Pulp's "Hip-Hop History" series sheds light on the early days of the genre and the integral role it’s played in the Washtenaw County music scene since the 1980s. To get a better idea of what it was like back when hip-hop first emerged, we spoke to four pioneering local DJs—Will “Chill Will” Higgs, Chuck Slay, Scott “DJ Scotty D” Downer, and Jamil “DJ Jammin’ Jay” Powers—about how they got started in the music, some of their favorite memories, and where their creative journeys have taken them.

Will Higgs

In 1978, 10-year-old Will Higgs wanted to become a DJ after seeing a cousin demonstrate his skills.

Rob Millett, aka DJ Robby Rob, taught Higgs his mixing skills and dubbed him “Chill Will,” a moniker that stayed with Higgs and later became his DJ name. It stemmed from Higgs getting hyped up about learning the DJ trade.

“Instead of [being] the kid that wanted the GI Joe with the kung-fu grip, I wanted a turntable and a mixer,” he said.

Higgs’ father soon got him two turntables and a mixer, allowing him to sharpen his DJ techniques alongside Millett.

“I’m right-handed, but I’m really ambidextrous,” he said. “But I do things—in the DJ world it’s called ‘hamster’—backwards to [my cousin] because [with] my right turntable, the crossfader goes left, [and with] my left turntable, the crossfader goes right. Eventually, mixers started coming out where you [could] just flip a switch and make it hamster for you.”

Higgs also tagged along with his uncle Walter Harris to WCBN-FM since Harris knew several DJs at the station. Those early WCBN visits eventually laid the on-air foundation for Higgs, who would later DJ and host the weekly The Prop Shop radio show on Saturday nights starting in 1988.

Meanwhile, Millett showed Higgs how to DJ a party after performing at events in New York.

“He’s the one that took me under his wing as far as showing me the real essence of how they did it in New York,” he said. “He’s a pretty big-name DJ out that way.”

As a teen, Higgs started hanging out at the Nectarine Ballroom on Sunday nights in 1985. He and his cousin carried in crates for The Wizard, aka Jeff Mills, during Mills’ DJ residency there.

“I had a mustache and a little hair on my chin, and they must have assumed I was of age,” Higgs said. “I would … watch him for a little while, and then I would go home because I had to get up for school.”

While attending Huron High School, Higgs DJed at talent shows, middle and high school parties, college gigs, and neighborhood gatherings. He took additional inspiration from The Electrifying Mojo, aka Charles Johnson, who DJed on WJLB-FM and WHYT-FM in Detroit.

After finishing high school, Higgs went to Washtenaw Community College and continued DJing parties around the county and Metro Detroit. He also mentored a younger cousin and showed them how to DJ.

In 1988, he joined several friends to DJ The Prop Shop, which first appeared on WJJX-AM, a former radio station broadcast only to students in U-M’s dorms, and later moved to WCBN-FM.

Higgs’ co-hosts eventually left The Prop Shop, and he became the show’s main host, except for on-air partners Big Rich and DJ Ell in later years.

The show served as Higgs’ primary outlet for playing hip-hop music, especially since there weren’t any designated hip-hop clubs in Ann Arbor.

He also added hip-hop music to his sets while DJing at local clubs and bars in the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s and ‘00s, including The Heidelberg, The Nectarine Ballroom, The Blind Pig, City Limits, Alley Bar, and other spots.

“They really didn’t want hip-hop music in the clubs,” Higgs said. “They thought it would be trouble … so you played the music, which was hip-hop music, but also the danceable techno and all the stuff that they were playing between here and Detroit.

“Most of the students were coming from the Detroit area and around, so they heard what was on the radio. They wanted to party, so you had to play a lot of that.”

Higgs continued to DJ in Washtenaw County and Detroit, including Saint Andrew’s Hall, and traveled throughout the country to do sets. He soon DJed parties and shows with hip-hop artists like A Tribe Called Quest, Eminem, Nas, Brand Nubian, MC Breed, and X Clan.

In subsequent years, Higgs chatted with touring acts like Redman, Method Man, Slum Village, and Common on The Prop Shop before their shows in Ann Arbor and Detroit.

He also featured Ann Arbor acts like Invincible, Athletic Mic League, and Isaac Castor—then known as Gameboi—on the show.

“[Invincible] was a tough kid, but nobody would really give [them] the time to do stuff,” Higgs said. “I would argue for [them], and [they] did [their] thing and [they] tore it up. [They] became one of the best from around here.”

By 2015, Higgs developed multiple sclerosis (MS) and continued to DJ at clubs and parties as well as host The Prop Shop.

However, in early 2020, he discovered he had colon cancer.

“I was still DJing and going around and doing stuff because it wasn’t affecting me, and I was doing what I needed to do,” Higgs said. “It started in March of 2020. I got sick in January and February, and went to the hospital, and then found out I had colon cancer.

“Because COVID was coming and nobody knew what COVID was about, they ended up putting me into the hospital and doing surgery. Once I had the surgery, that upset my MS … and messed me up completely. I was in the hospital for four months.”

