That was my challenge then, how to make scratching still fun for someone who didn’t necessarily come to hear that. It was fun to develop that technique. And now in dance music – I’m still a hip-hop guy at heart, but I love dance music.
A-TRAKAt 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.
More A-Trak Quotes
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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.
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When I get up I still check the rap blogs before I check any kind of dance stuff.
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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.
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I have a radio show on Sirius XM. I put it up as a free download on my Soundcloud and on iTunes. That’s a portal for me once a month, to play songs I know aren’t getting played on that station the rest of the week.
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I think one of the biggest things that’s changed in terms of the rapport with the crowd is that now crowds come to hear our songs. We’re getting closer and closer to an artist performance.
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I love disco and we sample it a lot for Duck Sauce. For me, that sound is kind of a new manifestation.
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I worked with him for years. I still think Kanye [West] is one of the most important people in music in the last ten years.
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At festivals you kind of have to play the game a bit and you have to play a lot of the big bangers but it’s to me it’s extra gratifying to be able to play the non-bangers and make it work. Because that’s still the craft of the DJ, I think.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I’ve been doing it since I was prepubescent when I loved to scratch records and play good music. As it happens, you know I sort of fell into the mix. I really feel like I played a role in bringing dance music to America years ago.
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There’s a ton of amazing music that’s not getting heard.
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I think whether dance music had exploded in America, I still would’ve been a DJ a long time. This is my first love.
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It’s a good feeling to have something to stand for in any part of your life. It’s like personal integrity.
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