When Chris Wong Won, the Treach DJ Mr. Mixx, and Amazing Vee were in the Air Force in California, they put up their own money to start the Fresh Beat Records label, record and press their tunes, and send mailers with promos to every distributor they had an address to in the country. This was the way that acts hoped to break independently in the 1980s. They secured vinyl pressings through Macola Records, a specialized manufacturing and distribution compound in Santa Monica. Owner Don Macmillan was cronies with Henry Stone, to whom he also sent copies of these early West Coast hip hop sounds. Stone pushed them on his club and radio DJ’s and promoters; people like Nick “Babyface” Salerno. As Christopher Wong Wong remembers, when 2 Live Crew arrived in Miami, both sides of their record were spinning on the radio. And the kids already knew the words.

Fresh Kid Ice remembers making deals with Henry Stone in his book My Rise 2 Fame. Check it out and learn how so much great Miami history is interconnected through the eras.