Quote

I was a bit of an outsider in the hip-hop world because I was a scratch kid and people weren't necessarily trying to hear that all the time.

A-Trak

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A-Trak
Age: 42
Born: 1982
Born: March 30
Composer
Disc Jockey
Dj
Entrepreneur
Musician
Record Producer
Recording Artist
Singer
Montreal
Quebec
Alain Macklovitch
Necessarily
Bits
Outsider
Hear
Scratch
Kids
Scratches
Trying
Outsiders
Time
Hops
World
Hips
People
Weren

More quotes by A-Trak

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I have a radio show on Sirius XM. I put it up as a free download on my Soundcloud and on iTunes. That's a portal for me once a month, to play songs I know aren't getting played on that station the rest of the week.
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The essential component of being a DJ is setting the mood it's playing to the context. So that if you're not able to adapt from one context to another, then you're not a DJ.
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I think whether dance music had exploded in America, I still would've been a DJ a long time. This is my first love.
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We have to wake up early and make songs everyday. I run my record label. You work at hours where your body isn't designed to work. But it's fun.
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It's always important to me to play something other DJs aren't playing.
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I think one of the biggest things that's changed in terms of the rapport with the crowd is that now crowds come to hear our songs. We're getting closer and closer to an artist performance.
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When I get up I still check the rap blogs before I check any kind of dance stuff.
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Building the scene, going out and doing shows and connecting with the fans, cultivating the fanbase in all these cities. I'm very glad that it's happening.
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I'm one of the few DJs who uses turntables. I'm the only DJ that's scratching.
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At the end of the day, Fool's Gold is a label that, when I hear something I like, I try to grab it for the label. There's a ton of great music coming out.
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I'm still a hip-hop producer. I never put a label on what I can do as a producer or a DJ.
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One thing that I learned in recent years from working more with other people is this idea that part of a producer's job is to make people comfortable and confident.
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I've talked to people who say that their music and their creative work is a much needed and appreciated escape, where they don't have to think about the state of the world they're not even thinking about themselves so much. They're not trying to express their own experiences of that day or relationship strife or anything.
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What's amazing about a DJ set is when you're able to re-appropriate a song or give purpose to a song that people didn't really think it was supposed to have. Give it this sort of hidden power by playing it before this song and after that one. That it fits into this logic and it goes farther than you thought it could go.
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That's what a DJ is at the end of the day - someone who leads where the music goes. The only thing that's changed is that in America, people have woken up in the last few years and realized it.
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I like getting feedback from people who show a lot of potential, and it's exciting to witness to new talents developing and bourgeoning. I always try to stay around the newest stuff, I don't like to stay with something that's kind of old or approaching it.
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At festivals you kind of have to play the game a bit and you have to play a lot of the big bangers but it's to me it's extra gratifying to be able to play the non-bangers and make it work. Because that's still the craft of the DJ, I think.
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Now I'm able to play on the main stage and play my own tracks and the crowd likes them. I feel like a lot the other DJs play a lot of the same songs, and not to knock them, but it's important to me to go up there and sort of sneak in a bunch of stuff the other guys aren't playing.
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There are things I like, there are things I strongly dislike. In my DJ sets and in my production I just gravitate towards what I like.
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There's a ton of amazing music that's not getting heard.
A-Trak