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-TRAKI’m not even a trained producer. I just keep following my ear and working on stuff until it sounds the way I like it.
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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There’s a ton of amazing music that’s not getting heard.
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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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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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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 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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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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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 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 always important to me to play something other DJs aren’t playing.
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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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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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A few guys will get up there with turntables as purists, to play vinyl or whatever.
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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.
A-TRAK