How A-Trak Went From Teenaged Battle Champ To Global Ambassador of DJ Culture | Blueprint

[Music] turntablist producer and label owner 8-track leveraged his success as a teenage scratch phenom into a permanent position on the Mount Rushmore of DJ's this is his blueprint [Music] growing up how did you make your deduction you tape up and dirty [ __ ] so I grew up in Montreal my parents are intellectuals and I would say that they encouraged like an interest in the arts neither my parents makes music but as you know both my brother and I are in music my brother now known as the frontman of chromeo at the time was just you know David mackovic and for both of us you know early 90s 92 3 was the period where we got into hip-hop through really through the Beastie Boys Beastie Boys in Cypress Hill the scratches on the biz markie phone on there just hearing that being like what's that what's that noise and that was just hypnotizing to me my brother with borrow cassettes starting with the Beasties in Cypress Hill but then going into far sites first album the last hole Balu 9 state Called Quest's Midnight Marauders but also Karis one returning the boom bap which had a bunch of premiere songs with a lot of scratching that was kind of our introduction it's a hip hop how does a curator volunteer life my bro was playing to get to are already and you know quickly he was already part of bands and and and I wanted to find my instrument I think I just tried it one day you know and I remember even my brother and his friends trying it at some point the way that I think anybody will try scratching you put a record on your parents record player it sounds like trash and you're just like okay I can't do it except when I tried it by myself after school one day it didn't sound like trash it sounded like scratching and it really became a fixation for me I would just listen to records that have scratching on them and try to analyze how Premier's doing this or how Pete Rock is doing that and I had a very very serious focus right from the start and it was very methodical almost mathematical work if I understood in my head how a scratch was supposed to be done I had to teach my hands to do it by that point my brother was also hosting a college radio show in Montreal and through that I met some local DJ's who were participating in the DMC battle you know before I got into it one of those DJ's was Kid Koala who is still known to this day awesome DJ extremely creative but there was a lesser-known guy called devious who would invite me to his house and you know by the way there was a whole process of even explaining to my parents that I'm gonna go hang out had a in a sort of bad part of town with a guy called devious you know in the end my parents were a little worried at first but they got to meet the guy and he was a very nice guy that he actually wasn't devious they were trusting especially as they got to meet the people that I was dealing with and see also to see what this meant to me so I really really found a true passion and you know pretty quickly they started being write-ups in the local papers and things like that because that would make cool appearances that shows even those 14 you know nowhere near being legally allowed to be in clothes I was just never never nervous about it it didn't take long for me to think that I wanted to answer battles I didn't even realize that the first battle that I'd enter would make me world champion I didn't I didn't see that coming knowing you as an adult you're a very sort of mild demeanor it takes a certain porosity and repetitiveness yeah to win there's words beyond competitive like I think that I'm overconfident and I think that that's helped me like I've thought about this over time because I thought back at like why did I put myself in that situation it worked out great but people don't usually do that the only thing I was think about was that I practice enough and I was a nut with my practice like my friends would call me a monk like I it was hours and hours and hours I remember they watched me practice and say you know of course this is the final days and say all right cool put up the needle skips you know just say well you can't skip sometimes on your practice that usually finds the spot that I'm using again and he would sort of think for a second go no run through your routine and I'm gonna surprise you and I'll bang the table when you don't expect it and you have to keep going with it and I'd be like okay and I would run through this set which is a six minute set so if you mess up one part all your timings thrown off in he would hit the table and it would make the Neal skip and it forced me to prepare myself for the un-- prepare well yes did you your heart expect to win I went to the World Finals which were in Italy that year my mom came with me because I wasn't gonna travel by myself at 15 in as I remember it and when I look at photos I was just having a ton of my life I wasn't like sweating buckets like oh man I'm gonna face this guy and that guy and this is like those videos that I watched which is like that's the truth I was just like I love scratch and scratch [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] the flipside of that victory in one of the biggest lessons in my sort of professional career early on was the skepticism and the haters that came with that because at the end of the day I looked like a cute little