About The Artist

• About the Artist

  

  The Evolution of Icestro (Da Gambler)

  My original rap name was AJ SHINE. Later I used Da Icestro JOE YOUNG and now just ICESTRO (Da Gambler). A picture is worth a thousand words. (see PICS and click on each thumbnail)

  This is an article of a thousand words. (This article was written by Micheal Friedman – the same guy who wrote the Bluff article on my About The Player page ….. as a matter of fact this was the article sent to me for review after he asked to do a story on me about poker players with outside interests ….. However the Bluff article was printed and I’m not sure this story ever made the light of day …… Read the Bluff article and you’ll see how completely different these two different stories are ….. It’s all good …. My blog is so I can write myself )
  
  

       Music producer Joe Simmons has led a life on the front lines of Philadelphia’s hip hop battle -
  grounds. Given a chance to see development of the burgeoning rap music scene from an insider’s
  perspective, this Philadelphia resident played a crucial role in the evolution of Philly’s hip hop
  sound. Shortly after being introduced to the then-fledgling urban sound at block parties in the
  early 1980s around the City of Brotherly Love, Simmons took off on a path that would that would see
  him become a DJ, rapper, producer, and manager of one of the world’s biggest hip hop groups, The Roots. 

       Having first been introduced to hip hop in its infancy through block parties, Simmons readily
  admits rap music was in its infancy stage at the time when he first got into the music at 13.  “Back
  then it was pretty much about the sound crews.  There was the Disco Rat, Grand Masters of Funk, Mount
  Airy Soundstage and the Boom Box Crew, Mixmaster Flash from Norristown, and Grandmaster Nell and MC
  Ceasar to name a few. Everything started with these guys and the block parties they threw. They
  basically created a club outside and would have parties that ran from noon until midnight. People
  would go from party to party over the course of the day. Before the DJs became the focal point of
  these parties, they had bands playing Earth Wind and Fire and Stevie Wonder. It all grew from these
  parties. That was how hip hop in Philly really got started” he said.
  

       Simmons fell in love with the world where the DJ was king. “At this time, it was about the DJs
  instead of the MC. The music was changing so much and these were the first guys to take it to a whole
  new level. This was when DJs were first starting to cut back and forth over records. It was mind -
  blowing because no one was doing it then. Now, people take it for granted, but back then, mixing and
  cutting was an art form. It caught everybody’s attention and they made a big impact on the people
  listening to the sound. It changed the game forever.”

       According to Simmons, it was the DJs, not the MCs who ignited the city’s taste for hip hop.
  “Nobody had heard scratching before this period. It was like finding a new percussion sound. Also,
  the ability for a DJ to keep a break going and have people dancing over a section that they would
  have previously had to wait a few minutes to hear was just insane. In terms of energy, it was like
  a tornado because the DJs could keep rocking the hot parts of a song. Once the MC got into it, the
  intensity would start to peak and parties would just go off.”   After coming face to face with
  Philly’s leading DJs, Simmons decided he wanted in on the action. Fortunately, he happened to live
  close to a local star who was blowing up spots all across town. “One of my friends who I went to
  church with had a brother that became the DJ for Schooly D. We ended up going to a lot of shows
  to see them perform. It was crazy.  That’s when I first got my turntables. I got hooked after that.
  I got lucky due to location I guess,” he said.
  
      Thanks to his connections, Simmons had a first-hand opportunity to see one rap music’s unsung
  heroes in Schooly D., who is credited for breaking early hip hop sounds that would forever change
  the face of the up-and-coming industry. “Schooly D. was the man at the time and he was one of the
  original people that truly influenced hip hop. He was one of the industry’s first real innovators
  and he doesn’t get enough credit for being the pioneer that he was. He was one of the first guys
  to take some money and go the recording studio to lay down tracks. His first track was an
  instrumental record, then he did  “PSK.” On the B-side track, called “Gucci Time,” he used a drum
  machine with a delay.  No one had done that before. Plus he added an echo to the sound. He got a
  lot of recognition from New York for that.” 

       After taking time off from music to pursue an engineering degree at the University of Virginia,
  Simmons started DJing parties again and started feeling a jones for his musical roots. After
  graduating, he moved back to Philly and started working on a radio show at Drexel University that
  would help change the face of the city’s urban music. According to Simmons, there was little love
  for rap music in its early days on the Philadelphia airwaves. “This was in the early ‘90s when rap
  wasn’t mainstream. Radio couldn’t decide whether they were going to accept it or be like the older
  generation and dis it. At the time, Philly’s biggest station Power 99 wouldn’t play hip hop. So we
  started a show on Drexel’s radio station. We started getting a lot of love from the record companies
  and the people in the underground scene. I got so many records, it was ridiculous. At one point my
  mom was like ‘What the hell?’ because I was getting so much mail. We were basically one of the only
  outlets for hip hop in Philly. We started bringing in local talent like The Roots and brought in a
  lot of the local DJs such as Cosmic Kev, Cash Money and Grandmaster Nel.”

