JVC Force | |
---|---|
Origin | Islip, Long Island, New York |
Genres | East Coast hip hop |
Years active | 1987–1993 |
Labels | B-Boy Idlers/Warlock Records Big Beat/Atlantic Records |
Members | AJ Rok B-Luv DJ Curt Cazal |
JVC Force (also rendered J.V.C. F.O.R.C.E) was an American hip hop group from Islip, New York.
Composed of DJ Curt Cazal (Curtis Andre Small) and the emcees AJ Rok (AJ Woodson) and B-Luv (William Taylor), JVC Force is best known for the single "Strong Island," which became an underground hit during the 1980s. [1]
JVC Force is a backronym standing for "Justified by Virtue of Creativity For Obvious Reasons Concerning Entertainment". [2] According to Woodson, "the letters didn't actually stand for anything in the beginning. JVC was the name of Curt's crew I believe. B-Boy thought we might get sued by JVC Electronics so our first release has the named spelled J.V.C. F.O.R.C.E." [3]
They were signed by B-Boy Records in 1987 [4] and released their first album Doin' Damage in 1988. [5] After Force Field was released in 1990 on Warlock Records, the group signed with Big Beat Records but broke up after the release of the single “Big Trax” in 1992, leaving a third album unreleased. [4]
Group member Curt Cazal remained prominent as a DJ and producer releasing tracks with many artists including Keith Murray (notably on his 1992 debut 12" appearing as “Keefy Keef”), M.O.P., Tony Touch and Boot Camp Clik. In 1994, Curt Cazal joined with rapper Q-Ball to form the group Qball & Curt Cazal, a.k.a. QNC.
Since the 1990s, Curt Cazal and QNC have also collaborated frequently with artists; Aim, Rae & Christian and released music on Grand Central Records.
Group member AJ Rok, became a freelance writer whose byline has appeared in several print publications and online sites including The Source, Vibe, the Village Voice, Upscale, Sonicnet.com, Launch.com, Rolling Out Newspaper, Daily Challenge Newspaper, Spiritual Minded Magazine, Word Up! Magazine, On The Go Magazine and several others.
In 2013, Chopped Herring Records officially archived JVC Force's unreleased third album (and other previously unreleased tracks, including demos and instrumentals) and released “The 1992-1993 Unreleased EP” and in 2014, The 1987-1993 Unreleased EP.
In 2014, AJ Woodson along with Damon K. Jones started Black Westchester Magazine, an African American Online News Magazine. AJ Woodson is now a Journalism Fellow of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and has released several books.
Lorenzo Jerald Patterson, known professionally as MC Ren, is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer from Compton, California. He is the founder and owner of the independent record label Villain Entertainment.
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult is an American electronic industrial rock band originally based in Chicago and founded by Groovie Mann and Buzz McCoy. They became known in the 1980s as pioneers of the industrial music genre – although by the early 1990s they had changed to a more disco-oriented sound – and as a frequent target of censorship groups, including the PMRC, which objected to the band's humorous and satirical references to Satan, Jesus and sex in their song lyrics and stage shows.
Digital Underground is an American alternative hip hop group from Oakland, California. Its lineup changed with each album and tour.
The United States Basketball League (USBL) was a professional men's spring basketball league. The league was formed in 1985 and ceased operations in 2008. The USBL started in 1985 as one of the first basketball leagues to play a late-spring to early-summer schedule. The league quickly became known as a development league for players, with many players moving up to the National Basketball Association (NBA) and many more playing in Europe. In 1996, the league made a stock offering, a rarity among sports leagues. However, in later years, the league declined as rival leagues appeared and USBL had a tougher time replacing teams that folded. In the last two seasons, the league was mainly a midwestern league, with teams mainly in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. After speculation that the USBL might fold after the 2007 season, the league announced that it would sit out the 2008 season and consider its options for the future. In January 2010, the league expressed hopes to resume play in April 2010. However, no further news has surfaced from the league. The final champions are the Kansas Cagerz, who won the title game on July 1, 2007.
8Ball & MJG is an American hip hop duo from Orange Mound, Memphis, Tennessee. They met at Ridgeway Middle School in 1984. In 1993, the duo released their debut album Comin' Out Hard. They went on to release On the Outside Looking In (1994), On Top of the World (1995), In Our Lifetime (1999), Space Age 4 Eva (2000), Living Legends (2004), Ridin High (2007) and Ten Toes Down (2010).
Onyx is an American hardcore hip hop group from New York City, formed in 1988 by Fredro Starr, Suavé and the late Big DS. Sticky Fingaz joined the group in 1991.
