I. Something Grabs a Hold of Me Tightly

Vanilla Ice was discovered on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. It was the winter of 1987-88 in South Dallas, or maybe it was the following summer. All exact dates have dissolved into a haze of liquor, hair spray, and the tinnitus caused by long-gone 808 claps. The only thing anyone can agree on is that at the height of hip-hop’s first Golden Age, all the action in the Triple D went down at a club called City Lights.

The property had already weathered several boom-and-bust cycles. Originally a segregated postwar movie palace christened the Forest Theater, it was alternately transformed into a jazz cellar, a recording studio, and the stage for legendary seances by B.B. King, Wilson Pickett, and Prince. By the end of Reagan’s second term, a local entrepreneur named Tommy Quon had resurrected it as the hip-hop epicenter of North Texas. From Thursday night until the break of dawn Sunday morning, the dance floor rumbled with a thousand rowdy but chic revelers. They freaked and hit pop locks, the Roger Rabbit, and the wop. The walls shook from Whodini, LL Cool J, Too Short, N.W.A, and the DFW’s own Fila Fresh Crew. Late at night, when you could feel the bass deep in your sternum, the spot would erupt to the seismic shake of Nemesis’s regional anthem “Oak Cliff.”

The ballers, hustlers, and dope dealers of South Dallas coexisted in uneasy communion. B-boys and D-boys intermingled with models and around-the-way girls. No evidence exists that Roy Tarpley was ever in attendance, but I’d bet on it. This was the heart of South Dallas, the trenches. Tussles were frequent, and being Texas, half the club came strapped. It was no place for the meek, but without risk, there is no reward. In the DJ booth was the surgical turntablist Floyd “Earthquake” Brown, who spotted something out of the ordinary one Saturday evening.