The Oral History of the Tunnel

The story of the biggest club in hip-hop history, as told by the people who lived it.

The year was 1993. Jessica Rosenblum, NYC party promoter and arbiter of downtown cool, was looking for a permanent home for her Sunday night rap party, Mecca. It would be a venue for Funkmaster Flex, the DJ she managed at the time, to expand his following. As luck would have it, Peter Gatien, the godfather of NYC nightlife, had a year prior acquired a freshly remodeled 80,000-square-foot nightclub, originally the historic Terminal Warehouse Company Central Stores Building (1890-91), where entire train cars would park and unload. The name of the space became synonymous with the function: the Tunnel.

Rap was in its adolescent phase, a marginalized teenager with energy to burn and people to piss off.

Thousands of young fans arrived every week to run the gauntlet of security between the sidewalks of the West Side Highway and the long, narrow venue on 12th Ave. and 27th St. The shields of the 10th Precinct never stopped hassling them, and the kids never stopped coming because Mecca was the only party that mattered.

This was where the records were breaking, where the bottles were popping, where everybody who was anybody in hip-hop had to be. Though maybe the blue suits were onto something—talk to anyone about the Tunnel and eventually you’ll get to the ugly parts: the beatdowns and snatched chains, the razors tucked inside hat brims.

How did this hip-hop party become one of the most successful nights in the history of American nightlife? Talk to enough of the participants and a story emerges: As hip-hop ascended from the underground to the top of the charts, the party moved from downtown soiree to career-making event. The Tunnel made history.

The Players

Everyone is listed with his or her relationship to the Tunnel first, followed by their current title.

Jessica Rosenblum – promoter/event producer/doorgirl; owner of JRose Agency and JRosenblum Events
Peter Gatien – club owner
Funkmaster Flex – DJ/promoter; HOT97 radio personality
Cipha Sounds – DJ; HOT97 radio personality
Chris Lighty – security/doorman/promoter; head of Violator Management (deceased)
Joie Manda – doorman/promoter; president of Urban Music at Interscope Records
DMX – performer; rapper

Prodigy – performer; rapper
Juvenile – performer; rapper
Jadakiss – performer; rapper
Glen Beck – security; co-owner of Emissary Security Group
Rob Scagnelli – bartender; manager of adult nightclubs in the NY area
Derrick Parker – NYPD officer; author of Notorious C.O.P., and co-owner of Emissary Security Group
Mimi Valdés – journalist; founder of Mimi Media Inc.
Michael Rapaport – clubgoer; actor

The Foundation

Funkmaster Flex:

I met Jessica in 1990. She used to organize the parties that Kid Capri and Clark Kent would spin at. They were making a name for themselves, getting big.

I started to ask around: “Who is doing those parties?” Clark Kent did a couple of Jessica’s parties, and then he got a manager; Kid Capri used to do all of Jessica’s parties, and then he got a manager.

I figured if I could do a couple of her parties, I would let her manage me. She put me in those rooms to prove myself.

She brought light to me.

Jessica Rosenblum:

I would say being a woman—particularly back then—was a bigger issue in hip-hop culture than my being white.

I would be saying hi to a guy I know on, say, 125th Street, and the girl he was with would be giving me a stank, stank face, like, “Yo, who’s that white bitch you’re talking to?” All they had to say was “That’s just Jessica.”

Cipha Sounds:

The Tunnel was bigger, had more security.

There was more money to be made—the bigger bar turned it into a real business, and that’s how Jessica pulled me into the security side of it.

We didn’t think of it as “I’m the head of security” or “I’m the co-promoter.”

It was Jessica’s thing, and I was her friend. But if you wanted to come into the Tunnel, you were going to have to deal with me. If there was an issue, they’d call me over to resolve it quickly.

Funkmaster Flex:

Mecca was a party that never stayed in one space for long, so [the first time it was held at the Tunnel], I thought it would be there until the next space.

But the club worked for a couple reasons: I was the biggest DJ at the time, Jessica was the biggest promoter, and Peter was the biggest club owner.

Joie Manda:

My first memory of the Tunnel—I went there on a Sunday, when the party was called Mecca.

Jessica Rosenblum was the promoter, Funkmaster Flex was the DJ.

Chris Lighty:

Jessica is the original hip-hop hipster.

She’s this nice Jewish girl, and you just wouldn’t think she had a love for hip-hop, for nightlife, when you first came across her.

She was able to mix it up with everybody, and everybody felt comfortable coming to that party.

