One late night at the Jay St./Borough Hall train station in Downtown Brooklyn, one of Hip Hop's living legends was spotted getting off the train and HHNLive.com was on the platform to greet him. 80s Hip Hop icon of music and fashion, Brooklyn native Dana Dane is definitely one of the most underrated MCs of the Golden Era with considerable influences in the gear we choose and the storytelling format of today's MC. Just to still be noticed in this metropolis of 8 million people shows and proves that Dana Dane still has fame, even on the A train. HHNLive.com writer ShaBe chills on the iron horse for a few stops with the living legend who looks just like he did in 1987, signature gold tooth and all, except his Ballys turned to Timbs and his Kangol has become a skully. Check it out as this real life Cindafella kicks it about the 5th element of Hip Hop, how he hooked up with Slick Rick, and how his classic raps have turned to snaps in the form of children's books.

ShaBe: I'm kickin' it here live with the legendary Dana Dane. Say a couple of words to the readers of HHNLive.com.

Dana Dane: What it is.. What it could be. The Great One Dana Dane.. you know how we do. We keepin' it real hood, ridin' on the train! (Laughs)

ShaBe: Give us a little of your history in the music game..

Dana Dane: I started off in the early 80s at the High School of Music and Art, Uptown Manhattan, 135th Street. Me being from Brooklyn. It's five of us including Lance Brown, Cool Out Ski, Omega the Heartbreaker, and I can't forget my man Slick Rick. We got together harmonizing, you know how Hip Hop came up, the Cold Crush, the Crash Crew, doin' our thing like that. From there we were just bangin' the tables in the lunchroom, doin' routines in the auditorium and that's basically as far as it went on our amateur tip early in the day. The last time we branched out after graduating from high school and Slick Rick hooked up with Doug E. Fresh and dropped "La Di Da Di". Myself, I was still in college and after I heard them do that song, I was like, 'Wait a minute! That's the hot shit! Let me get down wit' that!' So I dropped my first single in 1985, "Nightmares". You know, the rest is history after that.

ShaBe: You had a large influence on what is considered the 5th Element of Hip Hop, which is the fashion..

Dana Dane: Aw, man.. Where they steal that from? That's my lyric, the 5th Element. Everybody call knowledge the fifth element. I've been tellin' cats that the fifth element of Hip Hop is fashion. That's where we came from. That's how me and Rick got hooked up. Him being from the Bronx and me being from Brooklyn, we had similar styles. He was wearing Kangol's, I had some Playboys on, he had some British Walkers on, the Ballys came out around that time, you know, the Wallabees, we was wearing those, we had the Lees. It was just about stylin'. Sometimes, we used to come to school, not even talk to each other and be dressed the same, same colors and shit like that. That's how close our chemistry was. The 5th Element of Hip Hop, that's what they really need to recognize. Fashion has always been a part of Hip Hop from the early days when Afrika Bambaataa used to wear the feathers and the leathers and then the Cold Crush used to come out with the suits and the hats tilted and totin' guns in their pictures.

ShaBe: Let's fast forward a little bit in you career. How did you get hooked up with Herby Luv Bug?

Dana Dane: I met him at the Apollo Theatre. I had dropped "Nightmares". A lot of people don't know that MC Holiday that made "Gucci Man", he produced my first record before he got on as an MC. That's how his style sounds so similar to Slick Rick and mine. He did the drum track and Father did the music and they produced the song "Nightmares". We was supposed to be doing "Delancey St." the second record together, but we had a falling out because of business situations. At the same time, I met Herby up in the Apollo Theatre. We were performing on the same bill with Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, this is when Salt 'n Pepa was known as the Show Stoppers. I had a problem with my turntable or something like that, so they let us use theirs. From that time, me and Herby got real cool. I ended up goin' out to Herby's house in Queens and we worked on "Delancey".. that's the first song that we ever did together. 1986 we dropped that joint. That was the beginning of the Herby/Dana Dane hook up. After that, the same year, [Holiday] dropped "Gucci Man". If you listen to the record, it sounds similar to "Delancey St." because what he did was.. I had dropped the vocals over at his crib, so he tried to just re-flip the lyrics and tryin' to.. what they call it..BITE! That's what we called it back in the day, bitin' my shit! After that, me and Herby, we got a good rapport together and we really started putting it down. Then, he produced the "Dana Dane With Fame" album that came out in 1987.

ShaBe: What was the climate like in the streets of Brooklyn during that time?

Dana Dane: Being from Brooklyn, it seemed like the climate was always the same..Watch ya back! (laughs) Being able to go to Music and Art High School on 135th Street and Convent Avenue gave me an opportunity to see more that just Brooklyn. Uptown and Queens,.. well BX was rowdy, but for the most part, they wasn't robbin' and thievin' as much as Brooklyn was. Even though it was the crack epidemic, they had their own way of doing things. From that, I saw that Uptown, they was much cooler in regards to what they had and stylin' and things of that sort. So I took a little bit of that and brought it back to BK. As for the climate in regards to the robbin' and killin', I never really paid attention to it because I felt like I was from Brooklyn and once you lived in Brooklyn and especially one of the roughest parts of Brooklyn, Fort Greene. [The original] 50 Cent used to hang out in my lobby. He came to my house to use the bathroom. All the rest of the cats that was big out there, Jah, Killer Ben (R.I.P.), most of those cats were little dudes except for 50 Cent, we was about the same age. It was never really a thing for me because they were just there. You know, that was the hood. One of those things back in the day in Fort Greene; if you wasn't from the hood you couldn't come to the hood, but if you there, you was alright.. depending what you had (laughs)!

ShaBe: So you never got tried in your hood?

Dana Dane: Oh yeah, definitely. I had a pair of Cazals they tried to catch me for in the back of my building. It is what it is. They gonna try you. You just gotta stand your ground sometimes. I think everybody's been robbed before. The only time I've ever been robbed was in my hood! It was about '89, '90. My career had slowed down a little bit and I was just in the hood rollin' dice and I had won about $1500. You know, one of those after dice game set ups and shit like that. It happens to the best of us. We go through it and keep it moving. It don't make you or break you. If you live through it, it just makes you stronger.

ShaBe: Tell me what Dana Dane is into now.

Dana Dane: Always on the road performing the classic Hip Hop joints. You can catch me on Sirius Satellite Radio in the morning Monday through Friday 6am to 12 noon. I do Backspin 43. We play Hip Hop 1979 to early '96. Also, I'm writing some children's books, educational children's songs.. "Dana Dane's Hip Hop Tales" is like a children's short story book, like the Brother's Grimm. I took all my rap songs and made them into short stories. I took them out of rhyme form and gave them more depth. Also, I'm writing screenplays.. I just finished my second screenplay, "Cindafella". I did Cindafella the movie, Hip Hop style. We tryin' to make that happen before the summer.

ShaBe: Anybody in particular you're shopping it to?

Dana Dane: Anybody that got a check! (laughs)