kid you know I was 15 but I looked 10 maybe I don't know 11 somewhere around there and there's DJ's who we're practicing for years trying to enter these battles win these battles and I came in and just took the trophy home and they you know I think a lot of them were jealous rather than he's just getting bummed out I would just think no you know I'm gonna do I'm gonna win more battles and then if I win more battles no one's gonna say that I won that one battle because of how I looked I'm gonna make it so that it's undeniable my battling years were 97 to 2000 in 2000 I was 18 I was five time world champion which was a record at the time and I decided that would be my last year battling the turntablism scene itself was starting to dry out a bit and there was just less interest out there for scratch DJ's compared to how there really was you know so much enthusiasm for it for a few years and a lot of my friends my DJ friends were all at least five years older than me sort of took that as a cue to change their path a little bit some of them got residency's at the local club or some of them went and finished their studies or just sort of like shacked up with white V or whatever it was but a lot of the DJ's around me slow down as the scene slowed down so what was your thought process as you plotted through the second act I remember I really want to I want to DJ for Missy Elliott probably the best that I did just as far as flipping records was what get your freak on goodbye Missy I always wanted to mess with her records and that made me think well maybe I could be her DJ but keep in mind this is a time in the early 2000s where most artists didn't have DJ's I had another routine with grindin by the clips and I met Pusha T in a hotel lobby in LA at the Grafton and I just happen to have a camcorder in like bag with footage of what I was doing to his song and even with that it wasn't enough to really mean to anything so I went up to him hey what's up I made sure I come with EJ mhm the world champion cool let's meet you hey Jeff five minutes let me show you think three minutes let me show you this thing that do with Brandon oh [ __ ] watch it yo that's crazy cool thanks pounds that doesn't change my career it's cool head like no fault to him would I expect him to do you know I I was kind of vaguely looking for someone that could make room for me on their stage but that's very abstract little-known fact there was a brief period where I was hired to DJ for steve-o from jackass his manager used to be a promoter who used to book me and my friends a couple scratch DJ's so his manager saw me at a show and was like hey China put you years ago man you're so great like I want to make produce these DVDs for you and get you on the road and more people need to see what you do and I was like yeah more people need to see what it do that straight that's what I've been thinking too and oh my god there was this weird show that I played in Cancun for Maxim magazine during spring break it was one of the weirdest things in my life but it was steve-o and maybe two of the other jackass guys these guys are like stapling them nuts sex and like balancing ladders on their nose and basically hurting themselves in front of a crowd for a chair and then I went up a bit of scratch routine and the crowd loved it and I was like I knew that there is audiences that never seen scratching that could dig what I do I tried working with the steve-o squad for less than a month it was very weird but myself a flight home I think we were in Kansas City when I was like no I was like this is not the thing that I set out to do so how did you meet her I met Kanye on a fateful trip to London as it turns out the whole rockefeller team was in London for a sort of press run but there's a record shop called deal real they got me to come in you know do a little demonstration or routine so kina John Legend and I are at the same in store and Kanye came to support John but was didn't want to get noticed too much so he's in the corner of the shop with a hoodie over his face just there to support his boy but then he sees me come up and I do this thing where I flip the sample for just to get by with Vanina Simone sample and they go instrumental and as I'm hyper concentrated going through these really technical tricks I'm thinking this guy's into it I gotta talk to him after this and then most def walks in I don't know why I don't know why he's in town most ed walks into the store people go crazy they start freestyling people are mobbing into the store and I'm thinking like there goes my chance to talk to Kanye with [ __ ] so with the help of famous assistants who was just down to like connect some dots for me I had her up later on I was like you know I needed to talk to Kanye I know he saw my little set at the store and she was like look we have a press conference tomorrow here's where it is just go talk to so I go to this press conference with my suitcase I don't know anyone and I'm just sort of like waiting in the hopes that I can catch yay before I go to the airport and sure enough he's walking out and I McGill I'm the dude from the shop yesterday and he's then we start talking things like you know that was crazy you know I'm gonna take you on tour I need a DJ I'm doing this tour a college dropout that just came out right and so he was about to do his official tour it's like anything I need a deejay imma take you on