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Oral history with Karnage, bassist for Rebelmatic, guitarist for Xiakuan, rapper, and DJ, recorded on February 10, 2025, as part of the "Uptown Rumble: Heavy Music in The Bronx" project at The Bronx County Historical Society and shared with The Bronx African American History Project. The interviewer is Steven Payne, director of The Bronx County Historical Society.

In his oral history, Karnage shares some his early memories of Harlem, where he lived in the Manhattanville Houses with his family until he was 5 and where he visited many weekends afterwards since his extended family still lived there. At age 5, Karnage moved to The Bronx with his mom, near Sheridan Avenue at first but pretty soon after to Marble Hill, near the 225th Street stop on the 1 train. Karnage shares his memories of going to elementary school at the public school a few blocks north in Kingsbridge. In particular, this was around the time that he became enamored with hip hop, after watching movies like Wild Style and especially Beat Street. He started breaking at an early age, and he recalls the lively breaking and early hip hop culture that was still very much a force in New York City and in Marble Hill and Kingsbridge at the time. He recalls the mixed, but still largely segregated, nature of the neighborhood at the time, and the ways that these racial, ethnic, and national lines of separation were partially blurred at the elementary school.

He also recalls his first concentrated exposure to rock and roll music—a Beatles mix tape given to him by a resource teacher at the elementary school—and his first light bulb moment of wanting to play guitar, while watching Prince play a guitar solo in Purple Rain. Although he received an acoustic guitar as a gift not long after this, it took him a few more years to begin playing in earnest. Karnage then remembers his first exposure to social cliques at the junior high school he went to in Riverdale for a semester before his family moved to the Northeast Bronx, a few blocks away from Mt. Vernon. At his new junior high, Karnage quickly realized that he was a bit of an outsider as a lover of both hip hop and rock and metal and in a whole new environment that had a large Caribbean, especially Jamaican, presence. Karnage learned the ropes of his new school, while his twin early loves for hip hop and metal continued to evolve. These were the years where he bought his first cassette—The $5.98 EP—Garage Days Re-Revisited by Metallica—at a record store just across the Westchester border in Pelham; and attended his first concert—Living Colour in Central Park at Rock Against Racism with one of his first Black metalhead friends.

He also received an electric guitar as a gift during his junior high years, although he still was not progressing on it as quickly as he wanted. This all changed in high school, when his stepfather encouraged him to go to an adult education guitar class at Harry S. Truman High School on the weekends, and when some of the friends he made at Truman started jamming with him. Very soon, his parents could not tell whether he was listening to albums or playing his own guitar in his room. Next, Karnage remembers his time at SUNY Purchase, where he came into his own as a rapper as well as part of a rap collective. This was also when he coined the artistic name "Karnage." It was while he was at SUNY Purchase that Karnage was exposed more to hardcore, first through watching a fellow student play guitar and then while attending a show at Mullaly Park in 1996, where he saw Bronx hardcore band District 9 and No Redeeming Social Value play for a crowd that was almost entirely African American and Latino. This was another defining moment for him, and it was after this show that Karnage and some of his friends at Purchase first formed what would eventually become Xiakuan.

Disciplines

African American Studies | Public History

Abstract

Karnage shares his memories of his years playing shows and recording with Xiakuan, especially after the band was able to plug into the Bronx scene of the second half of the 1990s, which included bands like Rights Reserved, Proof of Purchase, Goatamentise, and others. Karnage then shares his memories of his next musical venture, as guitarist for a live hip hop group, BR and Timebomb, and what it was like for him to tour across the U.S. with the group, while further honing his chops as a guitarist and rapper. After 5 years with the group, it broke up, and Karnage was looking for his next musical venture. Although Xiakuan briefly reformed, it was not long before he met Creature of Rebelmatic, through an event organized by Peter Forrest (P. Fluid) of 24-7 Spyz. Karnage became bassist for Rebelmatic shortly afterwards, and he recalls some of the highlights of playing many, many shows and being on multiple EPs and one full-length to date with the band. Karnage closes by reflecting on the individuality at the core of Bronx heavy music.

LINK TO VIDEO RECORDING: http://cdm17265.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/baahp/id/125

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