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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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A-Trak
Age: 42
Born: 1982
Born: March 30
Composer
Disc Jockey
Dj
Entrepreneur
Musician
Record Producer
Recording Artist
Singer
Montreal
Quebec
Alain Macklovitch
Hips
Labels
Producers
Stills
Still
Never
Producer
Label
Hops

More quotes by 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.
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It's always important to me to play something other DJs aren't playing.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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When you know what you like and what you want and you're able to nudge things in the right direction, that's more profitable than ever, because there's so much information out there. Everything's saturated. Tastemaker is probably the most overused word, but I still think it's important.
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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.
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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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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
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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 think that's becoming the key to where the whole idea of art and culture are going nowadays anyway, is the idea of curation. Knowing what you like. That's sort of the future right now. Molding something, whether it be a roster on a label, or your blog, or a song, or your DJ set.
A-Trak
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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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A few guys will get up there with turntables as purists, to play vinyl or whatever.
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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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When I get up I still check the rap blogs before I check any kind of dance stuff.
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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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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