the road and everything came from that and you know it's funny the thing back at it because it feels like there's an element of chance right like what are the odds that Kanye and I will be at the same shop and that John Legend and I would be booked for the same in-store there's definitely not a chance but I also think there's an element of like identifying that moments that could be a pivotal moment for what you do and knowing when you have to just [Music] go for it a track and Kanye began a creative partnership that benefited both greatly but a track never lost sight of his own ambitions so how does that time when tour with him change your life in both of our lives it was seminal periods and you know I worked with yeh from right after college dropout to right before you two weights being a part of those projects you know late registration witnessing the work of John Bryan but also seeing Kanye's style grow scratching on gold digger then scratching on the common albums on being that stuff and then actually feeding some music that played some sort of influence into the sound of graduation you know I never want to take too much credit on that but even just being in the room and being a part of the conversation Tonya was the producer an artist he's the one that had a vision of what he turned it into but understanding just how powerful music is and how you know one reference can turn into something else that's completely different but there's a lineage there so during that period like 2006 into 2007 you're spending a lot of time with yay yeah you're starting to play things like justice and death poem on the side and are you introducing him indoors to the crew to all this stuff specifically for justice for example like I remember when they had the video for da and she he that had the animated t-shirt graphics the song yeah that saw me made I sent that video to Kanye like yo my friends made this cool video and then right away he was like I need to meet this guy and I juiced that and then you saw me made the video for good life so some of those were connections that I made but like it's tricky for me anytime I do an interview people try to pull this pull me to take credit for certain things and but to be fair Calle helped me with just as many things I'll just play him the music that I was working on because even though I was you know this reputation of being one of the best DJs in the world I was starting to produce and I I didn't take for granted that I would be a great producer necessarily those are different things so he would see me with my headphones on in the bus or wherever and they better let me listen to that that's what made him get on pro Nell's by the way that kid sister song I never asked him play and they're asking like rap on this song that I'm producing it was just one of those instances of him being like can I listen oh this is though and then like a few days later like singing that track at certain point oh you decided to step off of the Kanye West you know what prompted that fool's gold this this enterprise was probably the deciding factor is probably the biggest catalyst to that decision through my whole stints with Kanye there was definitely a sense of like is this the end game for me am I just when am I gonna be number two I've always been extremely grateful to what those what the experience of working with Kanye brought to me let alone the fact that he's a dear friend to this day it also it gave me the jetpack that I needed to get out of that previous phase of turntablism which was a sort of product of the backpack era that had lost steam it put me on stage at the VMAs and the Grammys and you know all these other events let alone just stadiums I found it falls hold at the beginning of seven I quit the Kanye gig at the end of 2007 and they remember when I told him I wanted to talk to him obviously we're on tour hey can I come to your room yeah sure and like I walked in and he's like so you're done like he just knew so I guess the next chapter sort of begins before the last chapter ends with the creation of fools yeah how did that happen full-scope was born around the time that I started producing music myself a little bit more seriously also and at a time when I just moved to New York I befriended New York deejay and journalists called Nick catch dubs we were in the same circle of friends where it just seemed like everyone around us was doing something new and really interesting and the establishment wasn't getting it the big labels weren't getting it and I just understood that it's not rocket science to press a vinyl and to get records out and that what's important is the community side of it and getting certain key journalists and people to hear it but also a few key DJ's and you know that those relationships can really build a strong brand the aesthetics of four schools are super important right from the start you know that's the rock rest in peace was a partner of the label for the preferred for many years like not only in the hen house art director but literally had shares that's how integral he was to fool's gold the same way that you you know someone in another era could think I I know what a what the Def Jam sleeve looks like or I know what a Stones Throw seat looks like or more wax or factory records we want a full school to be in that lineage what is your ambition for the further regular our ambition in the beginning for fool's