DJ Shadow: Giant Step Article, November 2006
We heard that DJ Shadow was in town, so we tracked him down and somehow convinced him to take a few minutes out of his hectic schedule to chat with us about hyphy, digital technology, globalization, and why rap doesn't suck in 2006...
GIANT STEP: There has been a lot of talk about the “Hyphy” [Bay Area genre of Rap music] tracks on your new album, and you seem to be writing passionately about Hyphy on your website. So for those who don’t know, how long have you been involved in the Hyphy scene/”movement” in the Bay and how did you link up with the artists that you worked with on this album?
DJ Shadow: Initially I was just a fan of this music, starting around 2002 when Rick Rock’s production style started cementing. In the same way that certain people can create entire genres, his body of work was starting to come together and it just sounded really unique and interesting to me. Between 2002-2003, I started hearing all these songs like “White Tee, Blue Jeans, and Nikes” by Keak da Sneak, “It’s Ah Slumper” by Turf Talk, “Gasoline” by E-40, and then of course the one that set it all off was “Hyphy” by The Federation. By that point, I was literally going to record stores grabbing everything I could, as a fan. I guess it’s hard for some people to understand that, but I just love when people get things going musically and when things start to happen, it’s like “Oh, good, this is something that’s going to inspire me for a long time to come.” That’s what I look for.
And of course being born and raised in the Bay and starting my career working with rappers in the Bay, it was just that much more exciting and that much more potent for me. Hyphy feels like the Bay in the same way that bounce music feels like New Orleans. For example, if you go to Houston you kind of understand a little bit more about Houston rap. It’s in the weather, the geography and the drugs that people take or whatever and so is the same with Hyphy. Eventually, in the same way after I listen to enough DJ Premier or Large Professor, I start wanting to make beats a certain way. So I sat down and made a beat. It came really quickly and it was really working for me. I thought “well if I’m gonna go this route and if I’m gonna contribute to the scene then I need to make a song that’s real. I need to make a song with the right people on it. I need it to have the right energy. I don’t want to make some hybrid.
As a result, I got a hold of Keak and Keak’s manager and Turf Talk and we put it together. And Turf and Keak’s manager were like “we gotta get this to radio right away!” I wasn’t even signed or anything, I just was like, “ok…yeah, that sounds cool.” Then literally two days later I was in New York and I started getting all these phone calls. People were saying, “Yo they’re playing “3 Freaks’!” Keak’s manager called me to ask “Are you listening? Are you listening?” Since I was in New York, I got the main station that broke Hyphy (KMEL) online and was sitting in the studio waiting for it to play and then they played it. In the Bay when a song is really hot and it’s in the mix, they put all these sound effects over it. It was so exciting to hear that, because I never get radio play.
GS: Do you think your previous work had an influence on the sound of Hyphy and how do you think your work on this album is going to influence the scene?
DS: I don’t think my early stuff had any influence whatsoever on Hyphy. That would be a real stretch for me to try to claim that. But, as far as contributing to the future, I can say that I’ve heard some beats that are obviously influenced by “3 Freaks” and “Turf Dancin’.” I heard one beat about a month ago where I said to myself, “Ok, they obviously heard ‘Turf Dancin’,” because it was barely changed. But that’s great. The fact that we did a high quality video and it got played a lot on MTV Jams – which I know is not even showed in New York, but it’s big in the Bay - helped to get the song out there as well.
GS: That video is a lot different than the other videos you’ve done. It’s more, if you will, commercially acceptable. Why did you decide to do that kind of a video and did it end up being more fun for you?
DS: Well again, if I’m trying to get the Hyphy audience on that song, I’m not gonna do some moody, abstract, black and white video. I’m gonna make a video that’s gonna reflect the scene. And I don’t know why that’s hard for people to contemplate. It’s the way I think about music these days. It was interesting, unique and new ten years ago to say, “well let’s get scratching on this rock track,” because it wasn’t being done. Or “let’s get Thom Yorke to sing on a track with samples and beats.” That wasn’t done. Ten years later, everybody does it. It was just my way of thinking that well, okay, “I’m gonna do a record then that reflects all the different types of music that I like and have them all be pure and of themselves and not try and make it a big mishmash album where every song is a little bit of everything thrown in the pot,” because to me that’s a cliché now. A lot of groups had huge commercial success doing that, so how is that innovative? Whether it’s Gorillaz or whatever, that’s like a standard format now. So I just wanted to do something that was utterly unique and if nothing else, I feel like this album is utterly unique.
