The Intangibles were The Grand Glorious Chuck Dukie, The Hot Merchant and Onasuss Maximus...

The group formed in a rather odd way. It's somewhat a fateful, act of God-sort-of affair. Me, Chad B., or Onasuss Maximus the Antagonist when rhyming, met the Grand Glorious Chuck Dukie, secret identity Charles, in 1983 on a street called Sudbury in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Chuck was the dude I knew to start rhyming first; circa 1993. We would freestyle purely for fun before that, but no one really started seriously rhyming until Chuck met the Primates at Shaker Heights High School. BLG, Reno Raynes, Sciencimatic, M-Double-A-L, Tha Nigga K, and shortly after, Dukie himself. Those dudes were all tight on the rhymes and we became real cool. They were the impetus to start Chuck rhyming. Chuck got a four-track and the Gemini mixer with the four sample banks as his first studio. You had to be precise with that thing. No waveform to view on a computer screen for ease of looping minus the pop. His dad had all of the old school hits, so Chuck got to digging. Looking to upgrade, Chuck worked mad hours at a gas station to get a MPC2000. On that machine, the boy got really busy making some ahead of his time hits. Chuck Dukie's demo is a bona fide classic. I lived down at the dorm at Cleveland State and we had mad MCs too. B-Roc and Black Male as 2/3 of Mental Ka$e, J-Akshun and Sean Corleone as Mental Chess, Crazy Steve the Barber, Rich London and those T-Dot boys, the Evildoers, Rafeeq Washington and a gang of others, myself included, were on some freestyle dojo shit. It really worked to hone the skills as we would go up to Mekkah Sunshine's radio show on WCSB and freestyle almost every weekend. We'd also steal a shitload of records. We were really on some Hip-Hop shit keeping it real as fuck at the time. I ended up moving to Washington, DC in 1998 to go to Howard University, the real HU, as an exchange student for a year. I get there and meet a gang of muthafuckas that, while weren't necessarily really trying to be MCs and pursue careers as rappers, loved to fucking freestyle and were quite good at it. Chris Adams is a freestyle dynamo and observant comedic asshole all in one. He is definitely the wrong dude to battle. Rob Bacon, CJ, Kevin, and a slew of mostly New York dudes would be in front of Slowe Hall on some serious rhyming shit. Because Howard is so international, you had to be on it, cause you were really representing your city. I came with the polished mercurial tongue from Cleveland; ask if you doubt me, step if you see me. I remember the homie Eric from Belgium would flip it in French and in Anglish. Howard also served as a serious rhyme dojo. One day, this one dude from Cincinnati who I had seen around often but never really conversed at length with, Jabari, jumped in the cipher and came quite tight. I was shocked cause he really ain't look or seem like the MC type. Dude was too magnanimous for that ego-driven role. I dapped him up and we stayed in touch. Instead of going back to Cleveland at the end of the academic year I decided to stay in DC. I had a decent job at George Mason and was able to stack a few, so I purchased a 61-key Triton and went to work on the beats. I randomly ran into Jabari on the streets and he says that he had been thinking of getting some equipment himself. Me and him ended up doing some song called "Throat Punches" which was horrible and stupid, but by making it we learned that we did work well together. After coming over and checking out my Triton, he went and got the 88-key Triton. Baller. Chuck Dukie moved out to DC in 2002 in the apartment I was staying at in Landover, MD at the time. We lived right in King's Square and it was perfect for making music since no one ever called the police. Chuck's MPC wasn't working properly, but he was quick to learn the Triton. Chuck and Jabari got along cool, so we decided we should all start the band up. The name "The Intangibles" was inspired by the philosophies of MC Hammer, as we, like he, knew ourselves unable to be touched. A funny thing was that Jabari himself really never had a rap name. At first he was "Legend", but that lasted for like, 3 weeks. Then he became "Hot Merchandise" or "The Hot Merchant," both of which I thought were dope, but he never kept to those. It's not of much consequence as he never says his name on the whole album anyway. As I stated previously, the guy's way too humble to be an MC. The original plan was to make a song a week, but that turned into a song every two months or so. We did however, record many beats, but just proved too lazy to record vocals. When we did do the tracks, our ritual was to get some decent vodka, usually Stolichnaya, and some cranberry juice and like mulattoes, mix 'em. Our rule concerning vocals was one take. No punch-in bullshit. If you couldn't spit the rhyme then you had to adjust it accordingly until you could. Imagine how this could hinder an MC on stage attempting to spit rhymes one hasn't the dexterity of tongue to say. As we got drunker, this could often result in many takes. Chuck had the record with 58. Sometimes the liquor worked perfectly as was the case on the song "Hooch." After we completed a track we'd record it to MiniDisc and go out. The usual location to party was Adams Morgan. The Common Share (R.I.P.) mostly. On rare occasions we'd hit up Dream. We never really pushed the album even though most people seemed to like it. We almost did it. Husky Records, was a legal entity, we were ready to go, but like so many other farts in the breeze, it didn't amount to shit. When I went to Tokyo in 2002, I passed out about 200 CDs for free, so maybe we're large over there as I haven't been back since and wouldn't know. We are though, a hit in Saipan. I moved into DC and everyone just seemed to get busy with life and kinda said "the hell with the rap game." Such is life. We're all still real cool though. Who knows? Maybe we'll start the band back up...