Funkmaster Wizard Wiz: Crack It Up.

I recently read a great interview with an eighties Bronx MC known as Funkmaster Wizard Wiz. I knew little to nothing about the dude aside from his affiliation with the Tuff City label, so i thought i'd better do the knowledge and check him out.
What i discovered i loved and i thought it only right to share with our faithful followers, but first here is a section of the interview that most intrigued me:

One of your most well-known tracks was ‘Crack It Up’. What was the story behind that?

At that time when I had wrote that, that was the initial time that the crack epidemic was really getting bad in our communities. It was like a recreational drug at that time, because nobody knew the effect that it would have in the long term. So it was kinda cool to be indulging with it in the beginning when it first came out, but as time went on I started seeing the effects and how it was affecting people I knew and people that was around me. I tried to put it into a record where it was just funky, but the public thought that I was promoting the use of crack. Once I came out with the initial song, they played it on the radio…we’ve got a bunch of phone calls in, banning it from the radio – asking Red Alert how they could play something like that. Because the hook seemed like it was indulging people to use crack After we got that feedback we had to go back in the studio and put, ‘You better not’ in front of the initial hook [‘Crack It Up!’], but by that time the damage had been done. The word was out that this guy was out there promoting this – this wild and crazy guy. [Adding] ‘You better not’ didn’t help save the record at all. I was labeled with that title and was banned off the radio. I believe it was KISS-FM.

Now maybe it's just my interpretation, but after several listens to the song in point i've come to the conclusion that Funkmaster Wizard Wiz was indeed glorifying the use of crack (he actually encourages the overweight to use it in aid of slimming down because its easier than exercise) more than drawing attention to its negative impacts..... And i for one don't mind in the slightest, as a matter of fact i thought this shit was fuckin' slammin. After more than a decade of horrible "Crack is Wack" songs i found it more than refreshing to hear someone buck, what would later become, the status quo (so to speak).
On top of it all there's a more than a million crackheads in the world, which says to me someone must be enjoying the stuff.
Why not Funkmaster Wizard Wiz?!?! Plus this joint is funny as fuck.



If anyone can track this joint down on wax please contact Run Royal, i'd be more than interested in purchasing it.