Remembering Kenny McFadden

An interview with a New Zealand basketball and hip-hop great.

Earlier today, the great Wellington, New Zealand-based basketball player and coach Kenny McFadden passed away, aged 61. Over the forty years he spent connected with New Zealand, Kenny made an incalculable contribution to the local basketball scene and community, leaving behind a shining legacy.

Born in 1960, Kenny grew up in Lansing, Michigan, with future NBA legend Magic Johnson before playing basketball for Washington State University. In 1982, when New Zealand started allowing American basketball players to play for local clubs in the National Basketball League, Kenny was the first import hired by The Wellington Saints (then Exchequer Saints). During the eighties, he served as a player-coach and won four championships, before retiring in 1996 to focus on coaching and player development, which eventually lead to him mentoring the future NBA center Steven Adams.

Outside of basketball, Kenny was also a huge influence on the first generation of hip hop heads in the capital - and last year, we interviewed him for the first season of the Aotearoa Hip-Hop: The Music, The History, The People podcast series. In tribute to Kenny, I thought it would be fitting to share the full transcript of our conversation with him.

How did you get from playing basketball for Washington State University to ending up in Wellington, New Zealand, in the early eighties?

Well, I originally got my scholarship to play for Washington State University in the early eighties. I went out there, played basketball, of course, and ended up getting injured my last year out of college. I hit my head on the backboard versus Ohio State. I ended up only playing the last five games in my senior year. My coach called me into the office after the season had ended and said my chances of getting drafted and going into the NBA was slim because I was injured, you know? They really wanted to see me play, and there was a chance for me to go overseas. And of course, I said, I’m ready to go. He says, “There are two places you can go right away, Czechoslovakia or New Zealand.” So I said, “Well, who speaks English?” Two days later, I was on my way down to New Zealand.

You arrived here in 1982 as the first import player for The Wellington Saints (then the Exchequer Saints). Not long after, you met the first Wellington hip-hop DJ, Tee Pee, right?

Yeah. He was DJing at a small club called Doctor Johns. It was on Courtney Place, where the Reading Cinemas building is now. Our basketball team's sponsor, of course, was the Exchequer nightclub, which was run by Nick Mills. They played rock music at Exchequer, so I had some culture shock the first time I went up there.

There was only one place in the city where they played hip-hop, and that was Doctor Johns, with Tee Pee. It was an underage club because they didn’t sell alcohol. So it was nothing but a lot of little kids, but they had good music up there. I’d spend a lot of time up there before going on over to Exchequer. After a couple of years, they ended up hiring Tee Pee at Exchequer because all the brothers used to hang out at Doctor Johns, but Nick wanted us up at Exchequer. Basketball and rap are intertwined, you can't separate the two.

Your older brother worked as a DJ as well, didn’t he?

Yeah, in New York. He originally started in the mid-seventies in the disco era, before it evolved into rap because, as you know, Sugarhill popped off in the late seventies. I already had a couple of friends in high school who came from Queens. One of them, Reese, used to rap all the time. That was the first time I heard someone freestyle. After my brother went to New York, I asked him to start bringing back some of the radio on cassette tape. I was still at Washington State, and I used to bring the tapes to school.

When I went out to New Zealand, I told my brother that we had no [hip-hop] radio out here. So he used to mail me cassette tapes of New York radio. There was a lot of hip-hop starting in New York at that stage, and I was listening to it two weeks later, here in New Zealand. That gave me a bit of an advantage. I could give the tapes to Tee Pee and show him the real music.

Those tapes must have been worth their weight in gold at the time.

Oh yeah.

What did you think about Tee Pee as a DJ and a rapper at the time?

Yeah, he was good. He was a quick learner. Tee Pee was what we call a student of the game. As you can imagine, I had a few rhymes myself at the time. I used to talk to him about rap, give him mixtapes, and just introduce the guys to the music. I’d tell them about what my brother did when he was DJing, and how you can rap between songs. After all, that was how it all started. We used to work on a few rhymes, you know.

When the breakdancing started on Manners Mall and Cuba Street, we’d bring down the boombox and a microphone and do a bit of freestyling while the boys were out there breaking. So, it was a huge culture change happening here in Wellington, at the same time it was happening in New York City because I was only two weeks behind.

Tee Pee told me that Mighty Mic C started The Uncut Funk show on Radio Active 88.6 FM in Wellington, he used to go up and play some of those cassette tapes on the radio. Apparently, people used to tape it, and he’d hear them playing tapes of tapes around the city.

Well, I mean at the end of the day, you couldn’t find the music by yourself. You know, you go to any big city in the United States looking for music and you’d find the tapes being played on the streets. Everyone sold mixtapes and you did your own mixtapes on your boombox. Once again, I think we were in line with what everyone else was doing in the United States.

Actually, I think we were ahead of the curve on most cities in the United States. As you know, hip-hop started on the East Coast before it got to the West Coast. I think we were ahead of the curve on the West Coast, down under the Downunder. We were up to date on the music, which when I look back on it was incredible, to be able to be that far advanced. Like I want to keep over emphasising, it was in the now. It wasn’t what was happening five years ago.

In 1987, DJ Rhys B and Mighty Mic C organised the first-ever rap competition in New Zealand in a community hall in Taita. You and Tee Pee were the judges, right?

Yeah. It was large. It was extremely good. It gave me that home feeling. The crowd was jam-packed. I was calling my brother, telling him what was happening in New Zealand, and he couldn’t believe it. Of course, in those days you couldn’t livestream it. You had to dial the number and wait to have a conversation. They were throwing block parties; we were throwing block parties. It was a great atmosphere as far as I’m concerned.

What did you think about the early Wellington hip-hop groups like Upper Hutt Posse and Noise N Effect?

They were good. All the groups back in those days were good because they were original. They were creating their own styles. I think that is the biggest difference because, in those days, you couldn’t copy anyone else’s styles. You had to talk about who you were and where you came from. You also had the New Zealand accent which gave it a different flair. They had their own identities, which is very important.

Upper Hutt Posse was great. I knew the boys extremely well. They came out to entertain, and they came out as a group. Back in those days, it was about groups like Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. You didn’t get many individuals rapping. Then, of course, Run DMC came out as a duo. In the nineties, you started getting some individual rappers standing alone by themselves. When you talk about Upper Hutt Posse, you’re talking about a posse of guys who was putting in work which I think was raw and authentic.

Rest In Peace, Kenny McFadden (1960-2022)