They’re still number one in the 631.
Rap pioneers JVC Force put the suburbs on the hip-hop map with the iconic anthem “Strong Island” in the late 1980s — and their funk-filled ode to Long Island has new life stretching all the way across the pond.
“People have come up to me and were telling me ‘you do not know how much that song meant to us,” member AJ Rok, who moved from Westchester to Islip as a little kid, told The Post.
Rok and partner B-Luv recently reunited — nearly 37 years after “Strong Island” was released — and embarked on a fall mini-tour in Europe where fans are clamoring for old-school hip-hop.
“Love has never ceased overseas. I probably do six [foreign] interviews a year,” Rok said before boarding a flight to a recent JVC show in Amsterdam.
“Strong Island” meaningfully changed things closer to home, however, as the group helped differentiate Long Island from the city in a hallmark first for the Bronx-born genre.
“People didn’t really know there were rappers from Long Island at the time,” said Rok.
Beating the boroughs
The city scene hadn’t played nice with outsiders from the early 1980s on, according to Archie Snowden, a hip hop influence of the time who’s now producing a documentary on LI rap history.
“The guys in the city, they went out of their way to block [Long Island artists] out,” Snowden said.
“A lot of those guys weren’t even saying they were from Long Island. They were saying they were from Brooklyn and Queens; otherwise, they weren’t going to get any recognition.”
Rakim was one of the first to boldly divide the two when the Wyandanch-born artist rapped that he was “rough enough to break New York from Long Island” in the 1986 track “My Melody.”
Public Enemy, whose core members Flava Flav and Chuck D bonded at Nassau County’s Adelphi University, also started coining the phrase and dropped it in the rap “Rebel Without a Pause” a year later.
“That’s what we sampled,” said Rok, whose real name is AJ Woodson.
“People didn’t really know Public Enemy was from Long Island at the time. When we did ‘Strong Island,’ it gave identity to those who came after us,” he added of groups like De La Soul of Amityville.
Embracing their less gritty habitat proved to be the right move as the record was being spun tons at local college stations like Adelphi and Hofstra University.
College radio was the place to be back in the day, as future game changers like Hempstead’s Busta Rhymes and his group Leaders of the New School used to take calls from the studios, according to Rok.
Snowden said “Strong Island” was the catalyst that “started to wake folks up in the music industry” to the vast talents waiting for their moment just a few miles beyond the five boroughs.
“Celebrities started paying attention,” he added. “Michael Rapaport still talks about JVC Force and what they did.
“There seems to be a resurgence now,” Rok said. “That will open up a lot of doors for us.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