gold was simply an extremely consistent packaging savvy and genre let's label run by DJs and the fact that we're a degenerate label was important because a lot of the early releases fell into this unclassifiable category of club music we had a few rappers that were experimenting with electronic beats which at the time was not the norm at all so we had that and we had electronic music that appealed to hip-hop heads Nick and I knew that as DJs that all made sense and not not only that but that was the most exciting music at the time we did our first whole school tour right from year one in in the fall the video for kids sister Pro nails which was a self-funded very clever video just come out and it was kind of like you know setting everything ablaze and we were getting a lot of attention cool kids were part of the fault we I think had just just just science ain't completely unknown Cleveland guy called Kakheti and you know III even brought in a few of my European DJ friends to make that bridge to build that bridge between scenes and to bring that energy of you know sweaty in the electronic parties to the morphing hip-hop scene and to just toss that and says some crazy new thing so one of the first early breakout successes that you guys had was kick how do you stay men mm-hmm the Kruegers remix plain Pat brought me okay day and night so I obviously know Pat through working with Kanye so he found Cuddy when he was basically unknown and sent me the two songs day and night and that new new not even directly asking if I would sign it to foldable but just on some like hey what do you think of this I found this kid and I remember going Australia for a tour and on the flight back I kept listening the day and night over and over again and even though there was some quarks and idiosyncrasies to the production style and whatever else that were different from what my ear was accustomed to hearing with hip hop production and some things maybe were technically wrong it was [ __ ] great and all they know is I couldn't stop listening to it so whatever that thing was I couldn't I listened to it on repeat for a very long flight those flights are linked to over 13 hours something about that long flight gave me like the the lightbulb when I when I got back home to think like we just put this out this is great the unite is one of those exceptional records and I mean that even literally that I think a lot of people in the music business dream of where every couple of years there's a song that takes a couple months to creep up but that becomes ubiquitous hit off the strength of just the originality of the music itself and you mentioned the current remix that you know the Crockers heard the song on fools gold's MySpace page and asked if we would send them stems and they had an idea for up-tempo remix of it and they did it for free and when we started selling it we gave them a little bit of money and they really didn't ask for much no one knew how big it would get and the thing that was very particular about the night is that both the original version and the electronic remix blew up like a two-headed monster and conquered you know these spaces at the same time it was incredible Danny Brown is perhaps the artist that I've taken from you know the single mixtape world all the way to a full-blown career how did you end up signing Danny and what was it about him they you know he became sort of the marquee artists both Nick and I noticed him on some you know online on some websites and interviews seeing what he looked like was part of what people introduced the hearing him talk hearing him say that he wasn't interested in trying to get a record on the radio but also seeing he's got a smile that's really charismatic hearing his speaking voice and just being like this guy is a character you know and understanding that he's from Detroit you thinking this guy could be like the next Detroit thing after the era of slum and whatnot as far as like him becoming a marquee artist yeah and breaking down doors and becoming such a unique character that was a team effort the early fools called the off parties when then he would perform half the crowd wouldn't get it and he and I would have thoughts after where he would feel sort of unsure about that and just sort of say I hope it and that you guys down and I'd be like dude you're incredible like are you kidding just keep doing what you do it's just gonna keep growing and growing and that's kind of that was our old foster that that trust and that confidence this is um this is a fool's gold office so we're right behind the store and only select you are allowed back here there's just so many memories of everything that we've been involved with between the events although obviously some of the releases five-year anniversary party with go space where the block got shut down because there's too many people and the cops came and put barricades and it was one of those like growing pains kind of moments think the the Cameron project with actual airbrush artwork that was yeah vinyl Brown xxx one of the best covers we've ever had cuddy of course that's the record that we presented to him and he lost this [ __ ] at this point you're in your late 20s and you got the label and give your DJ career going on producing as well around the same time you linked with Armand Van Helden and form Duck Sauce yeah and you guys have what is possibly the largest tape of