GS: You have mentioned that, after making The Private Press, you were finished trying to make music completely on the MPC [Akai Sampler & Drum Machine]. How has new technology changed your mentality about making music and how has it influenced the music that you end up producing?
DS: I use the MPC onstage. I use it still as a tactile surface, but the samples now live in the computer, because it just doesn’t make sense anymore to use zip disks. You can’t even find zip disks anymore. It just makes more sense for the samples to live in the hard drive and to use a software synth or a software MPC-type platform, because you can do so many more things to the sounds that way.
GS: Has this changed your approach to making tracks?
DS: Yeah, absolutely. Between 2003 and 2004 I basically spent a year learning how to make music from the ground up again, being tutored on Pro-Tools to really be able to use it to its full capacity, on MIDI and which software synths and drum machines were going to work for me. I spent about a year making music that I thought was kind of good at the time, but then you realize “well, it’s not really that good, it’s just that it’s different - it’s new.” And it took me about 9 months to really get so familiar that I stopped thinking about the technology and just started injecting my personality into the music again.
GS: Going along with that, what do you think technology, especially digital technology, is doing to the art and the culture of DJing? What is your opinion on Serato [digital DJ technology]? Are you pessimistic about it or do you think it’s just a part of the evolution?
DS: I’m a big fan of DJ technology. I embraced CDJs right when they came out. I was the first DJ to use the DVD turntable on tour. I use Serato on my live show now. To me, it’s just another tool. I have to play shows sometimes in front of 10,000 people - not in the US, but overseas at festivals and stuff - and when you’re playing in front of that many people, it’s really nice to not have to worry about needle-rumble. That’s what I love about Serato. My favorite thing about Serato is that you’re still using vinyl, but you don’t have to worry about any of the artifact problems of DJing. If you want to, you can set it on the mode where it won’t skip. There’s a couple times where I’ve had to put it in “internal mode” because stuff stacked up on the needle, but I had to let the whole song play. I love it.
GS: You’re a big record collector - you’re a record head. What about the next generation of DJs that will be growing up strictly on Serato and will not be buying records and not have to carry a big bag of wax to a gig? Do you think there’s any down side of this technology? Because a lot of people are arguing about this right now.
DS: Honestly, for me, I do my thing anyway. Before there was Soulstrut and before there was EBay, digging for records is something that’s been a part of who I am for most of my life now. And even after funk 45’s now, people move on to modern soul and other types of collecting. It’s like “fine, I like what I like.” You know what I mean? I’m fine being the only person doing something. I’m fine being somebody that does what everybody else does. I just do what works for me. I continue to buy vinyl every day and every chance I get, but at the same time, I’m not just going to be like “vinyl, vinyl, vinyl, vinyl - nothing else exists!” Because for example, in the Bay, Hyphy, fifty percent of the songs that are made never even touch CDs. It’s all MP3, so you’re gonna have troubles if you’re some kind of ‘physical product only’ kind of purist or something. I know that I’ll be digging for 45’s or whatever ten years from now, twenty years from now, so I don’t worry about anybody else. I know what I’m doing and that’s all I have time to worry about really…that’s just my own opinion.
GS: Digital technology has created a very global culture nowadays, but at the same time, as you mention in respect to the Bay Area, there are a lot of localized scenes that seem in a way more localized than ever. What’s your feeling on localization versus globalization?
DS: Localization is where it’s at. I don’t know why I sounded drunk when I said that, but [hahaha], yeah, localization is where it’s at! I think that the pendulum is, or to use wonderful Bush administration terminology, “we’ve backed away from the precipice.” And, you know, I think that the pendulum is swinging the other way, in a lot of aspects. A lot of people are kind of sick of McDonald’s being everywhere. Where would you rather eat? You’d rather eat at some really cool local one-off spot where the people are really passionate about the food that they’re presenting and that’s definitely the way that I feel about music.
GS: There’s a lot more live instrumentation on your album and even, on some of the tracks, there are “replayed” samples - you had different musicians actually replay samples. You even played stuff yourself, keys and what not. Did you play drums at all?
DS: No, I did stuff like string arrangements. I can play drums. Not great, but I’m not going to get up on stage anytime soon.
GS: Is that something you’re really trying to do more of now, getting more diverse in terms of sound sources and not strictly using samples?
