Artist: DJ Graffiti
Interviewer: Alex Fruchter

Waiting For The DJ: An Interview With DJ Graffiti

When I got turntables about a year ago I couldn't do anything. I couldn't beat match, I couldn't scratch, I couldn't cut, and I couldn't mix - but in that time I've practiced a lot and got advice and skills from other deejays along the way. After hearing Bling Free Volume 3 by DJ Graffiti, I knew I had to do an interview with him. I had to touch base and pick his brain about the art of mixing, and the thought that goes into producing a mixtape. Graffiti did not disappoint. He gave me pointers about staying within your boundaries, song selection and patience?Oh yeah, and he talked about what's he's up to these days. Check it out.

Alex: First let's just get right into the new album, if you could just explain the concept of Bling Free for those that may be unfamiliar with it.

Graffiti: Well, the concept of Bling Free, it came about back when I was kind of getting tired of hearing all the Bling Bling stuff on the radio. Not that I'm not about getting what I need to get to survive and getting the best of it, but I was just tired of hearing it everywhere, all the time. I thought the focus was being taken away from music and being more on just what material things I'm trying to get at. So basically that's when I coined the term 'Bling Free' and Bling Free Volume One came out and there's been three volumes now.
The main thing that I kind of want to get across to people, and that's what I try to educate a little bit more?is that it has nothing to do with hating on people who go out and get material things - because I want the things that everyone else wants. I just think there's a time and a place to everything - you have to have your priorities right. Don't go buy the car before you got a house. You have to make sense with what you're doing.

A: For the project, how did you go about picking artists and picking what songs to put on there?

G: I kind of have a process. With the Bling Free CDs I work on my exclusives and unreleased tracks first and I collect those. I get new music in the mail all the time from different labels. I've been doing college radio for a good while, so I get new music in the mail everyday. I always just a have a selection of new songs, so I focus on getting the exclusives and the unreleased tracks. When I get a good selection of those, maybe ten or twelve different ones to pick from that's when I say, 'ok now let me look at all this new music that's out right now that will fit into the format of what I'm doing.'

A: How often are you recording?

G: It's getting ready to change right now. The Bling Free series is kind of a once a year type thing, but just in general it's more of a bi-monthly probably. I have a new mixtape series that's gonna be called The Mixperience Sessions. I'm just going to throw everything in there. You may hear R&B songs, you may hear an underground Hip Hop song - you know it's still going to be me and my vibe. Just because those are the CDs I've had out there the farthest with the most promotion, people want to pigeonhole me and say I only do Bling Free stuff and I'm a backpacker and blah, blah, blah? but I play everything.

A: I guess being a good deejay is knowing when you go to a party or club that they want to hear music that they know, not music that you would play if you were chilling at your house.

G: Right, definitely.

A: When did you first get tables and get into deejaying?

G: I first got into deejaying - it was a funny story. I came up here to the University of Michigan in '96. As soon as I got here - I was from the metro-Detroit area, this is about an hour outside of Detroit - I was used to deejays that mixed and scratched and all of this. I got here at school and kept going to these house parties and fraternity parties where it's just a guy with two CD players, not even deejay CD players. There's silence for a few seconds then a new song would come on. Horrible! Everybody I was around hadn't been exposed to anything 'cause I was just in a dorm setting - so people were coming from everywhere. They were like, 'why don't you do better if you can.'
That summer I went home and my boy was deejaying so he had tables. I started going over to his house almost everyday. I had about three crates of records before I even had turntables, because I would just go with him whenever he went record shopping and just buy records I wanted to buy. So I got into it '96-97, been doing it since.

A: Do you remember the first record you ever bought?

G: No, because it wasn't really like that. I inherited my parents' record collection so I had tons of old '70's records that I basically started sampling from once I started trying to produce. I had a lot of those records, and when I actually started going to the record store I was spending 100-150 dollars every time I went in there, I was just so excited to have any kind of records. So it wasn't like I went out and only bought one record.