your personal career Barbra Streisand Barbra Streisand was a song that like our mom did I sat down for maybe a few weeks and made like three or four songs in hopes of finding one of them that would be a single and Barbra was the one that I would play to my friends if I would just sit down with my friends and be like hey you want to hear the new [ __ ] that we got when I got to that one I would say okay this is the really stupid winner or just like hey listen this silly thing that we did or this you know whatever adjective I've used but just like check this out we're stupid when we made that song I think I was on the floor laughing for about 15 minutes when we came like got that loop going the way there was and that voice sounded just the way that it did and it had that cadence that just felt like it belongs there and it doesn't matter if it doesn't fit the format of what's on the charts we we were number one in 12 countries it was like a seal oh [ __ ] you Swedish House Mafia 1 and I forget which Bruno Mars song and Barbra Streisand those were the three or four songs that were on the top of the charts in every country in the world and I would just look at that and be like this is so weird it's a loop the songs that go it makes no sense but you know that was I was proud of that because I felt there was something punk rock about that around this time 2008-2009 DJs in general start to step to the forefront you as one of the sort of emissaries of this movement ever since I was a kid scratching it was so important for me for DJing to have legitimacy and when EDM exploded in North America we finally got it rather than getting hung up over you know some sides of it that maybe weren't the version of teaching that I like or whatever else my thing was like hey we finally got people's eyeballs like we could this is the moment now we got people's attention everybody wants in on this I would be a hypocrite to wish for that for you know 15 years prior and then to suddenly be like but I don't like the way that have played out no okay it's great DJ culture that's what the as DJ culture conquered the world and to me that was exciting has that bubble burst I think what happened was there was a speculation mobile and with that a lot of like there was a certain there was a BT maybe like there was a lot of also-rans and I think maybe there was a bit of a filtering process where only the ones that have something you need to offer I still have their footing it's just that now in the bigger picture hip-hop is dominance which I'm thrilled about because after the EDM explosion the once child star assumed a new role as the elder statesman of the culture can you travel the world by yourself yeah you have complete control over everything that you do in the performance and now you have a staff forming around you how did you think about the management of that and you know the artists and all of those sort of sticky parts of the business dealing with employee he is dealing with internal company dynamics and friction between this person and that person was you know like you like you're hinting was a new thing for me to deal with and also dealing with heart with artists who naturally are creators and who are maybe fragile because they're putting themselves on the line and I learned a lot of lessons along the way if you think about it for the first half of my career I was the young kids I went from hanging out with my older brother and his friends to hanging out with my DJ friends who were 10 years older than me it's working with yeh and his friends were basically my brothers age and then around the time that I found it full school and I started putting on people and I myself was you know going over the hump of the mid-20s I started noticing some some even more more people calling me big bro or just like looking at me for advice that became more of a constant you know in the Fool's Gold chapter of my life the last 10 years which was like me realizing that I'm not the little bro anymore and that there's like generations and generations that are coming in and that I can help just be there for them and answer some questions and you know hopefully steer them in the right path as you look at your personal finances hmm are you are things just falling into place or I mean how are you approaching even way before fool's gold I was making decent money off of DJing and to this day I guess I guess the ELMO father has said this publicly I've never taken a salary from fool's gold this company is not how I make money this company is how I get cool eight years out I make my money being a drag and occasionally that involves duck sauce or whatever else I didn't grow up in the household where money was an end goal at all so when you grow up not having an excess of money and when you start making your own money at least in my case I could say early on I was cautious with it careful with it start putting some money away right from the start I just wanted to responsibly build a structure where I can do what I want to do and have the means to do what I want to do as a label boss obviously every artist you deal with these students that they are the next and whatever it has it been tough on you emotionally you know what when those people are left feeling let down by you know if an artist puts out something on Fool's Gold and it doesn't blow up as much as we all hope it would my sort of Mo is just what's the