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I think there is some truth to the fact that yeah, okay, cool, obviously the more mainstream kind of easier-to-grasp-onto dance music has become popular, but that holds true with almost any genre. It wasn't like the Sex Pistols hit the radio. It was poppier versions of that is what hit. It's never, like, the true core stuff.
Whether we like it or not, a breakdown in home-life will eventually lead to a breakdown everywhere. This is, surely, the most menacing and dangerous aspect of the state of society at this present time. Once the family idea, the family unit, the family life is broken up - once that goes, soon you will have no other allegiance.
Somewhere down the line, the evil ones stole the legacy of hip hop and flipped it to a corporate type of hip hop. They decided to tell everybody 'Well, this is what hip hop is,' instead of coming back to the pioneers and getting the true definition of what hip hop is and what it was and what we been pushing for all these years.
My definition of hip hop is taking elements from many other spheres of music to make hip hop. Whether it be breakbeat, whether it be the groove and grunt of James Brown or the pickle-pop sounds of Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra, hip hop is also part of what they call hip-house now, or trip hop, or even parts of drum n' bass.
I want to make myself and the crowd happy by way of something different, and that makes things difficult. I'm never playing something that hasn't been released or no one has ever heard before because I care to deliver them what they were hoping to see from me. But also I play four or five songs that will definitely surprise them.
I have really fond memories of growing up in Chicago, and I always love going back. I still have a lot of really good friends from high school that I go to dinner with. It's kind of become a tradition when I go out there to do a show to give a few friends a call, tell some funny stories about high school and walk down memory lane.
People think my career started when I sent that tape to Renaissance. I’d actually been working hard for seven years before I got to that point. I was putting on parties and booking DJs around me to get my name on the flyer. I knew I had to do it for myself. I knew no one was going to come knocking on my door. I knew it was up to me.
My parents even let me switch schools, to leave my regular school to go to the producer's school, because I told them producing is what I love to do, and it makes me happy to share my music and my passion with others. I was dreaming to go to that school. I begged them. They were like, 'Yah, know what? If you are happy, we are happy.'
I always used to travel without a passport case, and because of it I think I'm four passports in. I bought this small Tumi case to protect my new one, and it works really well, not just for protecting it but also for keeping credit cards and small stuff. I just throw it in my bag when I'm traveling, as opposed to stuffed in my pocket.
The thing is, people only care about their selfie. I am a fan of artists, and if I have 30 seconds with an artist, I am not going to take a photo just to prove on social media that I was with the artist. I am going to enjoy every single second of those 30 seconds, ask questions, talk, actually make something of the moment, thank them.
There are a lot of things being put out to let people know. Even in the last 25 years, all these extraterrestrial movies are to let people know that we're definitely not alone, and there's going to come a time when they're going to go, "Here it is, here's what other people have been seeing, people have been getting abducted and stuff."
It sucks for me, because now I have to not be as crazy as I am on the Internet. Which totally sucks, because it's not going to be fun anymore. But the repercussions are really bad. Like, Taylor Swift fans are really crazy. They threatened to murder me and stuff. It's really bizarre, and disgusting. They're the worst people in the world.
I think Dutch people are very sober. I don't know if it's the right word. Like, you have the most famous person walk by some Dutch people, and they're like, 'Oh, hello.' And they maybe take a photo, but most of the time, they'll respect you and leave you alone. And if you go to some other countries they will literally mob you, go crazy.
Personally, I'm not into reality shows - I can't even name a reality show that I was a really big fan of, altogether as a whole, not just from MTV. Like, if ABC has another reality show, I'm like, 'Oh God, another reality show.' But people love them. 'The Hills', 'Laguna Beach'... those do extremely well. It's just a personal preference.
A lot of work and thinking goes into my DJing. I want the entire night to progress seamlessly and when I have to adapt the energy on the fly for the crowd on any given night, I can do so with harmonic mixes that I've practiced over and over again. I am far from the only DJ that does this and it's something I take pride in being able to do.
When I first started producing, all I had was this little crappy sampler called a S20, which had, like, a minute sample time. I was making crappy beats since I was, like, 17 or 18, using Florida rappers, where I'm from. Then I started DJ'ing because I just wanted to have a new job. I was a schoolteacher for a while, and it was the worst job.
I am an indie kid. I made no bones about the fact that I fell into DJing electronic music by accident, by a lucky break, but it doesn't make me any less of a fan of that music, I just never envisaged... not through a lack of confidence or belief, I just didn't think that I'd be sharing the bill with people that I was going out to see myself.