DS: On this record I just didn’t want to limit myself at all and it felt really good. Because on The Private Press, it was a laborious record to make. I love the record and it’s some of my finest work, I think. But, because of the nature of what it was, what I was trying to achieve with it and the type of map I was trying to illustrate with it, it required it to be laborious. I feel like this record, I just wanted to have a little bit of fun and I didn’t want any technical limitations placed on me. So if I thought of a bass line, we’d play the bass line. Or I’d do it on the keyboard or on the keyboard but we’d replace it later. It just totally depended on what was going to serve the song. I think the best example of all of those things coming together was on a song called “You Made It,” where to me, it just sounds like a really cohesive whole. But every different type of discipline went into making it: some of the stuff that sounds live is actually sampled and actually quite cut up and reassembled. The drums sound really live, but they’re sampled. The bass line, I feel sounds live, but it’s a synthesizer. The strings were originally synths and then they got replaced by real strings. So every possible different discipline went into that song, but when I hear it, as a listener, I don’t think about any of it. To me it just works, as a song.
GS: That’s what comes across on this album. It doesn’t seem as much about the overall concept, but more getting your ideas out and having fun with it. You’ve worked with many artists throughout your career, but on this album it seemed like you collaborated with a lot more people than you have in the past. Who was the most interesting person to collaborate with?
DS: Every song is a different story. Working with Lateef, of course, is second nature and he’s great. I just really think that, well, we can talk about any of these, pick somebody and I’ll tell you.
GS: I guess the most obvious is Keak, I’m sure he’s just a character to work with…
DS: Yeah. That was kind of early-ish in the process of working on the record and we got together. It was crazy because Turf Talk had been shot up right before that, so it was a little tense. He was shot up right outside his studio and he didn’t know where we were recording. It was unfamiliar to him and all that, so that was in the air a little bit. But then on the other side, Keak was just totally in Keak-mode and it was really humorous. We took a bunch of photos at the session, and in every photo Keak is laughing. It was impossible to get him not laughing. He was just living the Hyphy lifestyle, shall we say. That was fun and you know, right there on the spot is when everybody was like “Yo we’ve gotta get this to the radio,” before it was even mixed or anything.
GS: Has your collaborations affected your live show? Has it been more fun on the road?
DS: Yeah, this tour has been definitely the most fun I’ve ever had on tour. Mind you, Fab, Turf and Nump were only on the first 5 dates, because that’s all I could really afford, but I’ve had a couple other people with me the whole time. The crew has been really good, but it’s hard being away. I have two young children, so that’s tough. That’s the only thing, that and traveling.
GS: How do you feel the reaction to your music varies between the US and abroad? Have you noticed a difference?
DS: The only difference that I have noticed is that in the US, everybody tends to have ownership of rap and hip hop. As a result everyone tends to be opinionated and historically, regional hybrids of rap are always shit on at the beginning. Whether it’s Miami Bass, LA rap, Texas rap, down south, it doesn’t matter. If it’s not in New York, people are automatically suspicious. People are automatically like “Well it doesn’t sound like Rakim.” Well, no it doesn’t. I think probably because I grew up in Northern California where we would get Seattle rap, Texas rap, Miami rap, everybody knew New York was where it started, and generally speaking, New York rap was better than most. But, that’s also probably because the only stuff that made it out to California was stuff that had passed the regional test and had gotten good enough distribution to get out. But people in the Bay, we’re used to this. If you don’t live in a major metropolis, if you’re not in Atlanta, New York, or LA, get ready to get shit on for a while. And then someone starts making money until so and so legitimizes it, which is why it’s great that 40 hooked up with Lil’ John. I thought that was a really smart move on his part. And you know, everybody was waiting in the wings for 40’s album to go gold and as soon as it went gold everybody’s getting looks, and as soon as all those people come out, everybody will say “Oh, I loved Hyphy from the beginning.” That’s the pattern. And I’ve seen it over and over again.
GS: Do you feel like you’ve been embraced by the Hyphy scene? You’ve embraced it, but do you feel it’s been reciprocal?
DS: Yeah, for the most part. Somebody called me up to tell me they were playing the Turf track on the radio. I mean, everybody that I’ve encountered and that I’ve worked with, if they weren’t familiar with me before, they are now. It’s been good. Fab had me on his show, 40 plays me on his show. It’s cool, it’s all good.