A: Do you have any artists or deejays that you look up to or helped you along the way?

G: My boy DJ K-Dog, that's where I started out. I started out in his basement, and his parents almost had to adopt me cause I was going over there even when he wasn't home deejaying on his tables. DJ Marquis has really helped me out a lot and mentored. He's been spinning around here in the Detroit area on radio - different radio shows. He's been in the game for a good? he probably doesn't want me to say this, but 15-20 years. Wax-Tax-N-Dre is the guy that got me into my first record pool. So, it's been mainly local deejays. Just looking at what deejays I was looking up to the most when I first got in the game, it was Cash Money, Jazzy Jeff - those were the deejays that I was really checking for at the time.
A: You said earlier when you first got to Michigan you just saw people turning CDs and you were used to mixing and scratching. What do you enjoy doing more, mixing or scratching?

G: I'm not that great of a scratch deejay. Really what I enjoy, and really what I think I'm best at, is song selection and those certain things of knowing what record to put on when and how to bring it in. Smooth transitions and things like that. I'm not going to be the best scratch deejay you've ever seen - I'm not going to wow you with my cuts, but they'll be solid enough that it's enjoyable.

A: Do you think it's important for a deejay to find their strength and not try to do more than they can?

G: Definitely. I always say that. I knew a lot of people that when they first learned how to do the crab scratch or thought they did it was like the whole CD was just crab scratching?Almost! 'Cause they hadn't mastered it yet. To me it's kind of like, if there's something simple that I do really well I'd much rather be doing that then to try to do something that I can't do. You won't hear me on my CDs trying to do crazy juggles and it really sound sloppy, because I can't. I can do a little something but I'm not going to try to do more than I can.

A: I definitely could tell, listening to Bling Free Volume 3, the focus is really the mix and it flows really well. You had a few things on there but nothing to take attention away from the whole flow of the music.

G: I thank you for noticing that. That's what I'm trying to do. I think that's a Detroit thing to a certain degree. I've heard that Detroit deejays in general, especially since there's a lot of electronic deejays that are well-known from Detroit, the focus is a lot more on mixing than it is on scratching. Even though we have our share of both turntablists, people that can cut circles around most anybody, but I think the focus here in general is if you can't mix here then you're seen as being a whack deejay.

A: Back to your experience at Michigan?Do you ever feel in the Bling rap there's an idea that being smart and going to Michigan doesn't mix with Hip Hop?

G: You mean do I feel that Bling-Bling rap doesn't mix with Michigan?

A: That it sends the message that going to Michigan and pursuing education and being smart isn't the cool thing to do in Hip Hop?

G: I don't think that, I think that's the line I kind of draw. I grew up in different areas. I grew up in less prosperous areas, I grew up in more affluent suburb areas - I've been everywhere. I have no problem with people being on their grind and trying to get what they can get and get their hands on cause a lot of time if you live in the hood it's like, 'I never had anything, so whatever I can get my hands on I want to get.' That's the kind of idea behind it when people are out here with the Bling-Bling rap. If you didn't grow up with too much, if I can go out and get this navigator on 23's it's gonna be the best thing I've ever seen and I've ever owned in my life. I think it's important to really take a step back from that. Here at Michigan the main thing people listen to is probably Three Six Mafia joints and whatever. I don't think education really differentiates what you listen to.

A: You talk about Hip Hop as totally self-sufficient, how far off do you think that is?

G: I really don't think it's too far along from now. Just because of the fact that people that started Hip Hop are now to the point where they're grandparents now and getting there. Half of that is because people have kids so young. The pioneers of Hip Hop are easily in their 40's - and that's not grandparents' age, that was just a joke - but the pioneers of Hip Hop are in their 40's and some in their early 50's, things like that. It's not far off because you have people that just grew up and lived Hip Hop their whole life. The Mayor of Detroit considers himself to be a 'Hip Hop Mayor' because he was heavily influenced by Hip Hop - he grew up in the Hip Hop generation. He's young, but he's running the city of Detroit. When I say Hip Hop will be self-sufficient, you'll have people that are lawyers and doctors and teachers and everything that grew up in Hip Hop and really connect with it.