While he’s now cancer-free, Higgs still struggles with his legs due to MS and isn’t able to drive. He started DJing The Prop Shop and doing mixes for other radio stations from his home during COVID.

“It’s hard for me to be standing,” said Higgs, who’s done physical therapy to help with his MS. “I end up sitting on this walker and doing what I do. That’s why I’m not out like I used to, because of the medical condition.

“With COVID going around, I had to be careful with doing all the stuff that I was doing and making sure my immune system was [strong]. I wasn’t taking any chances; I still wear my mask because COVID is still out there.”

In November 2023, Higgs celebrated 35 years of hosting The Prop Shop and was honored by Duke Newcomb, Jamall Bufford, MC Kadence, Tru Klassick, Isaac Castor, and DJ Graffiti during a Dojo show with Kool Keith at The Blind Pig.

Chuck Slay

In 1979, Chuck Slay received a stereo as a birthday gift from his parents.

It wasn’t the kind of stereo he initially wanted or needed, but it became a handy piece of training equipment for the aspiring DJ.

“I still tried to make mixes and do parties,” said Slay, who was a Pioneer High School freshman at the time. “I was [later] hired by local DJ Dorian Deaver, who provided a pair of Technics SL-1200 turntables and speakers. I purchased an amp from a local pawn shop, which allowed me to practice in my basement bedroom.”

Those bedroom practice sessions paid off for Slay, who started DJing Ann Arbor area school dances, functions, and corporate parties courtesy of Deaver.

“Once I had the proper equipment, I was known throughout the local area,” he said. “I learned how to not only structure music, but [also] to write and produce my own [music] starting out [by] mixing others.”

While building his reputation as a DJ, Slay sought inspiration from Grandmaster Flash, Jam Master Jay, Afrika Bambaataa, Prince, George Clinton, and James Brown. He also credited his uncle Chris for sparking his interest in music as a child.

“Unknowingly to him, I would borrow his records and use his stereo when I visited my grandmother’s home,” Slay said.

“I broke a few of his needles and blew out speakers on his equipment a lot. One day, he came to me and asked about his speaker being blown. I admitted to him that I was messing with the stereo equipment. Instead of being angry, he encouraged me to continue.”

Slay’s musical journey continued to evolve and prompted him to briefly pick up the mic.

“I had a very short stint as an MC and felt more in tune with the turntables and creating mixtapes, as well as performing at parties,” he said.

“I believe what inspired me to be interested in music was the way it first intertwined known songs, and the street DJs would make a loop from certain parts of the song they were using. To me, that was enough to bring forth my own ideas, as I was also a musician.”

In 1983, Slay had a memorable “performance” at the Ann Arbor Art Fair, where he created an outdoor club on Maynard Street with then-DJ partner Earl Hall.

“We set up across the street from the former McDonald’s and did an entire live mix performance using four turntables,” he said. “There were ‘breakers’ dancing, and before long, everyone was partying. At least for as long as they could before the local AAPD gave Earl and me a five-minute warning to shut down and pack up before being arrested.”

Slay also recalls seeing his uncle Chris in the street fair audience.

“He was cheering me on and smiling away,” he said. “He was good about being there when I had those kinds of moments—whether sports, music, or as a DJ.”

In addition to being a DJ, Slay started experimenting in the recording studio and became a proficient songwriter, instrumentalist, and music producer. He worked with local hip-hop MCs and singers when he had a studio in Ypsilanti on Miles Street.

“This was maybe around 1985 when I worked with bandmates Arzie Hardin and Jacqui Thompson on creating music for local artists, many of them MCs,” Slay said.

“Later, I connected with childhood friend Anthony Larkin, and we formed a production team working out of Icehouse Productions, located at 416 W. Huron St. We moved in about late 1988, and the studio remained open until late 2023.”

During the studio’s heyday, Icehouse Productions became a mainstay for working with the local hip-hop community. Slay and Larkin recorded, produced, and performed on tracks for a lot of the music that came their way.

“We were able to have a few acts signed to major labels … [and] the acts became producers with their own studios,” he said. “I eventually signed with Quincy Jones. Arzie did some work at Bad Boy Records as a producer, and Jacqui became Prince’s manager.”

Despite that success, Slay said he and his peers never got their due from the Ann Arbor community, especially when they were doing their hip-hop and R&B work in the late ‘80s and throughout the ‘90s.

“One example is when I was signed as an artist to Quincy Jones [and his] Qwest Warner label,” Slay said. “I reached out to The Ann Arbor News to see if they would do a story on [the] Icehouse studio and our acts. They would not even return our calls.

“Warner Brothers was going to reach out on our behalf, but we insisted that they don’t. From that point on, we referred to where we were from as the Detroit area. That left a sting with us. We felt it, and I know that a lot of others in the area did, too.”

