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When I get up I still check the rap blogs before I check any kind of dance stuff.

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
Stuff
Stills
Still
Kind
Check
Rap
Checks
Dance

More quotes by A-Trak

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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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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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I'm one of the few DJs who uses turntables. I'm the only DJ that's scratching.
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There's a bit less elbow room and latitude to take it somewhere else, at least at festivals. In the club you can do whatever you want but at festivals, especially Ultra, nowadays the crowd wants to hear our songs.
A-Trak
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It's always important to me to play something other DJs aren't playing.
A-Trak
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Traditionally, with a DJ set, you just go hear DJ that has a good reputation and let the DJ take you somewhere. It was up to the DJ what he wanted to play. Typically in dance music, people didn't know most of the songs a DJ played.
A-Trak
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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.
A-Trak
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Right now it feels like we're playing a role, like me and a couple of my friends, in where popular culture is going. That's a very rare thing in a person's life to be able to be a part of that. It's a responsibility I take seriously.
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.
A-Trak
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I worked with him for years. I still think Kanye [West] is one of the most important people in music in the last ten years.
A-Trak
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My ears are open to all sorts of stuff. I appreciate some of the big electro house guys.I love their music but I also like a lot of the stuff coming out of the U.K. Future garage stuff. A lot of stuff like that.
A-Trak
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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.
A-Trak
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It's a good feeling to have something to stand for in any part of your life. It's like personal integrity.
A-Trak
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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.
A-Trak
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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.
A-Trak
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That was my challenge then, how to make scratching still fun for someone who didn't necessarily come to hear that. It was fun to develop that technique. And now in dance music - I'm still a hip-hop guy at heart, but I love dance music.
A-Trak
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I've been doing it since I was prepubescent when I loved to scratch records and play good music. As it happens, you know I sort of fell into the mix. I really feel like I played a role in bringing dance music to America years ago.
A-Trak
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I'm not even a trained producer. I just keep following my ear and working on stuff until it sounds the way I like it.
A-Trak
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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.
A-Trak
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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.
A-Trak