SOURCE
We heard that DJ Shadow was in town, so we tracked him down and somehow convinced him to take a few minutes out of his hectic schedule to chat with us about hyphy, digital technology, globalization, and why rap doesn't suck in 2006...
GIANT STEP: There has been a lot of talk about the “Hyphy” [Bay Area genre of Rap music] tracks on your new album, and you seem to be writing passionately about Hyphy on your website. So for those who don’t know, how long have you been involved in the Hyphy scene/”movement” in the Bay and how did you link up with the artists that you worked with on this album?
DJ Shadow: Initially I was just a fan of this music, starting around 2002 when Rick Rock’s production style started cementing. In the same way that certain people can create entire genres, his body of work was starting to come together and it just sounded really unique and interesting to me. Between 2002-2003, I started hearing all these songs like “White Tee, Blue Jeans, and Nikes” by Keak da Sneak, “It’s Ah Slumper” by Turf Talk, “Gasoline” by E-40, and then of course the one that set it all off was “Hyphy” by The Federation. By that point, I was literally going to record stores grabbing everything I could, as a fan. I guess it’s hard for some people to understand that, but I just love when people get things going musically and when things start to happen, it’s like “Oh, good, this is something that’s going to inspire me for a long time to come.” That’s what I look for.
And of course being born and raised in the Bay and starting my career working with rappers in the Bay, it was just that much more exciting and that much more potent for me. Hyphy feels like the Bay in the same way that bounce music feels like New Orleans. For example, if you go to Houston you kind of understand a little bit more about Houston rap. It’s in the weather, the geography and the drugs that people take or whatever and so is the same with Hyphy. Eventually, in the same way after I listen to enough DJ Premier or Large Professor, I start wanting to make beats a certain way. So I sat down and made a beat. It came really quickly and it was really working for me. I thought “well if I’m gonna go this route and if I’m gonna contribute to the scene then I need to make a song that’s real. I need to make a song with the right people on it. I need it to have the right energy. I don’t want to make some hybrid.
As a result, I got a hold of Keak and Keak’s manager and Turf Talk and we put it together. And Turf and Keak’s manager were like “we gotta get this to radio right away!” I wasn’t even signed or anything, I just was like, “ok…yeah, that sounds cool.” Then literally two days later I was in New York and I started getting all these phone calls. People were saying, “Yo they’re playing “3 Freaks’!” Keak’s manager called me to ask “Are you listening? Are you listening?” Since I was in New York, I got the main station that broke Hyphy (KMEL) online and was sitting in the studio waiting for it to play and then they played it. In the Bay when a song is really hot and it’s in the mix, they put all these sound effects over it. It was so exciting to hear that, because I never get radio play.
GS: Do you think your previous work had an influence on the sound of Hyphy and how do you think your work on this album is going to influence the scene?
DS: I don’t think my early stuff had any influence whatsoever on Hyphy. That would be a real stretch for me to try to claim that. But, as far as contributing to the future, I can say that I’ve heard some beats that are obviously influenced by “3 Freaks” and “Turf Dancin’.” I heard one beat about a month ago where I said to myself, “Ok, they obviously heard ‘Turf Dancin’,” because it was barely changed. But that’s great. The fact that we did a high quality video and it got played a lot on MTV Jams – which I know is not even showed in New York, but it’s big in the Bay - helped to get the song out there as well.
GS: That video is a lot different than the other videos you’ve done. It’s more, if you will, commercially acceptable. Why did you decide to do that kind of a video and did it end up being more fun for you?
DS: Well again, if I’m trying to get the Hyphy audience on that song, I’m not gonna do some moody, abstract, black and white video. I’m gonna make a video that’s gonna reflect the scene. And I don’t know why that’s hard for people to contemplate. It’s the way I think about music these days. It was interesting, unique and new ten years ago to say, “well let’s get scratching on this rock track,” because it wasn’t being done. Or “let’s get Thom Yorke to sing on a track with samples and beats.” That wasn’t done. Ten years later, everybody does it. It was just my way of thinking that well, okay, “I’m gonna do a record then that reflects all the different types of music that I like and have them all be pure and of themselves and not try and make it a big mishmash album where every song is a little bit of everything thrown in the pot,” because to me that’s a cliché now. A lot of groups had huge commercial success doing that, so how is that innovative? Whether it’s Gorillaz or whatever, that’s like a standard format now. So I just wanted to do something that was utterly unique and if nothing else, I feel like this album is utterly unique.
