“That’s what diggers are like…they don’t give a fuck about any of that shit and will do anything to score some heat.”

Cosmo Baker: One story that comes to mind is about this old pet food store that I used to pass by while walking from my house into town. I used to pass this spot all the time and I never even thought twice about it. One day I was walking by and they had a few milk crates outside. I stopped and flipped through them and pulled some heat. Immediately I had to go inside and see what the real score was. I’m inside this place and it’s a mess. It’s stinking of cat piss, shit, and all sorts of terrible animal odors. I swear it was one of the worst smells ever. So I go in the back and there are cardboard crates of vinyl hidden in this back room and I’m sorting through the entire thing with my shirt over my nose.

“I go in the back and there are cardboard crates of vinyl hidden in this back room and I’m sorting through the entire thing with my shirt over my nose.”

The way that the crates were, you had to get down on your knees to sort through them. Within a few minutes I’m covered with cat hair and kitty litter that’s scattered all over. But then I started pulling out some bangers. I first pulled Harlem River Drive. And then right after I pulled out an entire collection of Strata East records. Most of the records were in pretty good condition, but some of them I had to salvage because they had kitty litter caked onto the sleeves. Some of the shit I pulled couldn’t be saved but you know I had to grab them anyway. I pulled the records that I wanted and brought them up to the dude and he was like, “$1 a record.” I said, “Okay, sure.” It’s a dirty job sometimes but you got to do it. And that’s what diggers are like…they don’t give a fuck about any of that shit and will do anything to score some heat.

“There were little dust mites everywhere. After our first time digging there, we were blowing black snot at the end of the day.”

DJ Shame: It was at a Jamaican record store. I was with my boy Sean from the Vinyl Reanimators. He found this place in New York where you had to know the people to get inside. In the back, they had a special door that you’d lift up to go to the basement. You had to climb down a ladder to get to the basement and it was full of 45s that had been there for years. There were little dust mites everywhere. After our first time digging there, we were blowing black snot at the end of the day. Every other time we went down there we put face masks on and we’d dig all day. The 45s stunk. Even after getting them home, they still had an odor for quite some time. But we got some good shit out of that place.

“Every other time we went down there we put face masks on and we’d dig all day.”

It was three dollars for each 45. They also had a shitload of different 12s from Grand Groove records, with stuff like T Ski Valley. They had all the titles sealed, just boxes of them. The only title they didn’t have was T-Ski Valley’s “Catch the Beat”, which was one of his big songs. Apparently, before we discovered this spot, it used to be called Derrick’s Records. The guy that owned Derrick’s owned Grand Groove records. Grand Groove was putting out hip hop records in the late 70’s and early 80’s, so there were tons of extras in the basement. We’d buy a shitload of those, take them down to the Sound Library, and sell them for twice as much as we paid for them. We’d flip money real quick.