It was the summer of 1988. We had just released the second Boogie Down Productions album called “By Any Means Necessary” and we were about to embark on our first U.S. tour. It was called “The Dope Jam Tour” and the line-up was Eric B & Rakim, Dougie Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew, Kool Moe Dee, Boogie Down Productions, Biz Markie, Ice-T, and J.J. Fad. WHOA! I thought that we were stars until our tour bus showed up. I will never forget. It was a powder blue Prevost with a large mural of a pink mermaid painted on both sides of the bus! Here we are, Boogie Down Productions, one of the hardest rap groups at the time, and we are about to travel through 60 cities on a powder blue bus called “The Mermaid.”

The Mermaid was an old bus that was used by Cher 10 years earlier. Everything inside of this bus was old. The TV’s were old, the seats were made of old velvet and the walls were covered with wood paneling. I remember we were leaving California on our way to perform in Las Vegas when the Mermaid started experiencing engine trouble. We were in the middle of the Mohave Desert on a two-lane highway with no town in sight and the temperature exceeded 110 degrees! It was hot as hell and we were in purgatory! The comical part of this story is that a priest, who was traveling to Nevada with foster kids, charged us $500 to drive us to Vegas. AMEN!

-dj