GS: You have mentioned that, after making The Private Press, you were finished trying to make music completely on the MPC [Akai Sampler & Drum Machine]. How has new technology changed your mentality about making music and how has it influenced the music that you end up producing?
DS: I use the MPC onstage. I use it still as a tactile surface, but the samples now live in the computer, because it just doesn’t make sense anymore to use zip disks. You can’t even find zip disks anymore. It just makes more sense for the samples to live in the hard drive and to use a software synth or a software MPC-type platform, because you can do so many more things to the sounds that way.
GS: Has this changed your approach to making tracks?
DS: Yeah, absolutely. Between 2003 and 2004 I basically spent a year learning how to make music from the ground up again, being tutored on Pro-Tools to really be able to use it to its full capacity, on MIDI and which software synths and drum machines were going to work for me. I spent about a year making music that I thought was kind of good at the time, but then you realize “well, it’s not really that good, it’s just that it’s different - it’s new.” And it took me about 9 months to really get so familiar that I stopped thinking about the technology and just started injecting my personality into the music again.
GS: Going along with that, what do you think technology, especially digital technology, is doing to the art and the culture of DJing? What is your opinion on Serato [digital DJ technology]? Are you pessimistic about it or do you think it’s just a part of the evolution?
DS: I’m a big fan of DJ technology. I embraced CDJs right when they came out. I was the first DJ to use the DVD turntable on tour. I use Serato on my live show now. To me, it’s just another tool. I have to play shows sometimes in front of 10,000 people - not in the US, but overseas at festivals and stuff - and when you’re playing in front of that many people, it’s really nice to not have to worry about needle-rumble. That’s what I love about Serato. My favorite thing about Serato is that you’re still using vinyl, but you don’t have to worry about any of the artifact problems of DJing. If you want to, you can set it on the mode where it won’t skip. There’s a couple times where I’ve had to put it in “internal mode” because stuff stacked up on the needle, but I had to let the whole song play. I love it.
GS: You’re a big record collector - you’re a record head. What about the next generation of DJs that will be growing up strictly on Serato and will not be buying records and not have to carry a big bag of wax to a gig? Do you think there’s any down side of this technology? Because a lot of people are arguing about this right now.
DS: Honestly, for me, I do my thing anyway. Before there was Soulstrut and before there was EBay, digging for records is something that’s been a part of who I am for most of my life now. And even after funk 45’s now, people move on to modern soul and other types of collecting. It’s like “fine, I like what I like.” You know what I mean? I’m fine being the only person doing something. I’m fine being somebody that does what everybody else does. I just do what works for me. I continue to buy vinyl every day and every chance I get, but at the same time, I’m not just going to be like “vinyl, vinyl, vinyl, vinyl - nothing else exists!” Because for example, in the Bay, Hyphy, fifty percent of the songs that are made never even touch CDs. It’s all MP3, so you’re gonna have troubles if you’re some kind of ‘physical product only’ kind of purist or something. I know that I’ll be digging for 45’s or whatever ten years from now, twenty years from now, so I don’t worry about anybody else. I know what I’m doing and that’s all I have time to worry about really…that’s just my own opinion.
GS: Digital technology has created a very global culture nowadays, but at the same time, as you mention in respect to the Bay Area, there are a lot of localized scenes that seem in a way more localized than ever. What’s your feeling on localization versus globalization?
DS: Localization is where it’s at. I don’t know why I sounded drunk when I said that, but [hahaha], yeah, localization is where it’s at! I think that the pendulum is, or to use wonderful Bush administration terminology, “we’ve backed away from the precipice.” And, you know, I think that the pendulum is swinging the other way, in a lot of aspects. A lot of people are kind of sick of McDonald’s being everywhere. Where would you rather eat? You’d rather eat at some really cool local one-off spot where the people are really passionate about the food that they’re presenting and that’s definitely the way that I feel about music.
GS: There’s a lot more live instrumentation on your album and even, on some of the tracks, there are “replayed” samples - you had different musicians actually replay samples. You even played stuff yourself, keys and what not. Did you play drums at all?
DS: No, I did stuff like string arrangements. I can play drums. Not great, but I’m not going to get up on stage anytime soon.
GS: Is that something you’re really trying to do more of now, getting more diverse in terms of sound sources and not strictly using samples?