       While hip hop struggled in its early stages, the college radio DJs became crucial in the sound’s
  development as commercial radio continued to shut out the format. “College radio was really used for
  breaking rap in the beginning. All of the record reps that we use to deal with would come to the
  college stations before they would try to hit the commercial stations. It was like they were trying
  to follow the path of least resistance. We were doing interviews with people like Gang Star, De La
  Soul and Public Enemy. They all did the college radio shows,” he said.  Originally thinking they
  were only providing music for people like themselves, Simmons and company had no idea they were
  making a bigger impact that would change Philly radio forever. “When we did the show, we really didn’t
  know what we were doing, but it turned out that we were breaking new ground in terms of radio. We had
  some real good performances and we got a lot of love because of that. It was one of the few outlets
  where we could hear the music that we wanted to hear. For a long time, especially in Philadelphia,
  they didn’t want rap music on their air. It created a huge opportunity for us and helped solidify
  the city’s mix-tape scene.” 

       While working at the station, Simmons began hosting local talent nights and he made a number of
  contacts while on the job. One night he ran into a little-known group that would eventually become
  top-selling act, The Roots. “At the time, I was hosting a talent night at a place called The Prince’s
  Lounge on Broadway in Philadelphia. My friend Cosmic Kev and I were there hosting the show. You had to
  see this place; it was such a dive. It was a bar with a little stage in the back that had this little
  drum set on it. Then we saw this kid coming in with an up-right bass. At the time, it was like,
  ‘What the hell?’ We were coming from an era where the music now came from the DJ, sampling, and drum
  machines, so it was completely different.”

       Intrigued by what he was watching, Simmons tried to keep an open mind and was soon rewarded when
  he found that The Roots were more than just a one-trick pony. “We weren’t sure of what to expect. They
  basically started playing A Tribe called Quest-type sounds. The up-right bass was controlling sound
  sonically. Amir (Questlove) was recreating all of the drum beats we heard on record. The first thing
  we noticed was that they were playing what was on the record live and that was unique. After a while,
  we also started noticing that Tariq (Black Thought) had this style where he would go back and forth
  and never stop rapping. They were truly unique,” he said.
  
       Soon after meeting the group and featuring them on his radio show, Simmons fell into the role as
  one of the group’s managers. “Honestly, I wasn’t trying to be their manager. I was trying to do my
  radio show to further my own music career. When I saw them, I didn’t know how I was going to be a
  part of their whole experience, but I knew I wanted in. They were definitely doing something different
  that was way ahead of the curve. They were doing something different form the other hundreds of rap
  shows that just had three MCs and a DJ onstage and they had a crazy energy about them.” 

       Although things were moving forward with The Roots as the band recorded its first album Organix,
  which was good enough to get them a showcase for Geffen that eventually landed the group a seven album
  deal, Simmons quickly grew weary of the life. “The problem for me was that I didn’t want to be on the
  road as much as we were on the road. They did a lot of shows in the beginning, but for me, once the
  show started, I was done working and I was spending my time wanting to do my own projects,” he said.
  According to Simmons, he had lost his appetite for managing hip hop acts. “I would never manage
  anyone else after managing them. It was a clash of a bunch of personalities and egos. At the time,
  I didn’t have the social skills to be a manager. I didn’t know how to stroke artist’s egos, because
  to me, that was a bunch of bullshit. It was a lot of drama. I was living out of a bag on the road,
  which is cool, because it beat working, but I had something else I wanted to do. I wanted to go
  home and make music. I look back on it now and I can definitely say it was a love-hate thing. It was
  fun, but there was drama every day.” 

       After several years of working with the group, Simmons finally decided to call it quits to do
  his own thing. After dropping a single under Joe Young, he decided to give music a rest for a while to
  pursue his interest in professional poker. “I started playing poker after I lost a lot of money in the
  stock market after 9/11. I started worrying about having a second income. I liked the fact that I could
  do my music all week and go down to Atlantic City on the weekend and make money. I also saw a lot of
  similarities between the beginning of hip hop and the beginning of poker’s rise to popularity. I
  didn’t want to miss the boat so for a long time I stopped doing music and just focused on playing
  poker,” he said. 

       Despite playing poker at Borgata Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, Simmons has gotten back
  into the music game. He is currently the working on an album entitled THE SOUNDTRAK TO A GAMBLERS
  MIND.  He is also working with his production group, The Teachers, to write and produce tracks for
  other artists.