A: I know you emcee, produce, and deejay - what's your favorite thing to do?

G: Well, I think deejaying is what I'm best at. I wish my production was better - I'm working on it. Everyday I'm in the lab trying to tighten up my production. I have high standards I guess because of who I'm around. I'm right here in Detroit and the producers around me are Jay-Dee, Lox, B.R. Gunna who's producing the new Slum Village Album. A lot of technicians, there's a lot of producers that really do top-notch stuff that I really think is at the top of the industry in general. If I come into the studio with a beat and it's just ok, then everybody is going to go 'hmmmmm' 'cause they're just great producers. So I kind of have to hold my production back till I can really feel good about stepping out there with it.

A: Back in the 80s when Hip Hop was just starting the deejay played the biggest role in really getting it going and that was the main focus. How do you feel about the role of the deejay now in Hip Hop, how has that changed at all?

G: Well, the deejay kind of got moved by the wayside for a minute, and there's been a bit of a resurgence focused on the deejay. Especially with mixtapes coming back to the point where they're being seen as something you really have to be accomplished in, in order to really break into the industry. You have to be seen on mixtapes. Deejays are always going to be around because you can't really have a party, you can have a show, but you can't really have a party without a deejay.

A: What's some advice you have for deejays that are just starting out now?

G: My main advice would be to practice and learn how to mix, because that's the one thing when I got into deejaying that I wanted to be - I wanted to have my cuts decent enough so they weren't whack, but on the same token I just wanted to be able to rock crowds and to rock parties. I think mixing is the biggest part of that. You can have two deejays with the exact same crates and because of a certain deejay's skill in song selection and manipulation and mixing he'll be able to take that one crate and just kill it, where the other deejay may have everybody going to sit down - like, 'man this is horrible'. Get some experience. Don't just jump out there and try to be in front of 20,000 people before you're in front of 20 or 200.

A: What's in the future for you?

G: Right now, like I said, I'm starting this new mixtape series. And the Mixperience Sessions is gonna be the one to come out more often. Each time it's gonna have a completely different theme to it. It might be, I have certain ones that are going to be on the table that are just focused on one group or one emcee. It'll be that kind of mixtape where it's just focused on one emcee the whole way through. Other times it'll be just hot joints at the moment for me in any different type of genre but I'm gonna mix them together. Outside of the music I'm really focused on business aspects and my marketing business which is Rapture Enterprises LLC. You know, kind of incorporating my whole legal and business background, that's really the focus - it's kind of jumping both things off so they kind of work hand in hand.

A: You want to talk a little bit about your radio show. It's called The Vibe - what are you striving for in The Vibe?

G: The Vibe, my kind of tag-line for it is that it's the 'Hip Hop quiet storm'. It's a lot of smoothed out records, love songs that are Hip Hop love songs, a lot of instrumental tracks that have a certain kind of groove, a mellow groove to them.

A: When can people catch that?

G: Right now it's kind of on a hiatus, to tell you the truth, 'cause I've been a little bit busy. I suggest they try to catch the radio show that I do on WCVN here in Ann Arbor. And that's on Saturday nights from 12-3AM and that's just the Underground Reciprocal show.

A: Are you touring at all with this record or anything?

G: I will be shortly - I'm waiting, I'm the tour deejay for Phat Kat, and there will be a tour coming up soon, I don't have all the details but it will be in the next two months.

A: You need to come through Bloomington, IN?.Do you have any last words for people out there?

G: My last words will probably just be one of my little things that I say - 'I'm trying to get it right'. I always type it at the end of any message board that I'm on? Haters I'll see you later, that is if I decide to turn back. That's really how I live. When I see people that hate, it fuels me forward just so I can leave them in the dust.