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BORN
“Queens, New York City, 1974”

FAMILY
“My mom and dad are both from New York. My dad worked as an insurance salesman and my mom worked for an insurance company as well. There was a tonne of music playing in my house as I grew up. My dad was a jazz drummer when he was younger and he still plays recreationally. I grew up listening to him play and hearing his jazz records. My mom was really into Motown and things like that, rock n roll. Motown was definitely an influence for me, and the too. It was constantly music in my home.”

MUSICAL ROOTS
“Music was really something I fell into. I played drums for a while, I played guitar and then when hip hop came about I really got into that and got some turntables. Music and hip hop was really a way to keep myself off of the street. I saw some of my friends get into a lot of trouble and I think music was a way for me to escape that. I collected records from elementary school: for some reason I ended up with this huge collection of 7”s; all kinds of stuff, a lot of 80s pop, cheesy stuff that was out at the time.”

FIRST PROJECTS
“My older step-brothers friend had turntables at his house. We went over there one holiday - I think it might have been Christmas - and I just started messing around. They were outside playing football and I was inside fooling around with his turntables. From that moment I knew I wanted to do it. I started in 7th grade, at 12 or 13, and when I first heard Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince I got straight into scratching, I just tried to mimic all the things Jazzy was doing on the records. Soon after, I started DJing at parties and I played a lot of house parties in the local Queens neighbourhood. It was cool, it was hip hop, a lot of battling between b-boys and breakers ‘cos there were a lot of crews in the neighbourhood. It was a really cool time then, around the late ‘80s. I did some local battles and things like that in New York, I did a few competitions and I even won a couple. After that I started to play local clubs which was really the start of me making any money DJing. It was hip hop, r’n’b, reggae, that sort of vibe.”

DJING
“I like to incorporate turntablism and party rocking together. A lot of people play clubs and don’t really do anything with the records, they just let them play. I try to keep everything danceable but at the same time incorporate the real DJ skills. It’s that immediate reaction that you don’t get on the radio, I love that interaction. I hate the word ‘celebrity’ but I do play a lot of parties in LA and New York for magazines, fashion shows and things like that. It’s totally different to playing a club, it’s a lot more eclectic and I have to play more rock and ‘80s It’s cool, I like to mix it up, and I’m also on the radio playing pretty much the same thing every day. I do drivetime Monday to Friday on Power 105.1 and sometimes play on Sunday so it’s pretty much a six-days-a-week thing. Big Tigger hosts the show and I mix up hip hop, r’n’b and reggae. I don’t get the opportunity to break records as I’d like to though. I have to stick to the hits pretty much because my show’s on at 8pm - prime time - so I can’t really reach for the new music or experiment as much as I’d like. I have to be smart and know what not to play. It’s a very female friendly station so they want a lot of r’n’b.
I’ve been to 23 countries. I DJed for Moby for two years and that opened a lot of doors. I got to see the world through that which was great. I was on the same tour as Hybrid too, they were great guys. We spent a lot of time in the UK and all the festivals, Reading and Homelands etc. I was part of Moby’s band, scratching over his tunes. It all started when he did a show called Conan O’Brien and wanted a scratch DJ to cut over his tunes. From there he asked me to come and warm up for his shows and then finally he was like, ‘just come and join the band!’ I did a bunch of those TV shows and I also DJed for Dido. I was part of her band as well, that was for a year right before I got with Moby. We did some TV and stuff, I was dropping beats, scratching over the different songs, adding samples and things. They were both so cool - Moby was just like, ‘do whatever you want’. Everything always pretty much worked out.”

LABELS AND PRODUCTION
“I started producing around five years ago. I have my own studio at the house and I make beats, pretty much recreationally. I haven’t had to do it as much as I’d like to. Eventually I’d like to develop my own artists and put out music that way. A lot of the stuff on the ‘80s mixtape was multi-tracked – live, I can’t really do the same things. But I like to incorporate movie samples and bits of things that people wouldn’t necessarily think to put in a mix. The FABRICLIVE CD is my first real, official mix album.”

FABRIC
“Oh I loved it. It was a great vibe, it really was. I had freedom to play a lot of different things and people were really receptive to it as opposed to a lot of the hip hop clubs that I do here in New York where you pretty much have to play the same records every night. I played ‘80s, some different things and everyone was open to it.”

THE MIX
“The mix has mostly a party feel, a lot of club up-tempo joints that I’m adding my own flavour to. A couple of remixes, acapella mixes, just adding that turntable vibe.”

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