DS: On this record I just didn’t want to limit myself at all and it felt really good. Because on The Private Press, it was a laborious record to make. I love the record and it’s some of my finest work, I think. But, because of the nature of what it was, what I was trying to achieve with it and the type of map I was trying to illustrate with it, it required it to be laborious. I feel like this record, I just wanted to have a little bit of fun and I didn’t want any technical limitations placed on me. So if I thought of a bass line, we’d play the bass line. Or I’d do it on the keyboard or on the keyboard but we’d replace it later. It just totally depended on what was going to serve the song. I think the best example of all of those things coming together was on a song called “You Made It,” where to me, it just sounds like a really cohesive whole. But every different type of discipline went into making it: some of the stuff that sounds live is actually sampled and actually quite cut up and reassembled. The drums sound really live, but they’re sampled. The bass line, I feel sounds live, but it’s a synthesizer. The strings were originally synths and then they got replaced by real strings. So every possible different discipline went into that song, but when I hear it, as a listener, I don’t think about any of it. To me it just works, as a song.
GS: That’s what comes across on this album. It doesn’t seem as much about the overall concept, but more getting your ideas out and having fun with it. You’ve worked with many artists throughout your career, but on this album it seemed like you collaborated with a lot more people than you have in the past. Who was the most interesting person to collaborate with?
DS: Every song is a different story. Working with Lateef, of course, is second nature and he’s great. I just really think that, well, we can talk about any of these, pick somebody and I’ll tell you.
GS: I guess the most obvious is Keak, I’m sure he’s just a character to work with…
DS: Yeah. That was kind of early-ish in the process of working on the record and we got together. It was crazy because Turf Talk had been shot up right before that, so it was a little tense. He was shot up right outside his studio and he didn’t know where we were recording. It was unfamiliar to him and all that, so that was in the air a little bit. But then on the other side, Keak was just totally in Keak-mode and it was really humorous. We took a bunch of photos at the session, and in every photo Keak is laughing. It was impossible to get him not laughing. He was just living the Hyphy lifestyle, shall we say. That was fun and you know, right there on the spot is when everybody was like “Yo we’ve gotta get this to the radio,” before it was even mixed or anything.
GS: Has your collaborations affected your live show? Has it been more fun on the road?
DS: Yeah, this tour has been definitely the most fun I’ve ever had on tour. Mind you, Fab, Turf and Nump were only on the first 5 dates, because that’s all I could really afford, but I’ve had a couple other people with me the whole time. The crew has been really good, but it’s hard being away. I have two young children, so that’s tough. That’s the only thing, that and traveling.
GS: How do you feel the reaction to your music varies between the US and abroad? Have you noticed a difference?
DS: The only difference that I have noticed is that in the US, everybody tends to have ownership of rap and hip hop. As a result everyone tends to be opinionated and historically, regional hybrids of rap are always shit on at the beginning. Whether it’s Miami Bass, LA rap, Texas rap, down south, it doesn’t matter. If it’s not in New York, people are automatically suspicious. People are automatically like “Well it doesn’t sound like Rakim.” Well, no it doesn’t. I think probably because I grew up in Northern California where we would get Seattle rap, Texas rap, Miami rap, everybody knew New York was where it started, and generally speaking, New York rap was better than most. But, that’s also probably because the only stuff that made it out to California was stuff that had passed the regional test and had gotten good enough distribution to get out. But people in the Bay, we’re used to this. If you don’t live in a major metropolis, if you’re not in Atlanta, New York, or LA, get ready to get shit on for a while. And then someone starts making money until so and so legitimizes it, which is why it’s great that 40 hooked up with Lil’ John. I thought that was a really smart move on his part. And you know, everybody was waiting in the wings for 40’s album to go gold and as soon as it went gold everybody’s getting looks, and as soon as all those people come out, everybody will say “Oh, I loved Hyphy from the beginning.” That’s the pattern. And I’ve seen it over and over again.
GS: Do you feel like you’ve been embraced by the Hyphy scene? You’ve embraced it, but do you feel it’s been reciprocal?
DS: Yeah, for the most part. Somebody called me up to tell me they were playing the Turf track on the radio. I mean, everybody that I’ve encountered and that I’ve worked with, if they weren’t familiar with me before, they are now. It’s been good. Fab had me on his show, 40 plays me on his show. It’s cool, it’s all good.
SOURCE