There’s a ton of amazing music that’s not getting heard.
A-TRAKI think whether dance music had exploded in America, I still would’ve been a DJ a long time. This is my first love.
More A-Trak Quotes
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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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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 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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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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It’s always important to me to play something other DJs aren’t playing.
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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’m still a hip-hop producer. I never put a label on what I can do as a producer or a DJ.
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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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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.
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We have to wake up early and make songs everyday. I run my record label. You work at hours where your body isn’t designed to work. But it’s fun.
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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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When I get up I still check the rap blogs before I check any kind of dance stuff.
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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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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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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.
A-TRAK