We recently connected with Geechie Dan and have shared our conversation below.

Geechie , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I knew I wanted to get into Hip Hop when I was teenager in the early 80’s.

I was listening and recording snippets of Hip Hop Parties, block parties, park Jams, live performances of Hip Hop from late night radio shows that were popping up on the airwaves in the wee hours of the morning.

I started emulating the individuals on the tape and instead of saying their name ..I started saying my new adopted name “Geechie Dan”. I name came from the 1974 movie, “Uptown Saturday Night” with Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte who played the character, “Geechie Dan Buford”.

I started becoming popular in my neighborhood of St Albans/ Hollis Queens and becoming known as someone that was collecting these Cold Crush, Zulunation, Funky Four, Jazzy 5, Grand Master Flash, Furious 5 MCs, Doctor Rock and The Force MCs tapes from The Bronx and Harlem.

As time went on…I became passionate about having the full 60 or 120 minutes of a jam so I started networking and by the year of 1985, I had approximately 100 tapes.

Today in 2023, I have approximately 1000 tapes, CDs and mp3 files of Park Jams, Block Parties, Clubs,Live Performances, Freestyles, Radio Shows in the world from 1975 to Present Day

Geechie , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Geechie Dan and I’m currently a Co Chairman at the Hip Hop Hall Of Fame, I was the Former Executive Director of the National Hip Hop Museum in Washington DC.

I’m also a Global Brand Ambassador for several Hip Hop organizations and I currently have my radio show, “Planet Of The Tapes” on LL Cool J Rock the Bells Radio SiriusXM Channel 43 Tuesday night at Midnight where I play snippets from my collection of tapes!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I started out building my social media by first becoming friends with individuals I grew up with.

The 2nd thing I started doing was reaching out to individuals and groups all over the world that love Hip Hop Culture and joining these groups.

The 3rd thing I started doing was put up post that were related to what I was about which was the tapes. Once I posted information about the tapes, people started becoming friends with me.

The 4th thing was to use my Social media platforms to promote Hip Hop and that lead to me again becoming someone of Hip Hop interest that people needed to connect with

The 5th thing was to share all my posts to all the groups that I belong to. I belong to 300 groups on Facebook so I would share every post of mine to all these groups and into I become global

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

My mother and I were involved in the Jehovah Witness back in the 70’s and 80’s and she wouldn’t allow me to get involved with Hip Hop.

There were several incidents my mother threw out my Hip Hop clothing in the good will box or the garbage to discourage me.

My mother would do everything and anything to get me more involved with the Jehovah Witnesses. She put alot of peer pressure on me so that I would give up and several times I almost did

These tapes provided hope for me and got me through some dark days and perhaps could be the reason I fight and go so hard for my dream. I wanted to be successful in something I passionately enjoyed and that was Hip Hop!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Geechiedanofficial
• Facebook: Geechie Dan
• Twitter: Geechie Dan 100