Nearly five years into The Combat Jack Show, Reggie Ossé is at the peak of leveraging his knowledge of the Hip Hop industry into a still-growing podcast. While his experience as an entertainment lawyer for the likes of Jay Z and DJ Clark Kent may have put him on the map in the industry, Ossé’s roots in 1980s New York continue to bleed into his interviews and media appearances.

Speaking with HipHopDX’s Dana Scott, Combat Jack recalled spending time with Keith Haring in the iconic visual artist’s studio and observing the amalgam of cultures in ’80s New York firsthand.

“It’s funny because my room-mate at Georgetown Law…from Spanish Harlem, his best friend, or one of his best friends, was a cat named Adolfo, from Spanish Harlem,” Combat Jack said. “And Adolfo was Keith Haring’s assistant. So those of us talking about how ill New York was, whenever we would get a break we would just get in the car, drive down to New York, and the first spot we would go to was Keith Haring’s studio man, and blow some trees with him, like, ‘Ahh, we back home.’ The culture in New York was so vibrant. There was no reason for you to not be cultured. There was everything. You’d go to a club like Danceteria, and one floor you’d see Madonna. On the next floor you’d see the Beastie Boys and the Punk Rock scene, and another floor it was Hip Hop. There was no delineation between genres.”

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