That’s what a DJ is at the end of the day – someone who leads where the music goes. The only thing that’s changed is that in America, people have woken up in the last few years and realized it.
It’s a good feeling to have something to stand for in any part of your life. It’s like personal integrity.
What’s amazing about a DJ set is when you’re able to re-appropriate a song or give purpose to a song that people didn’t really think it was supposed to have. Give it this sort of hidden power by playing it before this song and after that one. That it fits into this logic and it goes farther than you thought it could go.
I love disco and we sample it a lot for Duck Sauce. For me, that sound is kind of a new manifestation.
There’s a ton of amazing music that’s not getting heard.
I was a bit of an outsider in the hip-hop world because I was a scratch kid and people weren’t necessarily trying to hear that all the time.
It’s always important to me to play something other DJs aren’t playing.
A few guys will get up there with turntables as purists, to play vinyl or whatever.
I like getting feedback from people who show a lot of potential, and it’s exciting to witness to new talents developing and bourgeoning. I always try to stay around the newest stuff, I don’t like to stay with something that’s kind of old or approaching it.
I’m one of the few DJs who uses turntables. I’m the only DJ that’s scratching.
There’s a bit less elbow room and latitude to take it somewhere else, at least at festivals. In the club you can do whatever you want but at festivals, especially Ultra, nowadays the crowd wants to hear our songs.
Building the scene, going out and doing shows and connecting with the fans, cultivating the fanbase in all these cities. I’m very glad that it’s happening.
At the end of the day, if I do a set at a festival and I only have an hour, which is kind of short for a DJ set, I know that I have to play at least six of my songs. Then the whole challenge is what do I weave around that. How do I stand out? Because at a festival there’s probably fifteen songs every DJ’s going to play every hour, for the whole day. That to me is more interesting, because I still feel like an outsider in this world.
I’m still a hip-hop producer. I never put a label on what I can do as a producer or a DJ.
When I get up I still check the rap blogs before I check any kind of dance stuff.
There’s a lot of producers that are much more technical or gear-skilled than I am. But I have a pure idea of what I like and where I want to go and I follow that.
I think that’s becoming the key to where the whole idea of art and culture are going nowadays anyway, is the idea of curation. Knowing what you like. That’s sort of the future right now. Molding something, whether it be a roster on a label, or your blog, or a song, or your DJ set.
When you know what you like and what you want and you’re able to nudge things in the right direction, that’s more profitable than ever, because there’s so much information out there. Everything’s saturated. Tastemaker is probably the most overused word, but I still think it’s important.
The essential component of being a DJ is setting the mood; it’s playing to the context. So that if you’re not able to adapt from one context to another, then you’re not a DJ.
I’ve talked to people who say that their music and their creative work is a much needed and appreciated escape, where they don’t have to think about the state of the world; they’re not even thinking about themselves so much. They’re not trying to express their own experiences of that day or relationship strife or anything.
Now I’m able to play on the main stage and play my own tracks and the crowd likes them. I feel like a lot the other DJs play a lot of the same songs, and not to knock them, but it’s important to me to go up there and sort of sneak in a bunch of stuff the other guys aren’t playing.
My ears are open to all sorts of stuff. I appreciate some of the big electro house guys.I love their music but I also like a lot of the stuff coming out of the U.K. Future garage stuff. A lot of stuff like that.
At the end of the day, Fool’s Gold is a label that, when I hear something I like, I try to grab it for the label. There’s a ton of great music coming out.
There are things I like, there are things I strongly dislike. In my DJ sets and in my production I just gravitate towards what I like.
I’m not even a trained producer. I just keep following my ear and working on stuff until it sounds the way I like it.
