This week on A Waste of Time with ItsTheReal, we are honored to welcome the legend himself, DJ Kay Slay, to the Upper West Side for an amazing conversation! We talk with the Hot 97 and Shade 45 DJ about how he found graffiti in the early 1980's and became "King of the 1 and 3 Trains" by age 16, how he was break dancing and DJing parties at age 11, and navigating the streets of Spanish Harlem through his middle school and high school years. We discuss how he went from teenage star of the seminal documentary Style Wars to dealing drugs and doing a stint in jail, how his mother stuck by his side, and how he made it back out sober and with a mission to be the best DJ there was. We spoke about helping Kanye pick out singles for his first album, getting yelled at by Jay Z on New Year's Eve, what it felt like to finalize Papoose's $1.5M deal at Jive, how he sonned the radio guys at Bad Boy, and later sonned ItsTheReal. All that, plus stories about Cam'ron, Ma$e, 50 Cent, Eminem, Busta Rhymes, Justo Mixtape Awards, DJ Clue, Keith Haring, avoiding trains in the subway, getting mobbed by aspiring rappers outside Hot 97, his leather collection, and so much more!

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