Back in 1984, my High School friends Ricky, John and I used to hang out with each other.  This was during the early days of Rap - during a period of incredible growth and change for Urban Afro-American music.  Today the fruits of those creative days are now affectionately referred to as "Old School Rap."  Musician such as Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, The Sugar Hill Gang and Run DMC were rippin' up the airwaves. 

From the confines of my privileged ex-urban lifestyle my friends and I would sit around listening to the latest cuts and trying our hand at "scratching."  Scratching, a technique of altering the composition of a musical line by briefly and rhythmically reversing the direction of a spinning LP (Long Playing) record.  This important breakthrough would later give way to layering and sampling in modern musical narrative.

However, back in the days of Old School, thanks to the good graces of Ricky, I ended up getting the moniker of "Ice Cuba."  It was a play on the growing number of rappers taking on the "Ice" prefix to their stage names, as well as my background as the son of Cuban exiles