Born in Cumberland Hospital in Brooklyn. Raised in Brooklyn (Fort Greene sect.), Long Island (Stony Brook & Port Jefferson), Manhattan (Amsterdam projects in midtown & 110th st. uptown), Harlem (119th st. between Lenox & 5th), & Newark (7th Ave.). My father's a d.j., a musician, and a philosopher. My mother's a visual artist, and a humanitarian. I have no siblings. I'm a d.j., producer, and recording artist. I first started DJing in '83. My initial influences were GrandMaster Flash (the original "Freedom Party Jam" and "Wheels Of Steel" - he was the WIZARD!), GrandMixer DXT (formerly DST, "Rock It" which was a single by Herbie Hancock who was my fathers favorite musician. "Rock It" was actually the first record I learned to scratch on. The first record I TRIED to scratch on was a Sugar Hill album and I didn't know the weight of my hands yet so needless to say I f*cked THAT up!), Jazzy Jay ("It's Yours" - this dude had the most unique scratch routine segments on records. Even on his Def Jam releases!), and of course, JamMaster Jay (his title cut "JamMaster Jay" and every live show he ever did that I was a witness to such as The Beacon Theater, The FunHouse, Madison Square Garden, and Nassau Coliseum. My favorite memory was when he would run "The Big Beat" by Billy Squire! He MADE that my favorite beat and drum pattern! R.I.P.!) I also gotta say that a PERSONAL influence of mine was my boy R-Trane (aka Rich Luv aka Scratch Wiz) from Amsterdam projects. This was a dude who was already making his own speakers from SCRATCH, doing park jams (which he eventually included me in on!) and had a room full of visiting kids standing there watching him do his thing! And I became one of those kids! What caught me was that he was MY age!! So I figured "if he can do it I can do it" (especially since I thought I can do anything ANYWAY!!!). Trane was also the first cat I knew who had his hands on a drum machine! First he had the ELI Beat Box, and then he had the Synsonic Drums machine. Then, I remember in '85, my grandmother (God bless!) gave me $1,000 (I don't know where it came from but she hit me off for either my birthday or Christmas!). And of course, the first thing I bought was some equipment...AND A DRUM MACHINE!!! The first drum machine I had was a Boss Dr. Rhythm. That piece became my little homie! Before sampling was the thing, I use to run records over my beats and repeat it on tape with the pause button! I even started a crew named after the machine called THE BOSS MOB (I think I just liked the power of the word BOSS!! And BOSS MOB sounded dominant!!!). The members are too many to mention though we DID birth a group called THAT'S THEM (TAME ONE & EL THE SENSAI) who later changed their name to the ARTIFACTS by way of LORD JAMAR of Brand Nubian! During my days in grafitti I called myself ZASH. In the music field (mainly when I started beatboxing), I changed ZASH to ZONE and called myself CUTMASTER ZONE. Then later changed it to CHOPMASTER ZONE. THEN decided to get rid of the O.N.E. and left the Z. (I just had a thing for the letter Z.) And that's where CMZ comes from! As far as LYRICS go, I've been writing rhymes since Melle Mel's verses on "The Message". I use to write in the same fashion as The Furious Five! I had message raps, party raps, raps about girls, you name it. But I always wrote raps for OTHER people. I use to write for people who didn't even WANNA rap! I had friends who never knew I had raps FOR them! (lol) It's like it was all in my head! Until '85, after moving to Newark, my cousin Kell (aka Kool K.C. aka LUZE FC) and I came together with R-Trane (then Rich Luv) and Trev-O The Poet (also from Amsterdam projects) and formed a group called D.E.F. (Devastating Endurance Force!! we were also big Def Jam fanatics back then!!) I use to write LL Cool J style of rhymes for Kell (we actually won BATTLES with those rhymes!!). Then once we got tired of D.E.F. I went on to write for a high school friend of mine (Poo-Kay) who was ALSO Cool J influenced. But by THAT time I was on some Rakim/Just Ice/Biz Markie sh*t! So you can imagine, my lyrics were literally SICK!!! After a while, I started getting complaints about my rhymes being too difficult to say. (Meanwhile I was saying all these same rhymes myself in the lunchroom at school!!) I couldn't understand it! So at THAT point, I decided to say my OWN rhymes and be an M.C. The name RHINO describes my force of presence, but it actually came from a friendly discussion about what kind of animals we looked like. AND YOU CAN SEE WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THEY GOT TO ME!!! The name GRUFF I took on to describe my lyrical delivery (not my vocal!!). But since then, I've tried to shed this title but unfortunately it's already become a nickname by many!! (so I just gotta wear that one!) TO SUM IT UP: I'm the creator of the BOSS MOB which split into two groups: BOOM SKWAD (TAME ONE, DJ PORNO, KOOLMELLOW MAX 165, JAY BURNZ JAY, myself and MANY more!!!)& HIDDEN DESCENT (myself, R-TRANE, G.ROD, MAD ONE WALI, D!OCK, and MANY MORE!!!). I'm affiliated with grafitti crews like FC, NRG, & LTD through an old love of mine which is ART! Besides park jams and numerous recording sessions, my DJ skills are probably most remembered from working spots such as THE HYPERBOLIC LOUNGE (at Nightengale's on the lower east side, Manhattan) and THE PIPELINE (north Newark). I've done production for The ARTIFACTS ("Ingredients To Time Travel" That's Them LP 1997), TAME ONE ("Boom Skwad On Attack!" Crazee EP 2000), VITA VEE ("What's Goin' On?" Champagne's Constipation Compilation EP 1997). I've also done local production for REDMAN, Do It All (LORDS OF THE UNDERGROUND), RATED-R, & SUPREME C (ZOO CREW). My name and work has been honored twice in THE SOURCE MAGAZINE as well as EGO TRIP and BEAT DOWN MAGAZINE. You can catch me on the NEWARK HIP HOP: EPISODE 1 DVD and BEAT TO DEATH: VOLUME 4 CD/DVD. I've done production work for ATLANTIC RECORDS and have released my OWN projects and mix CD's such as "GRUFF...the jackmix", "DIRECT APPROACH", etc. AND THERE'S MORE TO COME!!! Stay tuned.....
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