By 2012, an April 20 article in The Ann Arbor News did mention Slay as a producer. At the time, he was collaborating with the Ypsilanti father-daughter songwriting team, Rickey Harding and Dymond Harding, on a 12-song debut album for then 15-year-old Dymond Harding.

“And the album has been recorded in an unorthodox way,” wrote Tom Perkins in The Ann Arbor News article. “Songs are sent back and forth on the internet via a server on Dropbox. If Slay writes a song or has music that needs vocals, it’s sent to Harding in Ypsilanti, who then records the vocals before sending it back to Washington D.C. via Dropbox.”

Today, Slay is still based in the Washington, D.C. area and maintains ties to the local music community.

“I moved away about 20 years ago,” he said. “I still keep in contact with a few of the DJs and artists. We have spoken about working on projects.”

Scott Downer

While growing up in the Arrowwood Hills Cooperative, Scott Downer, who was only four at the time, remembers his uncle playing records and being a DJ.

His uncle had parties at the family’s townhouse and DJed from 1972 to 1976 at different spots in Ann Arbor, including Tech Hifi.

“This neighborhood—the north side right here—Arrowwood really impacted me as far as going to [day] parties out here in the early days,” Downer said. “There was so much different music I [was] hearing.”

The family’s love of music left a big impression on Downer, aka DJ Scotty D, as a child. By age six, he imagined being a DJ and pretended to have his own radio station.

“I had a little tape recorder and a microphone,” said Downer, who created intro music for his imaginary radio station. “There’s a song by [New Birth] called ‘Dream Merchant,’ and I used to pretend I had records. I used to go into [a family friend’s] basement … and pretend I had my own radio station. The radio station was called WHIP, and I don’t know where it came from.”

As a DJ on WHIP-FM, he mimicked the sounds of a turntable while being “on the air.”

“I was pretending I was speeding it up, and in my head I was singing, ‘Hey, hey, Mr. Dream Merchant,’ the reasons that we’re here,’” Downer said. “I was mixin’ without it being hip-hop.”

He also impersonated his uncle as a DJ and improvised commercials on his radio station.

“[I’d say], ‘Hey, hey, hey. This is Scotty’s uncle, and we’re gonna have a party,’” Downer said. “Then I’d say, ‘Yes, indeed. We’re gonna play ‘Boogie Nights.’ And when I got to the end, I’d sing, ‘Boogie Nights,’ and I started fading it out. And then I said, ‘In a minute, we’ll be back in a flash. GE, we bring good things to life.”

That childhood play prompted Downer to beatbox and explore a variety of music. It wasn’t long before he added pop, funk, and disco records by Leo Sayer, The Jackson 5, KC and The Sunshine Band, and Heatwave to his collection.

In second grade at Northside Elementary School, Downer brought his records to school and shared them with his friends.

“I was scratchin’ before I knew what it was,” said Downer, who grew up with an older sister. “I was mixin’ before I knew what it was, let alone beatboxin’ before I knew what it was.”

Downer also developed a strong sense of community while living in a predominantly Black neighborhood at Arrowwood Hills. His family was one of the only white families that lived in the area, and his grandmother was one of the first people to move there in 1969.

“All my childhood and where I lived, I thought I was Black—everyone else was,” said Downer, who had a Black stepfather. “I was watching Black Power and Black Pride. Black is beautiful … and I watched these teenagers walking by, jamming to some music.

“The French Dukes, the drill team, they used to come here, and I’d learn all their chants and everything that they did when they drilled. I’d be there watching.”

By middle school, Downer and his family moved to Sandalwood Circle—known as Parkway Meadows—and met Fred Davis, aka DJ Bubba or DJ Bubs. They developed a close friendship and honed their DJ skills together while experimenting with different equipment.

Downer showed Davis his DJ setup, which included a turntable, a receiver, headphones, and some records, and demonstrated how to mix.

“Fred Davis said, ‘You don’t have to do that,’ and I said, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘I got a turntable and a mixer. We’ll have a full set,’” Downer said. “And I said, ‘What’s a mixer?’”

Davis brought over a mixer from RadioShack to elevate their DJ training.

“It was a Realistic and it had switches,” Downer said. “It wasn’t like the toggle switches they have now for transforming.”

The aspiring DJs started mixing and using two turntables to hone their craft. Downer lost access to one of the turntables and the mixer once Davis moved to Fernwood Avenue near Scarlett Middle School.

In 1982, Downer, then a freshman at Huron High School, bought a mixer at RadioShack and received two new turntables, one from a family friend and another from his girlfriend. He continued to DJ at home and grow his skills alongside Davis.

Davis then introduced Downer to Frank Dodd, aka DJ Dirty Red, who taught Downer the transformer scratch.

Along with building their skills, Downer and Davis studied emerging hip-hop artists and their releases. Every time Downer bought a record, Davis also bought one since they needed two copies of an album to DJ.

Some of their biggest influences included The Sugarhill Gang, Spoonie Gee, The Sequence, Treacherous Three, Funky 4 + 1, Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and Run-D.M.C.

