Kalimah Johnson’s first encounter with Jerry Flynn Dale was a head-to-head rap battle.

Johnson, known as “Nikki D,” had won two weeks in a row before Dale stepped up to the challenge at Future Funk Records, a music store on Seven Mile and Greenfield in the 1980s.

“He said, ‘Can’t no girl beat me rapping,’” recalled Johnson. “And I said, ‘Well, I’m here.’” 

By the third verse, Dale knew it was over; Johnson would be the reigning champion. 

Johnson said Dale stayed engaged with her and other local rap artists and vowed to build a recording studio in the basement of his College Park neighborhood home. 

Soon after, Def Sound Studio was born. 

Now, the hip-hop recording studio – an integral part of Detroit’s music scene for decades – is positioned to become the first designated as a historical landmark. 

“This is the incubator stage, where hip-hop in Detroit recording started,” Dale said of Def Sound. “It’s taken a while to get it popping off, but here we are.” 

Dale founded the studio as a teenager inside a small, white house on Winthrop Street. It’s been graced by big acts across all types of music genres—the Eminem-fronted group D12, the late Amp Fiddler, George Clinton Jr., Brown Mark of Prince and the Revolution and Kid Rock. Dale has also worked with the Winans family, including Vickie, Marvin and Mario. 

Dale approached Detroit’s Historic Designation Advisory Board in 2015 about a historic designation and was placed on the board’s waiting list. A study finally began last fall, said Rebecca Savage, lead architectural historian for the advisory board.

A public hearing was held in January and a second will be held May 23 at City Hall before the full City Council votes on the request. 

Savage said Def Sound is similar to Motown and Submerge Records, other recording studios that were started in residential spaces.

“I knew this was truly another Detroit story that needed to be told,” she said. “Detroit music history is an important component of Detroit, and it’s one of the great things about the city.” 

If approved, Def Sound joins other studios and music venues in Detroit that are locally designated as historic, including the Motown Museum, United Sound System Recording Studios, the Blue Bird Inn and the Underground Resistance Museum. 

Also involved in the designation process is Johnson, an ad hoc member of the historic designation study, alongside Dale. 

“Throughout my entire approach to hip-hop and trying to have a career, Jerry has been super supportive,” she said. “He’s really like a family member, like a brother. And his life story is so amazing.” 

A teenage Berry Gordy 

At 55, Dale said he’s used to going against the odds and overcoming adversity. 

He was placed in foster care at 12 months old and, after a tumultuous early childhood, Dale was adopted by Celia Pearl and Joseph Dale when he was 8. One thing that was always a constant in his life was music, he said.  

One of Dale’s early influences was the R&B group Raydio. James Carmichael lived down the street from Dale’s family on Yosemite Street on Detroit’s west side and was the cousin of band members Arnell and Darren Carmichael. 

A young Dale would often watch them rehearse. It didn’t take long for Dale to begin asking questions about music equipment. 

“I thought that was pretty cool, a young kid trying to learn how to become a producer. That’s pretty rare,” Arnell Carmichael said. “It was more myself, my cousin and my brother helping someone we cared about. We wanted to see him become successful.” 

And, of course, Motown was an influence, with Dale calling it the blueprint of Detroit’s music industry. Like Berry Gordy was the founder and key music producer of Motown Records, a young Dale had similar ambitions, only with a new genre that was just starting to gain popularity with audiences: hip-hop. 

While attending Cody High School, Dale became an apprentice at Sound Suite Studios on Puritan. The studio was a popular place for artists including Bob Seger, Anita Baker, Luther Vandross and Parliament Funkadelic. Dale was introduced to Sound Suite by Sir Harry Bowens, a member of Detroit group Was (Not Was). Dale learned from co-owner engineers Mike Grace and John Lewis and took in techniques artists and producers were using while he floated from session to session. 

“I wasn’t giving up and I wasn’t going away,” he said. “I just kept staying in the room. My method is, ‘Get in the room, shut the (expletive) up and wait your turn. You gotta get in the room, be in the room, but be invisible at the same time. Sooner or later, you’re gonna get your turn.” 

Dale mastered the electronic instruments in the studio, moving up the ranks as a top-tier musician, producer and engineer at Sound Suite. 