Jessica Rosenblum:

Hip-hop wasn’t part of mainstream culture like it is now; it was considered undesirable.

On top of that, it was very difficult for clubs to make money on a Sunday night.

They obviously weren’t going to give me Friday or Saturday, which were their big nights, so if I could say, “Hey, I can make you money on a Sunday,” they were going to be more open-minded to do hip-hop.

Jessica Rosenblum:

Everybody knew my name; it was like, “Oh, okay. It’s the white girl that throws all the hip-hop parties.” I was the original doorgirl at Nell’s, where I supported hip-hop by letting in people like Russell Simmons and the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J—they loved the downtown scene; they were way ahead of the curve.

Then I threw Heavy D’s platinum party in 1989. [Heavy D had] the first rap album on a major label that was acknowledged to go platinum. That party crystallized my credibility.

Peter Gatien

I was a fan of a lot of music, and my focus for nightclubs is that we have to be cutting edge.

By 1993, rap was becoming more mainstream—thereʼs no doubt about that. It was important to me, catering to all the niches that comprise New York.

Funkmaster Flex:

Peter believed in the night. He liked hip-hop, he liked the artists; he understood the artists, understood their personalities.

And he was a rock star to them, with his eye patch.

He was wielding just as much money as them, so he held his own. The artists had a tremendous amount of respect for Jessica, too.

The Line

Cipha Sounds:

The club was on 27th and 12th, at the corner.

The line started at 27th and 11th; to get from 11th to 12th was like going between East Berlin and West Berlin.

The street was blocked off with barricades along the side of the building where you’d wait on line.

Then there were barricades perpendicular down the street so you couldn’t go around and walk down the street.

Chris Lighty:

The out-of-town kids would try to come in with a ruckus, acting out of line, so we would say, “Oh, you want to get in? You and your boys, you gotta spend $1000 per person.”

Because the Tunnel was so hyped and the energy was so amazing, people paid it.

Joie Manda:

The police would randomly search people who were walking to the club.

They’d pull their cars over a block away, making it hard for people to gather, because, I guess, it was such a large gathering of young black people.

I don’t know how else to say it. They didn’t love that.

Jessica Rosenblum:

The Tunnel proved that hip-hop in a nightclub was a financial force to be reckoned with.

Chris Lighty:

Try and put 2,000 kids into a club quickly when you’re searching them the way that we had to search them—like they were entering Rikers Island:

“Take off your shoes. Oh, you have a gun? Take it back to your car. No knives. No weapons. No weed. No drugs.”

Tupac came to the club, and I had to send him back to his car, telling him, “Sorry, Tupac, but you can’t come in here with a weapon.” He gladly went back to his car, put his weapon away, then came back and partied.

Cipha Sounds:

Sometimes there would be cops, and they would have pages of mug shots.

They would hold the pictures close to your face to see if you matched one. They would grab people right there. It was crazy.

Prodigy

Chris Lighty and the white girl, Jessica, would be at the door and they’d get us in for free. We’d get free drink tickets.

Funkmaster Flex:

Jessica wasn’t stuck up; she probably didn’t let him [Rapaport] in one time.

She had an understanding of what the club should be, and how she wanted the night to be.

Every good club, every great night, has a tough person at the door.

The Club

Mimi Valdés

Walking around with an entire bottle to yourself? That was definitely a Puffy phenomenon; he was very flashy in the club.

It was also a measure of the time—hip-hop was becoming this phenomenon, and people were making so much money.

It was time for hip-hop to celebrate and say, “We’ve made it.

We’re not struggling anymore. We’re out of the hood.”

Cipha Sounds:

Girls were usually free until 11 p.m., so for the first part of the night I would play R&B.

To this day, girls come up to me and say, “I used to come to the Tunnel early and you played the dope R&B.”

Total, Case, and all that shit.

Jadakiss

I used to do at least an hour in the bathroom every time I went. It was a bathroom but the party was still going on in there! That was crazy! Wherever Peter Gatien is, I send him all my love—I hope he ain’t die or nothing—because that was incredible, to put a coed bathroom in there.

You could get your chain snatched, you could get sliced with a razor, anything. From the front to the back was a whole adventure.

That’s why I’d do that last.

Jessica Rosenblum:

I think the same things that made hip-hop and hip-hop culture exciting back then were the things that made the party exciting: it was brand new. It was unknown.

Nobody had even been in a hip-hop party with this many people, this much energy, this many bottles, and this many artists.