Two years later, Run-D.M.C.’s self-titled debut album and the Fresh Fest tour were especially influential for Downer and Davis. They would listen to those artists in Davis’ basement and hang out with their late friend Nick Jackson.

Jackson taught Downer, also a budding breakdancer known as “Circuit Breaker,” how to windmill and do other b-boy moves.

“The janitors at Huron called [us] ‘Floor Cleaners’ because [we’d] be back-spinning and polishing the floor,” said Downer, who did well in school but struggled with teachers due to having ADHD.

Like Downer, a group of Huron and Pioneer high school students breakdanced and became known as the Street Rockers.

A June 9, 1984 Ann Arbor News article highlighted the group, which included David “Zulu Z” Barton, Tony “Baby T” Blair, Eric “Sup” Brown, Reggie “Smooth” McFarland, and Clint “Iceman” Jones, and the rising popularity of breakdancing due to films like Breakin’ and Beat Street.

“The Street Rockers can be seen popping, locking, waving, and floating … on the University of Michigan Diag during some of Ann Arbor’s nicer weekends,” wrote Harmen Mitchell. “They practice after school in the dance studio at Huron High with other students who are into breakdancing, but are not part of their performing group.”

Downer and friend Jamil “DJ Jammin’ Jay” Powers identified a space at Huron High School that had decent acoustics for rapping and beatboxing. They also breakdanced there and in different spots downtown.

“I was a downtown kid since eighth grade,” Downer said. “We’d get on the university buses and [go] downtown breakdancing with the [boom] box on the corners.”

By summer 1985, they were chugging 40-ouncers, smoking marijuana, and hanging out during the Ann Arbor Art Fair.

Downer and his friends lugged a giant boom box downtown with them when they would breakdance and play Hacky Sack across from Tice’s Party Store, or what’s now State Street Liquor.

They would rap and breakdance at the corner and leave out a bucket for tips. “We were pop-locking and everything,” said Downer, who also did graffiti under the Broadway Bridge.

Back at Parkway Meadows, Downer would set up his turntables and a mixer to DJ at the complex’s clubhouse while the neighborhood kids played basketball and breakdanced. He’d bring 12-inch singles, play the instrumentals on the B-sides, and start rapping over them.

The kids playing basketball were fascinated with Downer’s burgeoning MC skills and noticed his rhymes weren’t written down. “It’s called freestyling,” Downer said.

Downer also recalls crashing a party on Argo Drive one night with Davis. They were walking home toward Pontiac Trail and heard hip-hop music from a nearby house. Once they went inside, they saw people playing records with the labels taken off.

He tried to ask the DJs where they got their records, but they wouldn’t say.

“[They] wouldn’t tell because if you had what another didn’t have—that’s what separated you,” Downer said.

It was common for DJs to take the labels off records and color them with markers, but Downer used the labels for his cue points. If one was labeled “Oak Tree,” then he knew that was his back cue.

Downer and Davis also DJed their first rent party for a friend at Arrowwood Hills Cooperative in 1985. They would put speaker wires through the floor to the basement and DJ upstairs while people partied below them. They couldn’t see the people at the party.

“We just played the jams—that’s it,” Downer said. “As long as the mix was good … you could do it.”

They continued to DJ paid parties, and it wasn’t uncommon for Downer to be the only white person at some of them. One of the party hosts once asked Downer how he felt about being in that situation.

“I said, ‘If I don’t look at my hands, or [in a] mirror, I just feel like I’m one of y’all. If I don’t see me, only you do. [The party host] said, ‘Man, where were you during civil rights? We could have used a lot more people like you,’” Downer said.

When they weren’t DJing, Downer and Davis would hang out at WCBN because they knew the DJs. They admired the station’s old equipment, which included Technics SL-1200 turntables and a mixer in production studio B.

At the time, the turntables cost about $700 each and were heavy-duty models. Downer and Davis longed to have the old-school turntables for their gigs, but couldn’t afford them at age 17 in 1985.

Instead, they stole the two turntables, a mixer, and some records when a WCBN DJ took a restroom break. Downer said he was later arrested, served three days in jail, and paid a $150 fine. He said he didn’t mention Davis as an accomplice, so Davis didn’t serve any jail time.

Downer said it was a lesson learned, and it took time before he and Davis were allowed back at the station.

In 1986, Downer graduated from Huron High School and focused on DJing and rapping. He met Roberto “DJ Helluva” Jones, aka Darnell Bop Jones, who was Downer’s DJ from 1989 to 1991.

Downer was an MC at the time and recorded his EP, The Man the Klan Can’t Stand, with Jones at Icehouse Productions. They teamed up with Chuck Slay and Anthony Larkin to record the EP, but it was never released.

Downer considered DJing his true calling instead and focused primarily on house parties, private events, weddings, and underground gigs, but performed at clubs as well.

He remembers a show at The Heidelberg in the mid-‘90s that featured Harm’s Way and Kid Rock, aka Robert Ritchie.

