12" - 1994 - BZ Music Recording
Let's talk about this hip-hop duo named Secret Invasion. In 1994, they released their first and only 12" called 'the Unknown Zone' on BZ Music Recording, a record label managed by Tom Mulreaney. Last time I saw their wax for sale on ebay, it was in 2017 and it was sold for 1225 US$... crazy... isn't it ?
For those who don't know Secret Invasion, it consisted of David Charles aka Righteous and Myron Brinkley aka Profet, hailing from North West Philadelphia, Pottstown PA also known as P-Town.
All the tracks of the 12" were produced by Tyrell Wilkerson aka Blade and Todd Wright aka Cheese. I've been lucky to talk with David Charles recently and he gave me more details about their story.
Righteous : "Everything in the group started from Myron Brinkley. Myron was called the profet, he was one of the most popular rappers in the Pottstown area. Myron was a writer and he was also a thinker and a reader. Myron was a solo rap artist, I was a local dancer in the Pottstown community. I had a passion for dancing and some rapping.. I heard Myron was the best out there.. so me and a friend name Ernston Clemons approached Myron at a local community center called the Ricketts center... we asked to audition for him to be his dancers... he told us to meet him at his house on Monday of the next week... so we left and practiced to get ready for the audition. Monday came and we went to Myron’s house. We auditioned and he said cool. You guys are good. Let’s do this.
So after that, we started to try to book shows at different places in the tri state area... Philadelphia, Maryland and Jersey etc... but we needed a name to promote... we thought about it a lot, and because we were from the suburbs 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia, we thought our talent was kept secret. But we knew we had something special and we thought we would invade the world with our sound. So everywhere we went, people liked what we did but they never heard of Pottstown. So we settled on the name 'Secret Invasion'.
Myron became a huge influence on my life in every way. A mentor, best friend, a brother. But it wasn’t until my sophomore year in high school that Myron asked me to write a rap. I was like no I’m not a rapper I’m a dancer. He said you’ve been around me long enough write a rap. So I did and it was called 'Scotty I don’t want none'. This was about saying no to doing drugs. Where we come from People strung out on drugs, alcohol, crack... Everything you could think of. So 'Scotty I don’t want none' came from probably thinking about old KRS and BDP sayings of beam me up to Scotty.
I wrote the rap in between Myron’s first verse and last verse. Myron likes it and then he said your my partner for now on... so I started rapping more. That’s how Secret Invasion and the name really came about... when I started rapping with him... We were officially a group.
Tyrell and Todd Wright were a few years older than Myron and myself. Tyrell was a local producer and beat maker. We all looked up Tyrell because he may beat on MPC and other forms of making tracks. He had a long history of working with different artist and a local town called Norristown Pennsylvania. So we all knew of Tyrell and his nickname was Blade... because he could scratch records. Tyrell was like a local beat making celebrity in our area.
Todd was the local hip-hop head and was also my cousin. He had a ear for music as well. We brought Todd in to help with remixing the songs. Everyone new of each other and liked each other, this project just gave us a chance to work together.
Todd and Tyrell weren’t part of the group... the group was more Myron and myself but blade was a huge part of everything we did, he was the one who made our tracks... blade and a guy named Rex were the ones who helped us to start producing records. Rex played keys and was good with-sounds and laying things down... Rex and Blade were like best friends... that’s where our sound originated from Rex and Blade.
Pottstown is not that big, We probably live 2 to 3 miles from each other maybe even a mile. Pottstown is a small suburb 30 mins from Philadelphia. 22,000 people, maybe more back then.. but there was one area called downtown which was 2 miles east of the place we called Penn Village. I was born and raised in Penn Village which is a housing project, more low income. A lot of us came from that area and then migrated downtown to more single homes or row homes.We all lived downtown during the time of this creation of 'Unknown Zone'."
Mad Props to David Charles, thanks for your time !
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