At All That, aspiring MCs and poets would pay the $5 cover charge and be allowed to perform one verse. Recalling the set-up on the night, the rapper Wordsworth says, “You’d walk up to the front of the stage and there was a DJ on the right side with a list you could put your name on, and they had a live band pretty much on set too.”

In 1995, LaMontagne added a second night called Words that was cast as an environment to debut new material. He wanted to showcase underground hip-hop artists like Mos Def, Company Flow and Siah and Yeshua DapoED, whose music was unlikely to be given airplay on Hot 97. Being surrounded by a crowd of creative peers was part of the appeal of LaMontagne’s nights. “They were people like yourself developing and gaining exposure and experience through their craft,” recalls Queen Herawin, an MC with both the Juggaknots and the all-woman crew Gypcees. “The audience was truly dope, receptive, patient and respectful of the craft.”

By the time Holman had left the Nuyorican in 1996 to help found the Bowery Arts & Science nonprofit arts organization, LaMontagne’s open mic nights had become the venue’s calling card for the city’s hip-hop scene. MF Doom announced his return to the hip-hop world there in 1998 after his old group, KMD, disbanded following the death of his brother, Subroc, while crossing the Long Island Expressway. “It’s a poetry cafe so it’s really set up with candles on tables,” recalls Doom, who rapped from behind a stocking as his now-trademark metal face mask wasn’t yet ready. “The Nuyorican shit was real intimate, real lyrical, like the stage must have been shorter than a table so you see the reactions of the people, kinda joke around with them.”

Saul Williams remembers Eminem visiting All That in 1998 and performing “Just The Two Of Us” off a cassette backing track to the amazement of the MCs in the audience. “Then he went to Lyricist Lounge and in a month he signed to Dr. Dre,” Williams recalls. “It was a quick trajectory – but there was a splash and a buzz in New York before he signed.” Also performing at the Nuyorican as a rite of passage was a singer-songwriter named Erykah Badu, who appeared there before the release of her 1996 debut “On & On” helped define the neo-soul movement. “She gets on stage, she’s in full Badu, got a head-wrap on and you’re expecting spoken word,” says Cryptic One, a rapper and producer from the Atoms Family clique that included Cannibal Ox among its ranks. “Instead she performed ‘On & On’ and the place was floored.”