Downer’s friend Steve Berger played bass in the band, which collaborated with The L.S.G.H. Clan and Kid Rock at the time. Downer was DJing with the metal band and hip-hop group during a show, and Kid Rock challenged Downer to a battle onstage.

“He said, ‘Hey, DJ, can I get on?’ And I said, ‘Sure, no problem, get on,’ so he got on and did his thing. The crowd went wild, and he said, ‘DJ, that’s how you’re supposed to do it,’” Downer said.

“I said, ‘Hold on,’ and grabbed the mic and said, ‘Whoa, Kid, is this a challenge?’ And I said [to the crowd], ‘Y’all, does it sound like he’s challenging me?’ and they were like, ‘Yeah!’”

Downer started dropping samples, scratching, and doing tricks with a crossfader. “I said, ‘That’s how you’re supposed to do it,’ and the crowd was like, ‘Woo!,’” he said.

By 1998, Downer joined a local DJ crew called The Unfadeables, which included longtime friend Jamil “DJ Jammin’ Jay” Powers and 11 other DJs.

Downer met Powers at age four when they both lived in Arrowwood Hills Cooperative and attended preschool at the Pontiac Heights Neighborhood Center.

“All the kids around here would say, ‘Man, I’m from the Heights,’” Downer said. “It just sounds tougher—it was way tougher.”

The lifelong friends collaborated with The Unfadeables for a few years until the crew dissolved due to life events and people relocating. The crew’s goal was to pool their resources to find and book gigs at local clubs.

“So Jammin’ Jay and my crew, The Unfadeables, we’ll tell you in a minute, we’re the best,” Downer said.

In 2008, Downer and Powers made a mixtape called Fire Spitters Vol. 1, which featured about a dozen local MCs. They also released volume two and have started working on volumes three and four.

One of the Fire Spitters mixtapes includes a collaboration with Monroe-based Prince Whipper Whip, aka James Austin Whipper II, who was a member of Grandwizard Theodore & the Fantastic Five and has been an MC for DJ Kool Herc.

Prince Whipper Whip now lives in Monroe and works as a nurse.

“Whip made things possible for me to put me where I’m at,” said Downer, who’s traveled with Prince Whipper Whip to DJ in New York City over the years.

Downer also has DJed at several bars and clubs in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, including Good Time Charley’s, The Blind Pig, The Heidelberg, The Nectarine, the Cavern Club, the Millennium Club, Crossroads Pub, Smarty Catz, Powell’s Pub, the Firefly Club, Touchdown Café, the Wooden Nickel, and others.

He primarily books his gigs by word of mouth and enjoys DJing public events, like hydraulic car shows at Community High School and Kerrytown in Ann Arbor.

“Those diverse crowds, I love it because you can play from AC/DC to Grand Funk to War to Earth, Wind & Fire … that’s what I like to do.”

As a music lover, Downer owns 72 crates of records and organizes them by beats per minute and genre in his basement. Part of that record collection includes releases by One.Be.Lo, Switch Stance, and S.U.N.

“All my records, this is like family,” he said. “Every record you see, I know the words, I know the labels, and I know the dates when they came out. Going from N.W.A. to Luther Vandross, that’s a whole lot of in between. All that they say is in me, no matter what. That’s what made me—these records.”

Today, Downer DJs Friday nights at Powell’s Pub in Ypsilanti and Saturday nights at the Elks Ann Arbor along with Da’ Heights/Northside summer reunions at Ann Arbor’s Northside Community Center.

As for the future, Downer wants to celebrate the local hip-hop scene by having outdoor parties and stages to showcase Washtenaw County artists and DJs, especially at a site like West Park.

He sees it as a way to help local artists build a fan base in a county with two college towns that have evolving student populations.

“These are humble people,” he said. “They’re trying to make the world better by their music and their lyrics and showing people how dope they are doing it.”

Jamil Powers

Jamil Powers remembers cleaning the house with his mother and listening to music on Saturdays at the Arrowwood Hills Cooperative.

Those weekly cleaning sessions sparked an interest in music and led to an appreciation for artists like Michael Jackson.

“To see a young guy like that doing the things that he was doing, it made it seem like if you had a dream like that, then it could actually come true,” said Powers, who started performing as a beatboxer in 1984 and as a DJ in 1994. “He was a real inspiration.”

By fifth grade, he wanted to be in band class at Northside Elementary School. One day, the teacher asked each student what instrument they wanted to play.

“When he got to me, I said, ‘The bongos,’” Powers said. “Everybody in the class laughed, but I felt bad. I [didn’t] see what was funny, and [the teacher] said, ‘Oh, you want to be a percussionist?’ And I said, ‘No, I want to play the bongos.’

“I’m in fifth grade, I don’t know what a percussionist is, but I know what a bongo is. I played bongos at home because we had them.”

Powers soon learned bongos were a percussion instrument, but ended up playing drums in the school band instead.

