West Coast Fil-Am Funk

“I go by DJ Apollo, Original Invisibl Scratch Picklz, Triple Threat Crew, from San Francisco,” says Apollo Novicio when I asked him how he’d introduce himself to someone who didn’t know him. Seriously though, who were we kidding? Any Hip Hop head worth his oversized headphones knows who DJ Apollo is—one of the pioneers of turntablism who rolled with a crew so dope, they were asked to retire from joining the Disco Mix Club (DMC) competition because they were just too good, nobody wanted to even try to go up against them anymore. And, guess what, he’s Pinoy too. But in case you’ve been in a cave all your life, and the name still doesn’t ring a bell, read on.

Back In The Day

Apollo first got his hands on a turntable when most of us were struggling to stay on our first two-wheeler bicycles. “My brothers and sisters collected a lot of records, and I used to go through ‘em and during family parties, I’d put them in an order that I thought would keep the party going,” he shares. “I didn’t even know I was DJing back then. We had one turntable, so what I’d do was when a record was done, I’d try to take it off as fast as I could, so the party wouldn’t stop.” It was love at first sight, for sure. He couldn’t get enough of it. He would sit there and listen to the songs and sing along and just be fascinated by it. Lucky for us, this love was going to be everlasting.

In the 7th grade, his friend invited him over, and there he saw, not one but two turntables, something in between them, and a milk crate filled with records. “I looked at it like ‘Wow, you can actually play two at the same time?’” he says. “I immediately knew what to do with everything and realized the party never had to stop!” That was when he started mixing, and by the tenth grade, he was already tinkering with the sound we now know as turntablism. “We started moving the record back and forth and realized, ‘Wow, you can make a scratching sound with this and you can be just like an instrument with this.’” He and Mix Master Mike, who he went to high school with, would cut class and go home and scratch all day. “We were so amazed with it, like, we knew you could DJ with it, but you could also be a guitarist, a drummer, or play any other instrument with it,” he says. Although it started in New York, they were the first around their parts to start scratching and start doing more than just play records.

Scribble, Cut, Flare

“Like I said, Mike and I used to cut class and just practice all day. We’d go one at a time and (we would be) always fighting about whose turn it was,” he laughs. “So finally we just decided to go at the same time, and using the same record, I’d grab one part, he’d grab another and we just started doing it at the same time.” The result amazed them so much, they wanted to keep it a secret at first—they knew they were on to something great.

On the other side of town was another DJ doing something similar. In the early 80’s everyone had DJ crews, and there was a local scene in the Bay Area and everyone was battling each other. Qbert, Mike and Apollo were all in different ones, and it was in about 1989 when Mike and Apollo started hooking up with Qbert. After Qbert won the 1991 DMC World Championship battle, he came home and they decided to form a group. “Mike and I were performing our Peter Piper routine and Qbert saw it and he was amazed with that. We were also so amazed with Qbert so we decided to form a three-man group. That’s pretty much how it started.” At that time, they weren’t even called the Invisible Scratch Picklz yet. In 1992, a year after they were formed, DMC opened up their competition to DJ groups and they decided to enter. In 1993, they finally had a name, but why that one? “We were a bunch of jokesters back then,” recalls Apollo. “We would sit around thinking of crazy names that just didn’t make sense. We were being goofy little kids, and the name Invisible Scratch Picklz came up. That was it.”

It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop

“When Hip Hop started it was so conscious and now I don’t like how the substance in the music is really not there anymore. It’s all about selling records and there’s nothing creative about the music anymore. Everyone’s talking about the same thing. I don’t like the way it’s progressing into that,” he says about the difference between Hip Hop then and now. Everyone and they momma says that though, so what’s he doing about it? On his end, he tries to keep the essence of Hip Hop by educating people through playing things they don’t usually hear or songs he thinks they might be missing out on. “That’s what I try to do, but you also have to move with the times. People wanna hear what they wanna hear so I guess I just try to be more well-rounded. It’s not just about picking up Serato and saying you’re a DJ. There are just so many other aspects to it.”

The best DJs, in my opinion, listen to more than just the genre of music they are known for, and sure enough, when I asked Apollo what other music he listens to he said he was a big disco head. He also loves vintage soul, rock, latin, reggae and rock. “I like a little bit of everything—which is what Triple Threat tries to preach.” Triple Threat, another crew he’s associated with, is composed of Apollo, Vinroc and Shorkut— three Filipino-American DJs with distinctly different styles. “We created that group because when turntablism took off, it wasn’t well-rounded anymore. Everyone was just scratching and doing tricks and not doing anything else.”

Worldwide Underground

As someone who grew up right smack in the middle of Hip Hop’s formative years, what does Apollo think of the love it’s now getting worldwide? “In Europe there’s a big scene that’s not necessarily Top 40 or commercial. There’s a lot of local Hip Hop and it’s great,” he says, “In Japan too. Everywhere, actually. It’s a force to be reckoned with, that’s for sure.” What makes Hip Hop such a global thing? What makes people everywhere from Germany to Hong Kong, from Manila to Ecuador embrace this genre, this mentality, this lifestyle that originated in New York? “It’s something I think all youth can relate to. Every culture gets it. They hear it and feel an attachment to it right away”, says Apollo. “It’s in the beat. It’s in the vibe. It speaks our voice.”

The thing about Hip Hop is that it is not static. It will keep on moving as long as there are drivers taking it somewhere new, somewhere fresh, somewhere that makes listeners say “Dayum!” Apollo was and still is one of those drivers. “The first time I came out here, nobody really understood the music. Everyone kind of just stared like, ‘What is this?’” he says. “I’m really happy that the Philippines is catching up. It’s definitely here to stay.”