Scorn is an English electronic music project. The group was formed in the early 1990s as a project of former Napalm Death members Mick Harris and Nic Bullen. Bullen left the group in 1995, and the project continued on an essentially solo project for Harris until 1997 when it was stopped. Scorn was relaunched in 2000 until the end of 2011. Harris restarted the project in 2019, but stopped it again in late 2022.
Douglas Arthur Wimbish is an American bassist, primarily known for being a member of rock band Living Colour and funk/dub/hip hop collective Tackhead, and as a session musician with artists such as Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger, Depeche Mode, James Brown, Annie Lennox, Tarja Turunen, and Barrington Levy.
No-Man are an English art pop duo, formed in 1987 as No Man Is an Island (Except the Isle of Man) by singer Tim Bowness and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson. The band has so far produced seven studio albums and a number of singles/outtakes collections (including 2006's career retrospective All the Blue Changes). The band was once lauded as "conceivably the most important English group since The Smiths" by Melody Maker music newspaper, and a 2017 article of Drowned in Sound described them as "probably the most underrated band of the last 25 years".
P.M. Dawn is an American hip hop and R&B act that formed in 1988 by the brothers Attrell Cordes and Jarrett Cordes in Jersey City, New Jersey. They earned significant crossover success in the early 1990s with music that merged hip hop, older soul, and more pop-oriented urban R&B.
Breakfast Club is an American musical group. Their biggest hit single was "Right on Track" (1987), which peaked at No. 7 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song was remixed for a commercial release in a 12" version for dance and club play by John "Jellybean" Benitez and became a top 10 hit on the Billboard Magazine Hot Dance Club Play chart. After 35 years of absence, in 2022 the band reformed and released a new single called "Could We Not Stop Dancing?" followed by "Fantasy Street" in December 2023.
The Beatmasters are an English electronic music group who gained success in the UK in the late 1980s with four top 20 hit singles. They then went on to produce and remix records for other artists, including Pet Shop Boys, Erasure and Marc Almond. The group's string of chart hit singles include "Burn It Up", "Hey DJ! ", "Who's in the House" and "Rok da House". The latter, having been recorded in 1986, is one of the earliest examples of hip house and most likely the first song of the genre. Hip house is a subgenre of house music which features rap vocals performed over a house rhythm track.
The Lox is an American hip hop trio composed of East Coast rappers Sheek Louch, Styles P and Jadakiss. Each hailing from Yonkers, New York, the group formed in 1994 and signed with Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Records two years later to release their debut studio album, Money, Power & Respect (1998). Despite critical and commercial success, the group parted ways with the label in favor of Ruff Ryders Entertainment in 1999, through which they released their similarly successful follow-up, We Are the Streets (2000).
Wreck was an indie rock band formed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1988, and later based in Chicago. After releasing three albums the band split up in the mid-1990s, with singer/guitarist Dean Schlabowske going on to found The Waco Brothers.
Barney Bentall and the Legendary Hearts are a Canadian rock band, based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, that formed in 1980. The band's name was taken from the title of Lou Reed's 1983 album.
The L.A. Dream Team was a hip hop group based in Los Angeles, California, active 1985–1989, 1993, and 1996. The group was founded by Chris "Snake Puppy" Wilson and Rudy Pardee in 1985. They are known for being one of the early hip hop acts on the West Coast and one of the pioneers of the West Coast hip hop scene.
Willie Lidell Townsell is a house-music artist from Chicago, Illinois. He originally released numerous singles on the Trax and D.J. International labels. He released one album, Harmony, on Mercury/PolyGram Records as Lidell Townsell in 1992. Two singles from the album were hits in the US, "Get with U" and "Nu Nu"; the latter featured the duo M.T.F., whose members were singer Martell and emcee Silk E.
B-Boy Records was an American independent hip hop record label formed by Jack Allen and William Kamarra in 1986, and situated at 132nd Street and Cypress Avenue in the Bronx, New York City. Its most notable signing was Boogie Down Productions, and it released Boogie Down Productions' first singles, "South Bronx" (1986) and "The Bridge is Over" (1987), and the group's landmark debut album, Criminal Minded (1987). Other acts that recorded for the label included JVC Force, Cold Crush Brothers, Levi 167 and Jewel T.
Joseph Jack "Severs" Ramsey, better known by his stage name Jah Paul Jo was an American musician, singer and producer best known for creating the novelty band Dread Zeppelin. From 1983 to 1988, Ramsey was the singer/bass player in The Prime Movers. Ramsey was also the owner of independent record label Birdcage Records, which has released albums by Dread Zeppelin, The Prime Movers, Stan Ridgway, Ron Asheton, In Vivo, The Mystery Band and others.
David L. Reece is an American singer who has been active in the heavy metal rock scene professionally since the late 1980s, recording with several bands in diverse genres including Bonfire from January 2015 to July 2016. He is best known for his time with the band Accept, appearing on their 1989 album Eat the Heat.