Founder Alonzo Williams Genre old school hip hop R&B Founded 1984 | Distributor(s) Macola Records (U.S.) Country of origin United States | |
Location Los Angeles, California | ||
Kru-Cut is an American record label formed by Alonzo Williams in 1984 during the formation of his group the World Class Wreckin' Cru in hopes of the group gaining a status and being able to make money. The Kru-Cut label struck a label with Macola Records to help to distribute music and products of the group. Lonzo a club owner of one of the famous nightclubs in LA called Eve After Dark decided to do his music production within the nightclub because he couldn't afford an expensive studio so he had to his production within the small, dusky studio behind the back of the nightclub.
Contents
History
One of the first productions by the group when they were first known as The Wreckin Cru was a song called "Slice" performed by DJ Yella and Cli-n-Tel. The song was very popular among the nightclubers and "Slice" would go on to earn street credibility and would go on to sell 5,000 copies in LA, which at the time was a very amazing achievement in that particular period. 5,000 units of 12" vinyl singles retailing at the 1984 standard MSRP of $3.99 was considered "Ghetto Gold", a substantial achievement for the early days of the Los Angeles scene. Distribution largely saturated local malls in southern and central California. The most common way of purchasing the vinyl 12" was at chain stores Musicland, Warehouse Music stores and Sam Goody. The most popular record stores at the time.
Inspired by Afrika Bambaataa and his influential electro song "Planet Rock" and the whole electro period on the East Coast and also seeing what the underground rappers on the West Coast such as Egyptian Lover and LA Dream Team were doing Lonzo decided to fuse the electronic sound into their sound. The songs "Surgery" and "Juice" were very popular 12 inch street records and exemplified music elements of Kraftwerk. Those singles convinced Lonzo to do an album which eventually became World Class.
The World Class album would gain cult status on the underground West Coast hip hop scene and helped to define electro hop and the World Class Wreckin Cru became one of the most popular hip-hop groups on the West Coast. Although the group and the album attained cult status unfortunately they would never reach huge mainstream popularity and the album is virtually unknown to this day.
Macola records would drop Kru-Cut because the record label felt they were taking a huge risk on the group and Macola records were not a steady, well connected record label. This led to Lonzo striking a deal with Epic records to distribute Kru-Cut music. Cil-n-tel would leave the group after the group signed the deal with Epic records this led to Lonzo replacing Cil-n-tel with Shakespeare which led to their last album Rapped in Romance which gained cult appeal but was less popular than World Class which forced Macola records to distribute their material. Also around this time Lonzo and Dre began producing for Ice Cube and Sir Jinx Dre's cousin who at time were in the Cru in Action.
Dr. Dre and Yella would leave the group in fall of 1986 over financial mismanagement so they sought an opportunity with Eazy-E & eventually became NWA. Lonzo would continue on with a new group World Class Wreckin Kru along with forming a new record label called Techno Kut records. Also Lonzo enjoyed moderate mainstream success with "Turn Off The Lights" featuring Dr. Dre's ex-girlfriend Michel'le.
Techno Kut records was an extension of Kru-Cut with collaboration from Unknown DJ and led to Lonzo Williams to recruiting hip-hop talent such as DJ Battlecat, The Mistress, Professor X and a few others. Professor X typified the Techno sound pioneered by Juan Atkins and his records became relatively well-liked and profitable which led to the birth of the ghettotech and electroclash movement.