Interview: Uncle Ralph McDaniels For Brooklyn Bodega

In the first portion of a multiple part interview, the celebrated NYC figure and DJ known to thousands as "Uncle Ralph" McDaniels sits down with The Company Man of BrooklynBodega.com to talk about his origins in NYC Radio, how he got into deejaying and getting his vision for the groundbreaking and much beloved Video Music Box program off the ground...

-BIG D O

The Company Man: In the mid-seventies, during Hip Hop’s infancy, Uncle Ralph began DJing.

Uncle Ralph McDaniels: “I’m in Queens by this time, so you know, the whole DJ thing is becoming really popular. We’re out in the park doing our thing. Break beats are starting to evolve. The commercialization of Hip Hop is starting to happen.”

TCM: After completing high school, while still DJing, he attended Laguardia Community College in Queens. There, during an internship at Manhattan Cable Television (the founders and operators of the America’s first urban underground cable system), his interest in film and television was officially ignited.

URM: “Nobody around me had ever seen cable before. I hadn’t seen it before that time because nobody had cable here — in New York — and I don’t think anywhere else. I think that must’ve been around 1980, so this was the beginning of the whole cable television explosion. And that was what sparked my interest because I always wanted to combine the visuals with the audio. I was into the audio already from DJing and being around certain artists…but now I had an opportunity to get involved with the video side of it.”

Read the rest here