The Showboys Thought “Drag Rap” Was Dead. The South Turned It Into Hip-Hop History

Some Hip-Hop records become hits. Others become foundational. And then they becoming iconic.

In 1986, Queens duo The Showboys, Orville “Buggs Can Can” Hall and Phillip “Triggerman” Price, released “Drag Rap” on Profile Records. The strange, cinematic record was inspired by the television series Dragnet, structured like a TV episode. With gangster themes, powered by an 808 bass, it would eventually become known simply as “Triggerman,” unbeknownst to the duo.

New York moved on. The South did not.

“Drag Rap” became especially key in Memphis and New Orleans, where pieces of the record were repeatedly played, sampled, chopped and reinterpreted. The Triggerman sound became embedded in Memphis rap and one of the fundamental building blocks of New Orleans bounce. T. Tucker and DJ Irv’s influential “Where Dey At?” used “Drag Rap,” and the sound continues through generations of Southern Hip-Hop. And that’s not all – Beyonce, Chris Brown and more have sampled it.

The craziest part? The Showboys initially had no idea any of this was happening.

For years, Hall and Price believed their record had disappeared. Then they got a mysterious phone call from Memphis and everything changed.

AllHipHop’s Chuck “Jigsaw” Creekmur talked with Orville “Buggs Can Can” about creating the record in Hollis, growing up alongside Jam Master Jay, arriving in Memphis like heroes and discovering that a song New York had forgotten was now part of the musical DNA of the South.

AllHipHop: I’ve known you for a long time and never knew you were one of the guys behind this legendary record.

Buggs Can Can: Me and Chuck go back all the way since I was head of marketing, marketing manager for Adidas, and we worked together a long time ago. But before Adidas, I had a Hip-Hop life.

I’m from Queens Village, but then was adopted into Hollis when I went to Junior High School 192. Jam Master Jay, God rest the dead, my man Jay, we met in band class. From there, man, Hip-Hop entered my soul.

Seeing Russell Simmons walking up and down Hollis Avenue putting up signs. I remember getting on the bus in high school and hearing “Sucker M.C.’s” and was like, “That’s Run. That’s Run-D.”

I’ve been in it a long time, Chuck.

AllHipHop: You also know something about the story of how Jam Master Jay became Run-DMC’s DJ.

Buggs Can Can: There was only a few people in the neighborhood that could bring their equipment to the park. In Hollis, it was Two Fifth Down. Jam Master Jay was a part of them, so they could bring their stuff to the park.

When Run-DMC wanted a DJ, they asked Smith because he was the main DJ for Two Fifth Down. He just got a job and was like, “Nah, I’mma do this job.”

They went and got Jay.

But Jay became the style because Jay was the one in the street. Jay was real. Even when we talk about junior high school, I don’t know why we felt like we were adults back then, but Jay was a man. He had the hat on, his father’s leather jacket out of his father’s closet, the Adidas with no laces. And that became style.

Look at God. Things work for a reason.

AllHipHop: Let’s get into “Drag Rap.” We’re talking 1986. Forty years later, what was the DNA of this record?

Buggs Can Can: We were already signed to Profile. We had two records out before the record that we’re celebrating 40 years, “Drag Rap.”

What happened was, in that era, people started taking television shows and making records. Everybody in Hip-Hop at that time, you wouldn’t use the same record, but you would join whatever the trend was.

So we were looking for our TV show theme that we could use.

One day I was leaving the crib and I heard Dragnet, the detective show. I had my hand on the door getting ready to leave the apartment. I heard that and backed up into the living room.

At the time, Doug Fresh’s “The Show” was out, and when they said, “Word, Rick, word,” and the 808 dropped right after, that blew our minds.

I was a beatboxer at the time too, so I started humming the Dragnet theme and doing that drop.

I was like, “Oh, it fit.”

I ran out the house and went and got Trigg.

AllHipHop: And you guys actually started building the record around your Jeep?

Buggs Can Can: We went and sat on the corner, Hollis Avenue, same block as Jam Master Jay. I had a red Jeep at the time. When you bang on it, it echoed like an 808.

We wrote the whole record, but we didn’t write a traditional rap record with 16-bar verses and eight-bar hooks.

We wrote a TV episode.

Dragnet was a gangster TV show. So first of all, we changed our names because there was always a Bugsy in any gangster show. My name was Can, and anybody that knows me, I never say I can’t. So my name was Can.

Can Can worked with Buggs. Buggs Can Can.

Phil D became Triggerman.

There goes our names.

Then we wrote a TV episode with an opening narrative, introducing the characters, then the conflict. Then we went to a commercial break.

AllHipHop: A rap record with an actual commercial break.

Buggs Can Can: Yes!

“Oh no, what happened next? For goodness sake, stay tuned to this commercial break.”

Back then there was the Wendy’s commercial, “Where’s the beef?”

And let me say this, Chuck. We made this whole record from scratch. Every note in this record was built by us.

