Electro pioneer Man Parrish sits down with me for a wildly candid, funny, and revealing conversation about the birth of New York’s early-’80s electronic sound—and how his tracks helped give breakdancing and hip-hop their first synthesized soundtrack.
We start with the origin story behind “Hip Hop, BeBop (Don’t Stop)”—made on an 8-track in his apartment, inspired by nights at the Funhouse with Jellybean Benitez (and a certain skanky Madonna tee). Manny explains how the barking in the clubs made it onto the record, why the title mixed “hip hop” (the dance) with “bebop” (the music), and how documenting the scene on record made it explode.
He breaks down the studio hustle of the era: cheap overnight sessions, sharing gear, and a tiny circle that ended up cutting a huge slice of New York dance history—Arthur Baker, John Robie, Shannon, Freeze, and more. We get inside stories on his production aliases (Two Sisters, COD, IRT) and the classic “Boogie Down Bronx,” including how that now-iconic phrase was coined and why the Museum of the City of New York credited him for it.
Manny remembers playing Studio 54 (including the insane entrance lowered from the ceiling, white-out dry ice, and a post-show hallway invite from Michael Jackson that led to a “Bad”-era remix). He talks candidly about being constantly ripped off by labels, why his résumé is stacked while his bank balance wasn’t, and how radio station IDs in his robot vocoder voice became a new kind of “payola” that pushed his records.
We dive into definitions: what New Yorkers then called hip hop (the electro dance tracks) vs. what the world later called rap, and how terms like techno got attached to sounds after hearing his “Techno Tracks.” Manny also shares how he still innovates today, using AI-based voice models to transform his own vocals for new house projects.
Other gems: the early porn-soundtrack club play that landed him a record deal, clothing-rack label politics that created the Two Sisters name, glitter-drenched stage shows, and why he sees sound as shapes and objects (a form of synesthesia) before he ever records.
If you care about where electronic dance music came from—808s, vocoders, street culture, art-school mayhem, and the moment club-kids became creators—this is essential oral history. Hit LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and drop your favourite Man Parrish track in the comments
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