Tommy Boy’s ‘The Lessons’ mega-mix, worth probably $1,000, BDP [Boogie Down Productions] third LP test-pressing autographed by KRS and many classics from the early ’80s on Sugarhill, Profile, Tommy Boy, etc.”
Other stuff in storage in New York includes:
“Darryl McDaniels’ [DMC of Run-DMC fame] afro pick with a fist; he handed it to his little sister in Philly, when she visited me at radio station Power 99 in 1985, and Run-DMC were guests that day; photos with legends like Eazy-E, UTFO, Crazy Legs of Rock Steady, Ice Cube, De La Soul and with Three Times Dope in Philly in 1984.
“I got the original T-shirt from Fresh Fest 1 which I attended at the Philly Spectrum in 1984. It was sponsored by Swatch, and the shirt shows a Swatch watch breakdancing [as well as] a great classic poster of Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys performing in Philly in 1988.”
Verse Six
The impossible has occurred. Shecky is speechless. What’s rendered him mute?
He’s been asked to spit a rhyme from his BMOC days.
“No way,” he says.
Premo figured he wouldn’t; too embarrassing.
Bring the conversation back to business and, once again, Shecky’s all talk. Right now, he’s diagramming on Game letterhead the three prongs of his enterprises, along with the next steps he’s taking to build an empire. Prong 1: the sexy DVDs. Content will be repackaged for cell phones, cable, the Internet and direct-mail. Prong 2: the DJ biz. In the works is DVDJ, which is just as it sounds—a DVD full of mashes, mix-ups and sets from top-notch DJ talent. Slap it in, listen and enjoy what Shecky calls “a party to go.” Prong 3: music division. Shecky’s found the next big thing.
And he is sitting on a couch in the Game lounge, all 5’6”, 240 pounds of him. Keith Ruffin (hip-hop moniker: Keith From Up Da Block) is a member of the Broad Street Beefcakes, big, grown-ass men who hype the crowd at Philadelphia 76ers games. More than that, he’s Shecter’s hope for doing in music what he did in magazines; everything The Source was—edgy, provocative, willing to push the envelope and take chances.
Keith From Up Da Block
Ruffin calls himself a “master of the Yankovician Arts.” That’s right, he does parodies. Catch is, his blow “Weird Al” Yankovic’s out of the water. He’s prolific (Shecky plays nearly a dozen tracks) and more professional, never compromising the artist’s original style, flow or cadence for a laugh, something he says Yankovic is prone to. And his stuff is good, often brutally so. Akon’s “Locked Up” is now “Knocked Up,” an ode to Kevin Federline turning Britney Spears into a baby factory. No one’s spared: not rappers, not pop singers, not country artists. He’s good.
At Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, which produced Boyz II Men and The Roots, he battle-rapped and acted in plays by Shakespeare and August Wilson—his acting chops already have Shecky imagining the video possibilities.
After meeting in Philly and listening to his songs, Shecky was a believer. He’s betting Ruffin will conquer YouTube, then the world. He’s so confident that theirs is a 50-50 partnership, unheard of in the world of rapacious hip-hop contracts. Shecky believes in Ruffin’s talent but won’t let business usurp his friendship—their camaraderie as Philadelphians and as students of hip-hop’s old school.
“I wasn’t going to get back into music unless I found someone special,” says Shecky, who thinks a Strip show integrating Ruffin, whom he says could be the “Danny Gans of hip-hop,” and his stable of beautiful women, isn’t far-fetched.
Last Verse
There’s a full-on party going on in club Light, and Shecter is in Shecky mode. Smiles only last as long as it takes to greet someone, then it’s back to work. Going to clubs is a necessary part of his business. Having pretty girls around him, shaking their asses, is a necessary part of his business, too.
Following his lead, the girls commandeer a large booth not too far from the music booth, where, he’s proud to announce, a female DJ is cranking out the jams on a computer. When Ruffin shows up, Shecter finally seems happy, as if a friend has arrived.
Not that he’s faking the relationships with the girls who bolster his aura or the nightlife personnel whose venues he’s helped to make more popular—all are valuable and worthwhile. But he’s different around Ruffin, more at ease. He knows just as many of the rap lyrics at Shecky. They’re business partners who could pass as lifelong friends.
So Shecter heads outside, grabs Ruffin, and they return to the club, the bouncers waving them on in, no problem.