Funkmaster Flex:

Diddy and Jermaine Dupri used to go bottle for bottle in there.

Peter Gatien

Gatien: There were nights where you would have competing groups trying to see who could have more Cristal sitting on the bar.

Chris Lighty:

If you go back to the video for LL Cool J’s “Doing It,” there’s a girl putting on lipstick, and LL walks up to her—that was shot in the Tunnel’s bathroom.

Prodigy

You’ve got the ladies and the fellas in the same bathroom, so you know niggas is fucking.

You wouldn’t walk in and hear people fucking, but you could see two sets of fucking feet in a stall.

Joie Manda:

At the bar, you’d say, “Give me a bottle of Moët,” and you would pay cash.

“Give me a bottle of Cristal, give me a bottle of Dom—no glasses.”

Watching a thousand people holding bottles of Cristal, Dom Pérignon, or Moët at one time was kind of amazing.

The club constantly sold out of champagne. Remember, this is the Bad Boy era; Puff Daddy was king at the time.

It was pre-Jay-Z. Jay would be there spending tons of money, but this was the Puff Daddy era.

Funkmaster Flex:

The Tunnel was the last club that Eazy-E went to before he died.

He and Ice Cube, they talked in the Tunnel for an hour the Sunday before he died, the first time they’d spoken in years.

I didn’t know what Eazy was doing there, I think he just wanted to see it. He had on a hoodie, and he didn’t look well.

Jessica Rosenblum:

Puffy and Jermaine Dupri were at the bar every week—there was no such thing as bottle service.

There were no ice buckets. There were no tables.

They were buying out champagne at the bar, and we had to serve it to them in rubber busboy trays, because we had nothing to put champagne in.

It wasn’t like now, when somebody buys a parade of Dom Pérignon or Moët Rosé, and it comes out all lovely at your table with sparklers and shit—that didn’t exist.

Funkmaster Flex:

From the DJ booth, you saw everyone that walked in.

The club could do 3,000 people; 4,000 on a holiday weekend; it would become impossible to control.

Jessica Rosenblum:

There are a couple things that make a great party: it’s the music, it’s the women.

If you have the most famous artist in the world, and the club is packed but it’s all dudes, who wants to be at that party?

And one of the best security measures in the world is to have more women than men.

It keeps the guys from fighting—they’re too entertained by the women.

Jadakiss

Bad Boy had its time at the Tunnel where we had it on smash, but Nas came through, Mobb Deep—everybody had their light at the Tunnel.

I’d chill in the front for a while, chill by the bar for a while, then I’d go to the bathroom, then before I’d leave I’d go to the back.

All the way in the back was love—all the people that were really enjoying the music were there. But to get to the back you had to walk through a long line of Brooklyn niggas, all types of incredible shit—you never knew what was going to happen on the way.

You could get your chain snatched, you could get sliced with a razor, anything. From the front to the back was a whole adventure.

That’s why I’d do that last.

The DJS

Cipha Sounds:

Flex didn’t talk as much then as he does now; Big Kap used to be on the mike the most.

I used to be a purist. I blended the records so that the heads wouldn’t stop nodding.

Flex would just fucking crash them in, and it was exciting.

What I did, it sounded pretty. I thought that Flex was sloppy.

But I found out the hard way that he was right. He controlled the room.

Funkmaster Flex:

Reggae DJs used to pull records back and make the club go crazy.

I would pull the record back and Big Kap wouldn’t yell “Pull up” or nothing, he’d just say, “Oh, my God—it’s fucking crazy in here!” He would acknowledge the moment.

The reggae DJs didn’t really acknowledge the moment, they acknowledged the song.

But Kap would acknowledge the moment in the club.

Cipha Sounds:

I can play anywhere because of what I learned at the Tunnel. It was so intimidating.

One time this dude threw ice at me; he hit me in the head with ice. And it wasn’t that he didn’t like what I was playing; it was that he wanted it louder.

I told him, “You throw ice at me again and I’m going to jump over this booth.” He threw it right away, didn’t even blink.

I had to jump off the side of the DJ booth, got into a huge fight. Security pulled me off, said, “Ciph, what are you doing?” They threw me back up into the booth, and that guy disappeared.

Funkmaster Flex:

My mic skills weren’t up then like they are now. Memphis Bleek’s“My Mind Right,” Tha Alkaholiks’ “Only When I’m Drunk,” Nas’ “Hate Me Now,” Jay-Z’s“Ain’t No Nigga” — all those records broke out of the Tunnel.

