Rhettmatic (Beat Junkies/Beat Fanatic Music Group) Interviewed by Andres (Classic Drug References)

As I got older, around like late 80’s and early 90’s, I started hanging out with cats that were in the same circles, that eventually became the Beat Junkies. Alot of the Junkies, we kind of grew up together or knew each other from the same scenes and we just happened to click more, we left our respective mobile groups or scenes because by the time of like ‘89 everyone thought that the DJ was played out and we were the only ones still doing it. By ‘92 officially, J. Rocc was like, I’ve always wanted a crew, let’s call ourselves the Beat Junkies and wear these Green Lantern rings.

So you guys wore actual rings?

yeah, actual rings. There’s no real significance to it, but basically J. used to work at a comic book shop so he was like, yeah, we’re gonna wear these Green Lantern glow in the dark rings around our necks We were like, um, fuck it, alright. It’s funny because everywhere we’d go we’d wear these things around our necks and people would ask what the significance was, we’d be like, I dunno, we’re Beat Junkies, [we wear them] cuz J. said so. When we started going to all the DMC battles we used to wear the rings around our necks, so people would be like, who are these motherfuckers wearing these Green Lantern rings, entering battles and actually winning? Half of us were, the irony of the group was that though the group was started by J. Rocc who happened to be African-American, most of us are Asians.