But in the mid-80s, he felt like the studio and others in the city weren’t taking rap music seriously and viewed it as a threat. In addition, he said, mainstream radio stations were not playing hip-hop songs. 

“You gotta understand, the Detroit music scene was locked down,” Dale said. “It’s like, how does somebody come in on a locked-down scene? You’re talking about Motown and the artists that were still here under the umbrella of Motown. I’m trying to be like Berry Gordy, but I’m a teenager.” 

That’s when the idea of Def Sound came in. 

The house of hip hop 

In 1981, Dale’s family moved to Winthrop Street and, two years later, when he was 13, Dale purchased the initial recording equipment he needed to found Def Sound, according to the historic designation board’s report. Dale said his parents were surprisingly supportive. 

“When rap is very new and your parents are old, it takes a gutsy parent to believe in your dream,” he said. 

By 1985, the studio was fully established in his parents’ basement. People working with Dale included his friend, Def Sound co-founder and future Detroit Fire Chief Percy Warmack II, guitarist Greg Brown, bassist Joe “Futuristic” Ford and Cornell “Popeye” Giavantt. 

Dale said news of the studio spread like wildfire for aspiring rappers. 

“There was no other studio they could go to like that,” he said. “This was designed from inception to be a hip-hop recording studio.” 

During the early days, Dale and his team worked with local rappers like Smiley, Johnson and Papa J Smoove. 

“There were a lot of musicians who showed me love,” Dale said. 

By the 90s, Dale was recording music with D-12, Kid Rock, Vickie Winans and Fred Hammond. In 1991, Hammond recorded portions of his song, “I Came to Jesus as I Was,” at Def Sound, while Winans recorded, “Don’t Throw Your Life Away.” 

In 1990, Dale met Jay Morgan, a producer and DJ, at the now-closed Wonderland Music in Oak Park. He asked Morgan to come by the studio and the two have been friends since. Morgan and his friends spent long hours learning about recording and sound engineering from Dale – most times with little to no money exchanging hands.

“Jerry never really charged the full rate of studio time that he could,” he said. “If you were close to him, he would hardly charge you nothing.” 

Later in the decade, Morgan worked with hip-hop duo 8Ball & MJG under Suave House Records in Houston and temporarily stood in for Denzel Washington on the set of the 1995 movie “Virtuosity.” 

“I always attribute the whole path to that time in the (Def Sound) studio because so much stuff was done and created that led to the next opportunities,” Morgan said. 

The next episode 

By 2004, recording at Def Sound was slowing down and Dale began taking on roles outside of music like real estate and co-founding the nonprofit McKinney Foundation. Dale said he also plans to go back to school to study law and psychology and develop a “hip-hop” chamber of commerce, where people can access services like getting insurance and finding a realtor. 

Today, Def Sound is only open for private sessions. But Dale still finds time to work with new Detroit artists like Da Voice. The two connected in a Facebook group a couple of years ago. Da Voice, a rapper/singer who prefers to go by his stage name, said he had some experience producing but wanted to learn more. Dale invited Da Voice to the studio. 

“When you’re dealing with sound engineering and production, you gotta be around other sound engineers and producers to challenge your thoughts and you can bounce ideas off of each other,” Da Voice said. 

The two are working on some songs together, while Da Voice is recording a funk album separately. 

Da Voice said Def Sound possibly becoming a historical landmark is “unbelievable.” 

“It’s one of the many positive things coming out of Detroit, and I’m glad he’s getting recognized,” he said. 

Johnson hopes the studio can become much more than a relic from the past. She wants to see the house open for tours so that the next generation can learn about the recording industry as well as Detroit’s hip-hop history. 

“I was there very early on and to watch him (Dale) go from that four-track studio on the dinner table to the 24-track studio that he had…it’s just something I admire,” she said. 

Dale said he always knew he would prove his doubters wrong and make his dream come to fruition. 

“There was never a time where I didn’t believe this was going to happen,” he said of opening Def Sound. “I believed that from the very beginning, and the reason why I believed it was because I was surrounded by musicians that had made it,” Dale said. 

“When you are going up against the odds, the rewards can be great.”