We didn’t sample. We made the record from scratch.

Then the first person we brought the record to was Jam Master Jay. When Jay heard it, Jay was like, “Yo, y’all should put that soap whistle over the top.”

That’s how that happened.

AllHipHop: The record gets out, Mr. Magic plays it, and then what?

Buggs Can Can: We got it on the world premiere, Mr. Magic. Then it got on the Mr. Magic Rap Attack.

Then, Chuck, the record disappeared.

It was off the radio.

Back then, we didn’t have BDS and SoundScan and all of that. Hip-Hop was so East Coast, really New York. If it wasn’t playing in New York, you really didn’t think the record was playing anywhere else.

We weren’t on those tours, so we didn’t know other places were playing Hip-Hop.

We went back to the streets, Chuck. Hanging on Hollis Avenue every day, 40s, just doing our day.

AllHipHop: Meanwhile, something completely different was happening hundreds of miles away.

Buggs Can Can: We got a call from my brother who told us a promoter from Memphis called us. This was years later.

They had been searching for us for years and couldn’t find us because the record was the biggest record in Memphis.

They said they wanted us to come and do “Triggerman.”

We were like, “Triggerman? We didn’t make no record called Triggerman. What are you talking about?”

We called the promoter and the answering machine came on.

It was “Drag Rap.”

So we’re like, “That’s our record, but why is he calling it Triggerman?”

He told us, “Man, we’ve been searching for y’all for years.”

We didn’t know about none of this.

We just wanted to get out of Hollis.

AllHipHop: Then you arrive in Memphis. What happens?

Buggs Can Can: We got our Eight-Ball jackets on, Chuck, our New York Yankees hats, and we went to Memphis.

We got there and there were people at the airport with signs saying, “Welcome Showboys.”

And there were three white limos.

Yo, we blew!

We were like, “What’s going on?”

Think about it. We thought we had been out of the music business.

We go to this place, and a lady sees our Eight-Ball jackets and hats and goes, “Y’all not from here.”

“No, we’re The Showboys.”

Chuck, within 15 minutes the whole restaurant packed.

People came for autographs.

We said, “Y’all coming to the show, right?”

They were like, “Nah.”

We said, “What do you mean? Y’all came down here to see us.”

They said, “Man, when they play y’all record, they get to buck.”

AllHipHop: That’s where you see the Gangsta Walk.

Buggs Can Can: They did this dance called the Gangsta Walk.

The only way I can describe it, Chuck, it looked like a roller-skating rink. Twenty of them walking together, and they’re going to Gangsta Walk.

If you ain’t a gangster, don’t get in that. Get off the floor.

Then it comes on the radio saying, “Please don’t go down in the area of The Showboys show. We will add another show. It is too crowded.”

They’re talking about their whole downtown being too crowded!

People were parking their cars two miles away and walking.

The limo is going through thousands and thousands of people. The driver says, “Y’all want to go to the back door?”

We were like, “No. Go to the front.”

Because we thought the record was dead, Chuck.

Then Trigg yells out the top of the limo:

“GET BUCK! GET BUCK!”

Oh my God.

It was chaos downtown Memphis.

AllHipHop: But Memphis wasn’t the end of the discovery. You eventually drive into New Orleans.

Buggs Can Can: We came back to New York. Phil bought a Nova because we knew they liked old schools down there. We painted it, tricked out the rims. The paint was still wet when we left. We had bugs all in the paint.

We went to Memphis, Little Rock, Dallas, Houston, then New Orleans.

We’re going across that long bridge, both of our first times to New Orleans.

Chuck, think about a group that thought their careers were dead.

As we’re going across that bridge, every single record, every single song, fast, slow, medium, got our sample in it.

It became like the roux in gumbo.

That’s what Triggerman became to their music.

It blew our minds.

We got off the bottom of the bridge, saw somebody and asked them where that radio station was.

We didn’t even go to our hotel.

AllHipHop: You went straight to the station?

Buggs Can Can: Straight there.

There was a DJ named Wild Wayne on. We just walked into that studio and said, “Yo, we The Showboys.”

He looked at us like, “Yeah, right.”

I said, “The rhymes you’re about to hear are true.”

He said, “YO! YO! YO!”

He went crazy, turned his mic on.

We stayed in New Orleans for about two weeks doing little shows and getting to know the music and the people.

AllHipHop: Forty years later, how do you look at what Memphis and New Orleans did with something you created in Queens?

Buggs Can Can: I can’t thank both of those cities enough for keeping it around this long.

New Orleans and Memphis really got hold of it.

And now we’re finally getting to the point where we’re getting our rights back, and we’re able to come back out after 40 years.

Because we The Showboys, man.

When we do that record, Chuck, we do that record.

Now we’re going to come back out and start hitting the streets again and hitting some stages again.

We can’t thank New Orleans and Memphis and the South enough.

It’s the little record that could, bro.

It came out the same year as Run DMC’s Raising Hell.

That’s crazy.