CONVOS: Buckshot on Black Moon, Duck Down, and Building Hip-Hop From the Ground Up
Before Buckshot was an emcee, he was a dancer. Before Duck Down was a label, it was two broke kids in Brooklyn trying to sell 12 inches out of a bag on the corner. That’s the story he sat down and told on this episode of CONVOS, and it’s exactly why we ask every guest the same opening question: when did hip-hop enter your DNA? Was it a song or was it a moment? For Buckshot, it was both, and it started on the floor, not behind the mic.
Buckshot came up as a dancer first, full stop. He was locking and popping years before he ever picked up a mic, pulling influence from the Rock Steady Crew, Shabba-Doo, and the IBM dancers who ran downtown at the time. He kept a cassette of Rakim’s Long Island Blueprint in his pocket radio and studied the culture from the outside in before he ever stepped to a verse.
The shift happened almost by accident. He was moving with a crew where his boy was the emcee and Buckshot handled the choreography, until federal charges took the mic man off the board. Somebody still had to rock the crowd, so Buckshot became the emcee out of necessity, not ambition. That’s also where the name comes from, pulled straight from the streets of Crown Heights before hip-hop ever entered the picture.
Building Black Moon From Scratch
Not long after, Buckshot linked with 5FT through the dance scene, and 5FT put him on to a young producer named Evil Dee. That connection became Black Moon, one of the most influential crews to come out of Brooklyn’s boom-bap era. Buckshot broke down how the group’s name reflected exactly who they were: a set of artists who saw themselves as performers first, acting out different characters and different worlds through the music.
The industry didn’t open the door right away. Black Moon shopped their demo everywhere and got turned down across the board until Hank Shocklee gave them a shot. That relationship turned into an internship, and Buckshot’s first real job in the business was as an A&R coordinator collecting records for the Juice soundtrack, working directly with artists who were already legends to him.
He’s honest about how rough that come-up actually was. When the promo 12 inches for Juice landed, he grabbed a stack and hit the street corner sure he was about to eat off them. He didn’t sell a single one. He tried again with a batch of custom hats. Same result. Zero sold. Buckshot laughs about it now, but he’s clear that those flops taught him more about how people and business actually move than any win could have.
Jump Around, Duck Down, and a Deal Born on Stage
Somewhere in the middle of all that hustle, Buckshot ended up in the background of one of the biggest rap-rock crossover moments of the 90s: House of Pain’s “Jump Around” video, jumping right alongside Everlast. He talked about why that record felt authentic instead of borrowed, and how it opened his eyes to what real cultural crossover looks like when nobody’s cosplaying.
The Duck Down story itself started on a stage he almost didn’t get to perform on. Buckshot and his crew talked their way into one song at a Maria Davis show, tore the roof off with it, and got approached on the spot about a record deal. That’s the chain of events that eventually built Duck Down Records into one of the most respected independent labels in hip-hop.
He also pulled back the curtain on the label’s legendary, chaotic 1996 release party, a night with Biggie and Puffy in the building that turned into a full-blown live-band disaster on stage. Buckshot calls it one of the roughest nights of his career and also one of the most important, because it’s the same blueprint of hip-hop, funk, and live instrumentation he’s returning to on his new project, dropping July 24th. He described it as a tribute to himself and a gift he’s giving to his own catalog.
Still the Architect
From deep cuts off Chemistry to the chemistry between him, Masta Ace, and the rest of the Brooklyn cypher, Buckshot’s run is proof of what staying consistent for over three decades actually looks like. He also gave love to the rapfabulous® takeover weekend he ran across the network, hitting listeners in New York, San Francisco, Orlando, and Pittsburgh in the same broadcast window.
Dancer, emcee, A&R, label founder, architect. Buckshot’s been all of it, and this episode of CONVOS is the full blueprint straight from him.
Follow rapfabulous across all socials including YouTube. And don’t miss our latest CONVOS extended interviews, wherever you listen or watch podcasts.