“I’ll never forget that because technically, me being that young, everybody laughing at me could have stopped me from chasing my dream, but it didn’t,” he said. “But I was very hurt and embarrassed by that. That was the first pain that I ever had when it [came] to music, so it was a scar that’s always stayed with me.”

Powers also admired a local DJ named L.J. Stone, who was instrumental in introducing Powers and longtime friend Scott “DJ Scotty D” Downer to the DJ craft.

“He was from Arrowwood, and he was in that ’78-’79 graduating class,” said Powers, who later adopted the DJ name "DJ Jammin' Jay." “He was the DJ that we knew … and when he was doing it, there wasn’t a lot of hip-hop out there.”

The first hip-hop music Powers remembers hearing was “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. His older brother Darryn had played it when Powers was growing up.

“Anything [my brother] was doing with music or was listening to, I had the chance to listen to as well,” Powers said.

By 1984, Powers started laying the foundation for a local hip-hop scene alongside DJ Will “Chill Will” Higgs, Frank “DJ Dirty Red” Dodd, DJ G-Nice, Downer, and others.

“When hip-hop came through, or when it finally got here to Ann Arbor, we were in ninth grade [or] tenth grade,” he said. “I think there’s a group of us that started it, and we’re like the forefathers of hip-hop here.”

A student at Huron High School, Powers started as a b-boy and wanted to DJ, but wasn’t able to afford the equipment. In the ‘80s, he’d breakdance at Briarwood Mall and the Ann Arbor Art Fair. 

At the mall, Powers and his friends would have breakdance battles and then run from security so they wouldn’t get caught.

“We’d run out of the mall, come in another door, and go to the other side, and now we’re breakdancing over there,” Powers said. “We’d [breakdance] in the gathering spaces in the center, and we also used to do it on that matted rug that was there in those places.

“One of the spots was by the big purple circle. That was one of the spots we went to where you’d sit down a couple of steps, so we would do it there. After the movie Breakin’ came out, everybody was doing it in the hallway right in front of the movie theater.”

At the art fair, he would bring a piece of cardboard to breakdance and make money. It was the summer hustle for the burgeoning hip-hop community.

“We were doing it, and the funny thing is not knowing it, but we were paying our dues then—like blazing a trail,” Powers said. “Doing things that no other group of people would ever do, like breakdancing at Briarwood or breakdancing at the art fair.

“It’s been years since the last time you’ve seen somebody breakdancing at the art fair. You don’t see that anymore, but we did that.”

Along with breakdancing, Powers also added beatboxing to his hip-hop repertoire.

“But being a drummer, being a percussionist … I started beatboxing … in 1984,” he said. “That was the thing I was known for at Huron, and I was very good at it—I was the top dog.”

Powers soon joined the Kaja Fresh Crew, an emerging group of MCs, DJs, and beatboxers that combined their hip-hop talents and gained a local reputation for winning hip-hop battles.

“I would have to say the Kaja Fresh crew was one of the most powerful crews around here in hip-hop,” Powers said. “And the reason why I say that is because we had the best of the best.”

The crew included David “Zulu Z” Barton, Tony “DJ Treble T” Fisher, Mike “Lil Mike” Taylor, Downer, and Powers. Its name stemmed from the expression, “cause you gotta be fresh” crew.

In 1985, Powers said he demonstrated his beatboxing prowess in a battle against Doug E. Fresh at World of Wheels. Fresh held a beatboxing battle at the Ann Arbor skating rink and opened it up to the public. The winner of the battle would open for Fresh’s talent show at World of Wheels.

“We were telling everybody from every other crew to bring [their] A-game because [the Kaja Fresh crew] was entering,” Powers said. “Nobody showed up, and that was the moment I realized how powerful and bad we actually were.

“Nobody wanted to go up against us. We were expecting the best of the best. Nobody entered, so we won by default. I got a chance to beatbox against Doug E. Fresh. We battled because that’s what you did back then.”

During the battle, Powers performed a song with a DJ scratching the word “Nothing” from a record. He would rap, “When you mess with us / You get nothing,” and then the beat would come in and he would finish the lyric.

Fisher brought his Technics SL-1200s to use for the battle, so Doug E. Fresh’s DJs asked Fisher if they could use his equipment instead.

At the time, Fisher, Powers, and the Kaja Fresh crew weren’t aware of DJs taking the labels off their records to protect their music and samples.

Doug E. Fresh ended up beating Powers in the beatbox battle, so Powers didn’t get the opening slot for the talent show at World of Wheels.

Not long after that, Powers said he and his crew learned Doug. E. Fresh had released a track called “Nuthin’” on his 1986 album, Oh, My God!.

Powers said Doug E. Fresh’s “Nuthin’” was similar to the “Nothing” he had rapped and beatboxed during their battle at the roller rink.

While Powers didn’t have an official copyright to his song, local friends knew about the song and asked him about it when they had heard Doug E. Fresh’s version.

“They were like, ‘You heard the song? They stole y’all’s song,” Powers said. “And then we heard the song, and it was like, ‘Wow.’ That just let me know we were on the right road.”