The Shows

Funkmaster Flex:

I never paid an artist to perform at the Tunnel.

It was never even a discussion.

Artists were begging [to perform].

Jadakiss

Going there performing and going there partying, there was a difference.

[Partying] you’re just out in the crowd seeing the melting pot of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Jersey, Connecticut, Staten Island, Long Island, all the beautiful women, but it was also very dangerous sometimes.

Fights broke out. Miscommunication—it could get ugly.

Prodigy:

Performing there, if felt like, “This is our club. This is our home.”

Juvenile

All weekend [before my performance], people had been telling me that they would boo you off stage. They told me it was the hardest club to come to [from out of town] and do a show.

I had it in my mind that I wasn’t getting booed off stage—I was going to be the realest nigga.

When I did “Ha,” everyone started taking their shirts off. I did “Ha,” like, three times.

After that, I can’t remember everything. I was drinking Hennessy, and I was in a wild mood, man. Hennessy makes you crazy. I think I went into the crowd…

Jadakiss

Bad Boy hosted a night at the Tunnel just as Diddy was breaking [the Lox] open.

We did “Benjamins” for the first time [live] there and it was a madhouse.

Flex pulled it back two or three times and we just kept rocking it. There were other people on the bill, but after we did “Benjamins” it was a wrap. They didn’t go on. The club was shut down. Craziest thing I’ve ever seen.

Diddy lost his Rolex that night, just wildin’. You know how “The Benjamins” was. Somebody walked out of there with an $80K Rolex.

I felt like in New York, the ice was broken for us [with that performance].

Because you got the media coverage that Monday. Then everybody’s talking about you.

DMX

It was hot as a motherfucker, and the stage was crowded. The Lox were there, Onyx was there. Everybody in the crowd had those leashes, the kind that make it look like you’re walking an invisible dog.

When I performed—and it’s the only time I’ve ever done this—I performed one song at least 12 times. One fucking song. Each time I did “Get At Me Dog,” it was like the first time. I only had a few songs at that time anyway.

But the energy was up, so I just kept giving it to them: “Where’s my dogs at?!” I was wearing overalls, and when I finished, the shit was around my waist.

The Fights

Jessica Rosenblum:

If you have a hugely successful party, with people who have money and expensive cars, and it’s all migrating to one neighborhood, it will attract additional things.

It has nothing to do with the event.

Funkmaster Flex:

Nobody followed the rules from another nightclub [in regards to fights.]

The rules were made in there.

Peter Gatien:

On Sundays, we used to have anywhere from 60 to 90 security people from different neighborhoods that knew who the troublemakers were. And we did an exhaustive search.

In all the years we were there, the only shooting incident was some guy who snuck in a gun with his wheelchair and shot himself in the calf.

Derrick Parker:

One lieutenant in the 10th Precinct kept a bottle of Pepto-Bismol in his desk just because of the Tunnel.

He’d come in Monday morning saying, “All right, what happened last night?”

The Endgame

Funkmaster Flex:

Once the money was paid off, the club closed [in June 2001].

By then, there were more clubs open on Sunday nights, there were more black parties popping during the week and on Saturday—the game had changed.

Peter Gatien:

My clubs closed because of an aggressive campaign by the city, state, and feds to topple me. It’s that simple.

Cipha Sounds:

The club probably closed down four or five times all the years I was there.

So when we closed that last time, I thought, “Oh, we’ll be back.” But we never went back.

There was no grand finale. It just closed.

Funkmaster Flex:

We didn’t really know it was amazing while we were doing it.

We thought there’d be another club.

The Legacy

Joie Manda:

I think rap is still great, but it’s more homogenized now.

It’s on the radio all day, it’s immersed in pop culture.

[During the time of the Tunnel] it was still underground. Even though Bad Boy was mainstream, the lifestyle was new.

Juvenile:

I feel good knowing that I had an opportunity to rap on a stage where some of my idols did shows.

When I walked in, I knew the history; I knew it was a train station turned into a club, and I knew it had a lot to do with hip-hop.

It was the biggest club in hip-hop history—I don’t think you could put any club in front of the Tunnel.

Funkmaster Flex:

The Tunnel symbolized my entering into hip-hop.

That was the last era of real hip-hop, when performing at a club made you official.

I miss hip-hop.

Jessica Rosenblum:

People waited all week long until Sunday to go to Mecca, to go to the Tunnel. It was something to look forward to.

Hip-hop is pop music now, it’s part of mainstream culture and it’s available everywhere.