DJ-R Interview

Dainjazone: You now live in LA. Do you still have your residencies in AZ? You were locked down (in a good way) out there.
DJ-R: I do and I go back whenever. It’s like a come-and-go-as-I-please situation. There are some new spots opening up out there. It’s going to be really exciting out there in the next year.

Dainjazone: You’re 26 years old. How long have you been spinning?
DJ-R: A little over 10 years. I scratched a lot when I was younger. We would smoke weed and scratch. I grew up going to raves and listening to hip hop simultaneously. I was going to all these parties when I was thirteen. My sister would take me to all these underground raves. There has always been a strong DJ community in Phoenix. All the DJs out there have always been amazing. Arizona doesn’t have a lot of entertainment in their nightlife, so it’s harder to keep the crowd entertained. Through the evolution, there’s no wack DJs in Arizona.

The whole premise back then was you don’t come out of your bedroom unless you’re dope. The people we were looking up to weren’t handsome people and...

MikiWAR: Was that a shot at Fashen?
Dainjazone: Fashen is incredible looking! (room laughs)
DJ-R: Fashen probably gets more p**** than all of us combined. Honestly, you didn’t want to be a rock star, you wanted to be a good DJ. That’s what DJing needs to get back to right now. Recently, I’ve been traveling a lot more and as I go into a lot of these cities and seeing some of these cats, I’ve noticed their idols and the people they look up to aren’t good DJs. They’re well marketed, well branded people. There’s not a lot of DJs that are speaking up about it right now. All the people that should be saving the art form are pigeonholed into, "well if I speak up now, I’m going offend some of the people that support me." It’s up to all of us who are just breaking out right now to say something like, “We need to bring it back. It needs to be more about skills instead of this, that, and the other.” The marketing and branding is important. It’s up to people that have the ball in their court to make the change. I feel like the past four or five years have been about marketing and branding. Guys that I looked up to wouldn’t have made it out of their bedrooms if it were like that when they were coming up.

MikiWAR: What are your thoughts on the Redbull 3Style competition?
DJ-R: 3Style was cool. I think the judging needs help. I had a lot of fun, but I think there were a lot of cats that didn’t make it out of their heat to the finals that should have. I think DJs that are really tech savvy; whom we all want to see in it should have been judging. A lot of the guys who were judging it are iconic names and they haven’t completely grasped Serato. A lot of those guys play on absolute mode and they’re judging a DJ battle that is technologically forward. I tried to freak s***, put s*** in the sampler and remix two things at once. A lot of that stuff that DJs were doing in other markets during the prelims was overlooked. Jayceeoh for example; that dude is bonkers. He should have made it to the finals. I’m kind of glad that he didn’t. Haha.

MikiWAR: You ended up placing second in the country?
DJ-R: Yea, that was cool. I really enjoyed my set. I switched my set up a lot from my first to my second. I saw that a lot of guys hadn’t. My only regret is not sticking with my first set that I did from the prelims.

MikiWAR: So everybody just came with the same material?
DJ-R: A lot of people did. I’m not mad at that. There wasn’t a lot of new music that was that much tighter than what people were using in the prelims because it’s s*** now. A lot of the guys that were in it were traveling so much. They don’t have time to work eight hours a day on a fifteen minute set for a national finals.

Dainjazone: How did you and Evil One link up?
DJ-R: I’m at 7/11 at 3am and this dude is in there raging out. I heard him say, “Why the f*** don’t you sell light bulbs? I need a light bulb.” (room laughs) No, for real, Evil and I met on this label together (I promise you he was not smoking meth out of a light bulb). We were on the same bracket of these cats that have potential and have worked so hard on their craft but haven’t broken out of their respective markets yet. We really linked on the strength. To be quite frank, within five or ten minutes of meeting each other we were at Ross buying panties and then doing a photo shoot in a Jacuzzi for a mix called "Seven Million Hundred". I saw his d*** in under thirty minutes. It’s really not that impressive, but you know... I’m just kidding (room laughs). If Evil One had a penis it would be amazing. Haha. I’m just roasting Evil because he roasts everybody. Evil has all the other days of the year. I have this day. (room laughs)

IMAGES FROM THE SHOW




AUDIO DOWNLOAD
PODCAST! Downloadable 96 minutes mp3 version of DJ-R on the MikiDz Show courtesy of Beezo.net

View all archived mp3s here: www.beezo.net/djs/mikidzshow/

Or stream it live here:



VIDEO DOWNLOAD


All full recorded videos for past guests can be accessed from the MikiDz page here:
http://www.djcity.com/mikidz