In 1986, Powers also battled classmate Antwan “Spidey D” Caldwell at beatboxing during a Huron-Pioneer football game. He was impressed by Caldwell’s ability to make different noises while he beatboxed.

“It was one of the dopest things I had ever seen,” Powers said. “He beat me in that battle.”

Powers continued to beatbox for a few years until becoming a DJ in 1994. He quit his second job at the time to hone his craft.

“As far as beatboxing was concerned, I went as far as I could go on that,” he said. “I’m satisfied with that particular part of my hip-hop forte. I really didn’t do much with breakdancing [either].”

As an aspiring DJ, Powers was influenced by DJ Jazzy Jeff, Jam Master Jay, Mix Master Ice, Roc Raida, Jeff “The Wizard” Mills, Chill Will, and others. A former girlfriend helped Powers buy his first set of DJ equipment, and he started building up his skills.

“I have to look at people like DJ Chill Will—he’s a forefather of hip-hop—but he started off DJing,” Powers said. “[People] like him, G-Nice, Dirty Red, and Scotty D, all of those guys, I looked up to, but they also showed me what they were doing in New York, you could actually do here. They were very instrumental [to] me in growing up.”

Powers soon picked up a beat machine, which helped him identify the beats per minute for different records to use in his DJ sets. Having that knowledge helped him mix better and organize his record collection as well as Downer’s collection.

He also used to catch Mills’ DJ sets at The Nectarine in the early ‘90s. “I would stand there and watch him all night and just study him,” Powers said.

Powers continued to hone his skills and DJed at different places, but never had a residency.

“This is when the racial part of hip-hop started seeping in,” he said. “You would go to a club, you would try to get a job, and they would say, ‘Oh yeah, we don’t want to play hip-hop. It causes too many problems. The wrong people come—whatever, whatever.’”

Powers would return to the same local clubs as a patron and see white DJs playing hip-hop in their sets.

“I’d say, ‘Wait a minute! He’s playing the same hip-hop I would have been playing,’” he said. “Does a white DJ playing hip-hop make it any safer? I’ve never understood that. For me, that was one of the times I ran into the racial part.”

Those experiences also deterred Powers from pursuing a local residency.

“In this whole time, I might have contacted five clubs in my life,” he said. “You go back [to the club and] there’s a white guy there playing hip-hop—that really discouraged me.

“Even though I wanted to do residencies, it sorta made me steer away because I’m thinking, ‘This guy’s probably not even gonna be honest with me on why he really doesn’t want to hire me.’ It was hard for me to accept the answer, ‘no,’ and it’s just in my nature.”

However, Powers said things have changed since then.

“It’s gotten better over the years, but way back then, there was a disconnect between the hip-hop community and the local clubs,” he said. “Being a forefather of hip-hop here [in] Washtenaw County, it was such a bad thing.”

Another challenge arose for established DJs by the late ‘90s and 2000s, the era of digital music leveled the playing field and shortened the learning curve for new DJs coming onto the scene.

They no longer needed just turntables and old-school equipment to mix music manually.

“Instead of turntables, they were using CDJs, and then Serato came out,” Powers said. “You have these guys that have been DJing [for] six, seven months, and they’re pretty good because the equipment cuts their learning curve.

“So now they’re coming in saying, ‘Yeah, I’ll DJ a night at a club for $60,’ and they were undercutting us. They’re getting these … DJs that are just doing it for pennies on the dollar, and we can’t go do what we would like to do at these places. That was an issue that also came up.”

Powers adapted to the technological changes, but decided to form a DJ crew with Downer, Deckmaster D, and 10 other peers to form The Unfadeables in 1998. The crew met each week to identify clubs to contact and potential gigs to book, but it was short-lived.

“We have all these skills, everybody’s ready to go, everybody has equipment, we were meeting on Sundays, and it was like, ‘OK, we gotta start calling these clubs because that’s where it’s at. Let’s go get this money,’” Powers said.

“You come back next Sunday, nobody’s called a club, so that went on for about a month—maybe a month and a half—and then we just stopped having the meeting. I thought, ‘This is pointless. Nobody’s [putting in the work], not even me. I wasn’t doing it.”

Instead, Powers DJed weddings and private parties and was known by word of mouth. He also DJed a weekly hip-hop and poetry open mic night called The Salacious Intellectuals at the Gypsy Café in 1998 and 1999.

“The Salacious Intellectuals was founded by Pedrick Jones and Chinelo [Bomani], his side kick, this past February,” wrote Kerri Murphy and Gina Rasmussen in a September 24, 1998, article for The Michigan Daily.

“Joining them was the ‘Hip Hop Infamous Madcap DJ Jammin’ Jay’ who breaks the intensity by mixing upbeat popular jams in between each act. Overall, this type of vocalizing has been more than welcomed to the Ann Arbor community.”

Nearly a year later, The Ann Arbor News ran an article on July 12, 1999, about the open mic night, which took place each Tuesday.

