Doz Funky Baztardz

Doz Funky Baztardz was made up of three members, DJ Taz, Melo and Class. Taz was born in Haiti but was raised in East New York. After his mother broke her leg at work in 1987, the family moved down to the warmer climate of Miami on the advice of her doctor who suggested that her leg would heal quicker if they got out of the North East. Taz started DJ'ing in Miami from the early 90's and made a living selling beats to round-the-way artists. He met Melo one night at a party thrown by a girl he was dating, who happened to be a cousin of Melo's. Melo was spinning in the bedroom, where the decks were set up. The speaker was placed outside the door in the hallway so no one could see who was DJ'ing. Melo dropped some Kwame instrumental [he recalls] and started to freestyle over the beat. Taz immediately recognised the MC's talent and made his way up to the bedroom to see who it was. The next day they were writing tracks together.

Melo too had arrived in the States in 1987, he coming direct from Trinidad to Miami. His first memory of the music was "The Message", but before getting into music he was a B-Boy. Named after his favourite artist, Grandmaster, he formed a B-Boying crew called Clan, along with two cats Crazy D and Slick D. Before the music was Graf and dancing. On arriving in America he would show off his DJ skills on Saturday nights by hanging his speaker out the apartment window. His first experience of the "biz" was selling rhymes to local Hip Hop artists. He wrote poetry at school way before he heard "The Message", so he had a natural skill for scanning and word play. But it wasn't until he connected with Taz that the music really began to flow.

Taz's first paid work came from selling beats for $50-$100 to local acts. He graduated from his Casio RZ1 with its 4 seconds of sampling time to a secondhand SP1200 which he bought from Space Music in Miami with money saved from selling beats and his part time job in a movie theater. The two started to lay down their first recordings around 1991 funded by Taz selling beats. They recorded in a studio called "Who Brought The Dog" owned by a cat called Harvey in Miami. They pressed up 300 copies of a white label called "Journey To The Weedhole" around 1992/1993 and distributed it themselves to local Mom & Pop stores on consignment. Around this time, through their DJ'ing and promoter contacts they started getting booked to support Hip Hop acts when they came to Miami. They supported Cypress Hill, Nice & Smooth, Busta Rhymes, Fugees, Jeru and Redman among other notable NYC acts. With momentum building they self financed another single, "What's Goin On" in 1994, again pressing only 300 copies. They followed that record up a year later with "Straight Outta", again pressing 300 copies.

Doz Funky Baztard'z suffered from a Hip Hop disease prone to all East Coast-influenced acts hailing from Florida - known as Bass-osis! If you didn't "do" Bass music, you didn't get supported. Miami had its own sound and "copying" the NYC Hip Hop sound was frowned upon. The labels down there didn't invest in anything other than Miami Bass. So this huge talent was left by the wayside.