I guess I think like deep inside, I know that it's like, it's a different kind of performing, it's not really... You're not performing like a guitar player or a singer is performing, you know what I mean? So it's weird to be in the same type setup as one of those. 'Cause I'm not really doing much, you know, like technically it's not that hard.
I love a great melody and wonderful lyrics that speak from the heart, and my music has that and speaks about it; but there's just something that was really raw and energetic about the early House music. It's hard to describe. It's like you had to go to these parties where the stuff was being played on these huge sound systems to really feel it.
Hip-hop has crossed many boundaries and racial barriers, broken them down for people to come together, to listen to the music or come out of their own social ills in each of the countries that it has went to. Thanks to my traveling, and keeping up from place to place, and pushing our ideology - peace, love, unity, and having fun - it has worked.
I love Twitter, you know? I try to read everything I can on Twitter. You get so much nice feedback about stuff, you know you just put out a sentence and everybody laughs or everybody's just sending something back. It's amazing. Same with Facebook, you know? I'm a lot on Facebook and it's just - it's just amazing. And YouTube, of course, as well.
My mom used to be concerned 'cause I would never go outside. And when I'd go outside, I'd have friends, but I just was always in the house listening to music, practicing DJing all the time. Then my uncle got a keyboard, drum machine, so I'd just be in the house at 12, 13, just, like, messing up his presets. And my mom was like, 'My son is strange.'
The lifestyle is strenuous on the body, but it's stimulating to the senses and the mind. So there's a give and take. There are days the flights knock me out, where I feel like the human punching bag that is being on planes every other day. I think people sort of glorify it, like "Oh, you're at parties and there's booze and girls." But it's still work.
With every show I go out and do, I'm trying to change peoples' lives. I'm trying to make a huge moment and give them something that they'll remember forever. I know that's crazy to say after I've played maybe 5,000 shows in my life, but really that's what it is. Leaving it all out on the dance floor and giving people something spectacular to remember.
I love what I do. I'm living the dream. I know that sounds corny, but I wanted to be a DJ from about the age of eleven or twelve, so the fact that I've spent over half my life living out my dream and still doing it at a very high level, I consider myself very lucky. But I've also worked extremely hard and I still work really hard, maintaining my career.
How we view ourselves can often determine the perspective and degree in which we see others and the world around us. Each and every one of us has a view. Such a view, that it can shape the future of others and how they live, dream and look towards the future that we all hope is better and more fruitful than our past. This I believe is a common initiative.
I started producing in 1992 at the age of 15, when I found out music could be made with the help of a computer. I come from a musical family, but was always the family member not as good as the others. So once I found out I could release the music that was stuck inside my head through a computer, I knew I found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
I can only speak from my personal journey and my personal struggles which are completely different from other individuals but if I can slightly help someone else understand themselves, then that's perfect. Because I only make music, there's so much emotion in the music itself that I hope people can tap into and feel the same way I feel when I listen to it.
We were being put somewhere interesting from being involved with analog, to working with digital. Those two worlds just collided and it felt great! That was probably the key inspiration in terms of me going on to not just making dub plates for my sound, but doing the unobvious and "selling out" to the masses. I subsequently got a record deal because of that.
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select-doctor, lawyer, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.
Vinyl, CDs or laptops, it doesn't matter - you should use whatever you're comfortable with. If you're on the dancefloor and there's good music coming out of the speakers, that should be enough. If you're standing there storing your chin going: 'This would sound better if it was on vinyl', yes it might do, but at the end of the day, people want to go to a party.
When I started Fool's Gold and producing consistent records that were like electro beats with rapping on it that was experimental and weird. I made a mixtape called Dirty South Dance where I put rap vocals over dance music. That was literally an experiment. Now all these rappers are rapping on dance music. This is something I've been trying to build for a while.
I knew it straight away when Twitter first came around, and also Facebook, where it was so easy to post, that this was another way to speak directly with people listening to my music. If they found my music and they like it, most likely they want to hear more from me and hear what I'm about. I've put an enormous amount of time into that and it's played out well for me.
I enjoy creating all types of music and I take inspiration from everything around me. Its not about trends or what’s fashionably popular, its about creative expression, quality, emotion and artistic integrity. I love and listen to all styles of music and try to blend the influences together into my songs. Including elements of funk, soul, dub, disco, ‘80s sounds and rock
I think the production thing was a stroke of luck really. But for me, I had to do it, as it was always part of the plan. But my biggest claim to fame was to recognize those who were at the time unrecognised. Soul II Soul was like a festival to all these artists who wanted to be a part of it. We travel to all these different destinations and everyone gets off where they need to.