“We are providing people with an outlet to express themselves to the world,” said Powers in the article. “We also are letting Ann Arbor know that minorities and people who are traditionally silenced have something important to say and worth listening to.”

Jones and Bomani invited Powers to DJ the open mic night, which drew aspiring poets, hip-hop artists, and DJs.

During the open mic night’s run, Powers noticed a teen boy attending the event each week. The boy, known as Justin Fittens, asked Powers questions about DJing, and Powers took Fittens under his wing.

“[I told him], ‘Make sure you know your history because once you step on this hip-hop scene, Black people are going to question you just because you’re white. And you need to know your stuff, and if you know your stuff, that’s gonna give you passes and keys to other stuff because they know, OK, this guy’s legit. He’s not just playin’ around, he knows his stuff,’” Powers said.

“And he said that was one of the most important things … that I ever taught him, and he saw that it did help him.”

Fittens later became Deckmaster D and collaborated with Dante LaSalle and Dirk Verbals in the hip-hop group Switch Stance. He’s also responsible for naming their DJ crew The Unfadeables.

“If you were going to watch me DJ for an hour and then you’d watch Deck DJ for an hour, then you’re gonna see my DNA all in his [set],” Powers said.

By 2000, Powers had gained notoriety after winning local DJ battles hosted by Guitar Center in Canton.

Powers stopped into the store with a friend one day and learned about the battle. He signed up for it on the spot and later won it.

After winning the battle, Powers went back to Guitar Center, chatted with one of the employees, and learned he was going to the Midwest regionals in Chicago.

“The Guitar Center guy said I was running around the tables doing stuff nobody had ever seen before,” he said. “I said, ‘Yeah, that was me,’ and he said, ‘What?’”

In Chicago, Powers competed against 12 DJs from the Midwest, and that was the first time he had experienced competition outside of the local area.

He came in fourth place that year, but later won the local Guitar Center DJ battle two more years in a row. Powers returned to Chicago for the Midwest regionals and placed third in the second year and second in the third year.

The third year, he lost to Cleveland’s DJ Remix, who squirted alcohol on a record at the end of his set and lit it on fire.

To strengthen his skills, Powers studied VHS tapes of DMC battles featuring six-minute DJ routines with Roc Raida and The X-Ecutioners. Studying the videotapes reinforced the hip-hop culture of battling that he had learned growing up and continues to embrace today.

“That’s how I was brought up in hip-hop,” Powers said. “Me being a nobody and becoming a somebody, I had to go through a lot of battles. I still have that mentality now.”

By 2017, Powers had sold his turntables and quit DJing. Over the years, he’s struggled with depression and was homeless for seven years. He also lost his record collection when it was in storage.

“My record collection was just as big as Scotty [Downer’s],” said Powers, who’s now 57 and lives at Arrowwood Hills Cooperative. “I lost it in storage [three] years ago. I couldn’t afford to pay [for] it.”

A year later, Powers lost his nephew, Aris Taylor, in a car crash on I-94 near State Street.

According to a January 30, 2018, article in The Ann Arbor News, Taylor had lost control of his vehicle, had been struck by a pickup truck, and had died at the scene.

Taylor was only 29 and had been performing and recording under the hip-hop moniker Seven Flamez. He was also a 2007 graduate of Huron High School and a star basketball player.

“Everything I learned about … music came from my older brother, who is Seven Flamez’s father,” Powers said. “Here comes Seven Flamez off that same root … and he’s doing his hip-hop here and made a name for himself. We miss him to death. He had been at it for a while, and he was bubbling.”

Despite those losses, Powers is optimistic about the future. He plans to get new DJ equipment and work on a new mixtape called The God Mixtape. Powers released the Fire Spitters Vol. 1 mixtape with Downer in 2008 and a second volume after that.

“With this [new] mixtape, I’m going to do all [the facets] of what I do in hip-hop,” said Powers, who’s inspired by Busta Rhymes’ 2020 album, Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God. “There will be videos of me breakdancing or dancing now. There’s going to be music with me beatboxing, there’s going to be music with me DJing, and then there’s going to be music with me rapping.”

He also wants to develop documentaries about the forefathers of hip-hop in Washtenaw County and the history of the Arrowwood Hills Cooperative. The documentaries and the mixtape will help preserve his legacy for his 13 children and 27 grandchildren.

“I’m gonna do all of those … [and] put a lot of videos out on YouTube,” he said. “So that after I’m gone, my kids and grandkids can just put on DJ Jammin’ Jay and watch as many of the videos that they need to watch.

“I just want anybody that gets a hold of the project to say, ‘This guy, Jammin’ Jay, was immensely talented,’ and that’s all, I guess I’m asking for.”

Lori Stratton is a library technician, writer for Pulp, and writer and editor of strattonsetlist.com.

DJ Chill Will hosts "The Prop Shop" every Saturday night from 9 pm to midnight on WCBN-FM, 89.3, or streaming on wcbn.org. Shows from the past two weeks are available here.