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.
A-TRAKThat 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.
More A-Trak Quotes
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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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There’s a ton of amazing music that’s not getting heard.
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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.
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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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Right now it feels like we’re playing a role, like me and a couple of my friends, in where popular culture is going. That’s a very rare thing in a person’s life to be able to be a part of that. It’s a responsibility I take seriously.
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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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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’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 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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It’s always important to me to play something other DJs aren’t playing.
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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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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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One thing that I learned in recent years from working more with other people is this idea that part of a producer’s job is to make people comfortable and confident.
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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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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.
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