While we travel as much as we do; this city is still really unique to us in terms of how eclectic it is. There's the variation of pockets when you're travelling around London that you don't necessarily find in the centre, but I'm talking about the city as a whole. For us, the inseparable links to the arts, being innovative and creative in an area like this is very transient as well.
With that explosion of dance music thing, there have been some downsides. We're lacking a little bit of connection right now. Pop music is so massive. It's everywhere. Today, there's less of discovery. There's less "I'm going to drive two hours and go see him at this dirty night club." We're missing a little bit of that. It's still there, and I feel like those connections are still made.
You put music in categories because you need to define a sound, but when you don't play it on your so-called radio stations that claim to be R&B or jazz or whatever... All music is dance music. But when people think of dance music, they think of techno or just house. Anything you can dance to is dance music. I don't care if it's classical, funk, salsa, reggae, calypso; it's all dance music.
The lack of quality dance music and the fact that here in the United States, house music is not seen as anything viable by the music industry. I figured that this might be another shot at the industry looking at the possibilities of house music and giving it a little bit more legitimacy than what they give it. It's a host of different things, but it's something that I needed to say musically.
Everybody wants to make some money, but they really love what they do. You got others who are just "money, money, money," and fast life and women and everything. They go a whole other route. That's a fight of good vs. evil. A balance. It seems that more of these stations are pushing a negative side instead of keeping a balance, and to me, that's a conspiracy that's going on all over the planet.
Well technology has changed a lot of things, making it possible for just about anyone to make music. But not everybody is a songwriter, so that puts me in a completely different ballpark than the other DJs out here that are writing and producing tracks. I don't stop at tracks, I try to complete the whole package with the song. So working at that level has put me in a completely different place.
If we believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God and that He came into this world and went to the cross of Calvary and died for our sins and rose again in order to justify us and to give us life anew and prepare us for heaven-if you really believe that, there is only one inevitable deduction, namely that He is entitled to the whole of our lives, without any limit whatsoever.
We could get together all over the world, all races, hold hands together, and hum to death, and try to move the moon where the sun is, move the sun where the moon is at, and send a little piece of a star down there and burn all our asses up. We could get into the science, and make bombs and all that stuff, but you still ain't gonna hit the supreme force or the power that put all this into motion.
Part of therapy is the hope. You need to feel like there's hope, warmth and happiness somewhere in there otherwise you'll be more lost than you were to begin with. Part of the therapy is just diving in, embracing what you're feeling and try to understand why it's there. But also, knowing that you need to be kind to yourself. That's the biggest piece of advice I give to people that suffer from anxiety too.
My view of university training is to unsettle the minds of young men, to widen their horizons, to inflame their intellects. It is not a hardening, or settling process. Education is not to teach men facts, theories, or laws; it is not to reform them, or amuse them, or to make them expert technicians in any field; it is to teach them to think, to think straight if possible; but to think always for themselves.
That's always been the process of our music, in a sense, keeping it simple, not being so heavy that you are beating people over the head, it's just weighted down and it's like, "oohhh I can't relate." People are able to relate because we talked about things that everyone has experienced, it doesn't matter your race or genre. Music was your mainstay. There was something in our element of music that connected.
I'm hoping there's cohesion in these tracks. Some of them were made weeks ago, some were made in 2010, but they've all stood out as one big thing I want to give to everyone. The concept behind No Plans references a few of concerns: having no plans with school, no plans with jobs, and no plans for the future. I'm hoping these songs can help you forget about those concerns, at least for 30 minutes of your day.
It's impossible to overstate how important social media has been to me and the development of my career. The fact that I can go and play venues that hold 25,000 people and sell them out is crazy.I don't have music on the radio. I'm not a pop culture icon. I'm just this kid making dance music. And yet I still can sell out massive arenas. It's truly incredible, and I think a lot of that is because of social media.
I think what's made electronic music so fascinating is that it came up through the underground and always moved and pivoted so quickly that you could never keep a handle on it. That continues to happen. Sure, the stuff on the very top moves slower and is marketed for Spotify. But there are still going to be undercurrents that flow freely and move around, simply because there's too much of a base with this music.
The ultimate test of my understanding of the scriptural teaching is the amount of time I spend in prayer. As theology is ultimately the knowledge of God, the more theology I know, the more it should drive me to seek to know God. Not to know about Him but to know Him! The whole object of salvation is to bring me to knowledge of God. If all my knowledge does not lead me to prayer there is something wrong somewhere.