Filed under: News, Exclusive

Joshua Ostroff, AOL

When Rob Base bounded onto the stage of Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum for TOGETHER 2012, the United Jewish Appeal fundraiser may have been an unlikely event but the venue was rather apropos, what with all the dinosaurs in the building.

The '80s hip-hop legend no longer performs with his one-time partner DJ E-Z Rock, but Rob Base was part of a stellar old-school hip-hop bill that included a surprisingly fantastic Sugarhill Gang, expectedly fierce Naughty by Nature and a well-fed Young MC. It was also on the eve of a new anthology compilation by Profile Records, the legendary rap label whose very first release was Rob Base's stone-cold classic 'It Takes Two.'

So in the labyrinthine backrooms-turned-greenrooms of the R.O.M., Rob Base and his dynamite singer-slash-hypeman Kyle Rifkin reminisced about parties in the park, their undying hits and how Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock changed hip-hop forever.

Your music was considered poppy at the time, but R&B choruses are all over rap now. How do you view your place in hip-hop history?

Rob Base: Well, I know definitely I was one of the first artists to do the hip-hop and R&B thing. When we did it, I just wanted to do something different. I didn't want to do the same thing that the other groups were doing at the time. So we just did it that way and I really didn't care what people said. There were a few groups that were saying, "Oh, you're selling out. You're this, you're that." And I look at them now and they can't even get one show -- so hey, what the heck, I'm happy.