Set It Off

Rico: Hoya, when did you first start coming around and going to shows? How old were you?
Hoya: When I was 15, and I’m 28 now! Used to chill out, me and M, we used to go bombing all the time and we met niggas through bombing. We’d go bombing, run into some dudes, they all knew each other. Basically it ended up being Jere and some other dudes later on. You know people started putting who and who was together and it ended up, they knew who M was...it just happened to be they was hardcore dudes—some of ‘em. We were from Corona, they were from the Heights and then, we just clicked. We got the music connection, the neighborhood connection, the graffiti connection, so we started chillin.

Rico: Seems like you were a hip-hop kid before you were into hardcore.
Hoya: (laughs) Fifty-fifty. It was like me, MQ, Double O, Ezec—well, Ezec I met later on—it was me, Double O, the guys from Corona. We was the Corona boys and all the rest of the dudes was the Heights. Everybody knew who MQ was ‘cause he was all-city.



Rico: When did you meet Scot E. Banks and start hanging out at CBs before things changed?
Hoya: First people I met was Jere, Bundy, Ronny and Ritchie who wound up being my drummer in Dmize. That was when me and MQ was walkin’ around bombing and we went by the Heights and people saw us bombing, “Yo, what are you writing? What are you writing? Yo, this is MQ,” and that’s how we met everybody. Then we started hanging with Scot E. When me, Double O, MQ and Scot E. started mixing, that was when it started getting serious.

Rico: But the idea was to be sober for a minute.
Hoya: Yeah, yeah. No drugs or nothing cause they was on some soldier shit, like yo, we got people rolling up shooting at us whether they be hanging out drunk or high or whatever they’re gonna get caught. So the idea was like trying to be a little more militant about how we were doing our thing but it didn’t last that long. But that was when people started seeing that the group should organize itself a little more, or that we had enough people to make something. And you have enough hype or whatever, enough of a rep or something to make it serious.

Rico: I have to say, in the beginning, when we first met, we were family. I didn’t have a place to go, and I stayed at your house. You know what that means. So, I mean, on that, you were a cool motherfucker.
Hoya: My outlook, I was one of the few lucky dudes who had a family together. I had a family that had my back, good or bad. A lot of people don’t have that. I know what I got. But, my family being the way they are, also could never turn anybody away. Because the fam don’t see a bad person, they first see, “What went wrong to somebody to do what they did?” And that’s how everybody should think. Because, can you imagine painting a picture about somebody when you don’t know them? You know, Rico said that, E said that, when everybody had tough times or whatever, “Well, everybody, yo, come crash at my house.” It was something I never had to ask. Cause you know, knowing my mother, how she was and she is, and my family was like, “No no no no. You got nowhere to stay, you stay with us.” Because we know what it is, God forbid one of us is homeless. We know what we would want people to do for us. We were kids. At the time, you think you’re a man, but you’re 15, 16 years old. They let all of us be men, but still took care of us at the same time.
Rico: So I hear you are doing movies now.
Hoya: Trying to do the movie thing. Raptorious is an underground horror movie. Kamal, from the Jerky Boys, is directing movies now. Basically wrote a part for me, a pretty decent part. So I’m doing a little bit of that! And trying to open up a tattoo shop in Queens. It’s part of our lifestyle, the tattoo game, the music game. So, we’re trying to make a mecca shop of tattooing in Queens. There’s no place in the city and in Long Island and we wanna lock down Queens.