next move let's play the next project or is there still something we can do with this project to work it in a different way maybe that's just something with the way I approach olive oil what I do you're gonna have failures certain projects that you or the team or whoever can labor over the most might be the ones that are just the hub it's the hardest eggs it just doesn't quite come out as gracefully and there's other things that just happened extremely naturally and then just connect and people feel that the contagious aspect of that can spontaneity and that really connects to and you kind of just have to accept that there's a lot of things out of your control on whether or not something connects or hits or sales or whatever your you know barometer is but I also you have to accept that that that's part of the King how do you maintain sort of your contact with the cutting edge of what's going on I have to research new music that feeds my teaching and that feeds Fool's Gold signings that just feeds the knowledge that I have to always keep up and I can never let that slip and I remember in my earlier days as a hip-hop fan being sort of scared of change in particular you know I'm such a child of the DJ premier era I'm such a child of boom bap and when like keyboard beats started appearing that sounded so wrong to me in the beginning but when I realized that I was clinging on to one paradigm in that that it's wrong to do that in music especially as a DJ I think I was ashamed of that and and and you know I never want to make that mistake again there's a way to still be critical because my job isn't to like everything and just be like ah our kids are so cool I still have to have an opinion and to find the stuff that has substance or that has a rich or whatever else but to at least understand what's me you know if something's making waves why how's it connecting so this year he debuted the first annual Goldie Awards yeah it sort of brings things full circle and definitely the EMC champion put on your own DJ battle the whole idea of cold Awards was you know filling a void in the sort of DJ ecosystem on one hands like I know just how much winning those battles in my early years established my rep got my name on the map and I also know specifically when that scene lost people's interests and sort of like thinned out so for me that exercise in throwing the Goldie Awards was not just to manage to organize a DJ battle period but it was a sort of reconnecting of the dots whereby you know I know the audience that comes to my fool's gold events and I know how a DJ battle is due to be updated and I just had to connect all of it for me it felt like the most important milestone in in the last many years of what I've done because it's it's so deeply significant to me and you know when you are talking about you know the boom of EDM and whether that bubble may have burst a little bit or at least the sort of readjustments that djs as personalities have been going through this past year in the public eye I felt like that it was a perfect window to insert a place where the true authentic craft of the gene can be celebrated and encouraged and just like grounded really ground the whole thing for the very strong foundation as you get older does life on the road become more difficult look I feel like there was a point maybe in my mid to late 20s where I started to feeling like ah man I'm messed up coming home from a tour and being messed up and by the way like even the sort of what it does to your psyche the mental side of it just coming home bummed out sometimes and just being like why my bones and then you realize like oh yeah that's equal to that fatigue oh [ __ ] with your mood so the only thing that I wanted his recent in recent years is to try to balance it out I'm just okay with the whole thing like look I do what I love for a living it's constantly challenging I just love the [ __ ] out of eating in general I will say that the entertainment business and music as a whole is designed to give people like myself or and anyone that makes music a career normally of like five years the challenge is longevity and the way to overcome that challenge I think at least I've found is this sort of constant reinvention I always think of where the path is going and you know what I did before and what I'm about to do next and that's why none of the new elements that come into what I'm doing are ever too much off course because I know I know the story I'm writing a story [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Complex

Views: 127,008

Rating: 4.9217606 out of 5

Keywords: complex, complex originals, complex tv, complex media, Blueprint the show, noah callahan-bever, Nick Catchdubs, Fool’s Gold, Pete Rock, KRS One, DJ battles, turntablist, mixing, scratching, chromeo, montreal, kanye west, graduation, college dropout, tour dj, 808s and heartbreak, dance music, EDM, producer, electronic music, kid sister, danny brown, kid cudi, hip-hop, federal reserve, camron, duck sauce, fool’s gold day off, detroit, armand, barbra streisand, canadian DJs, pusha t

Id: oSl-Fgw3tUk

Length: 36min 12sec (2172 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 04 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/martintmed]

watched it the day it came out and keep rewatching it and learning something new every time, lots of gems in there and cool stories like him in the store with kanye