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Ghetto Heaven is your first residency and it's been a real success. What's your secret?
What's my secret? I dunno man, it's like a miracle in the works. We were lucky to get a good crowd and at the same time we
pushed out new music, which is important. I guess that's what keeps people coming back. Basically we just play commercial
things but we play it before anybody knows about it. What I wanna do with the crowd is I want them to hear it at Ghetto first
and then when they go back and watch the TV maybe they see it again, and say 'Oh, I heard that at Ghetto', you know. But
me and T-bone are working pretty tightly on what we should play and we try to slowly introduce the crowd to the new hip-hop
sound because we are tied up with all my friends down in New York playing hip-hop as well. So we try to play what they play
down in New York so we try to build the whole culture.
What were you doing before your Zouk residency?
I was playing around at gigs. Basically I was a competition DJ, battle a lot, a turntablist. I won the Vestax Malaysia
championships and I do the Salem Innovation Sessions. We're trying to build the Innovation Sessions sound... we wanna build a
New York party sound.
Has your residency helped you progress as a DJ?
Yea, it helped me learn a lot more about reading the crowd. I mean it's totally different playing clubs and playing competitions.
It's like 'this week I wanna push this track', you know. I wanna see how people react to it. It's not like playing for yourself.
Sometimes we go out and we just play what we think is underground or whatever, and sometimes we're out there to entertain
people.
You're always a very fun and upbeat person yourself...
Yea, I try to put in enough energy into it as a performer and entertainer more than as a DJ, so it's more about energy and
playing tracks and having fun and singing the tracks that I play, you know.
Do you think local dance music people take ourselves too seriously sometimes?
Maybe... sometimes it gets too serious I guess.
What would you recommend to lighten things up?
It's very hard to explain, man. It's about fun. Energy, you know. I'm not really in the dance scene so it's unfair for me to comment
about that.
How did you get the name?
A friend of mine gave it to me. I answered this question like a million times lah. He gave it to me when I was really young, so I just
stuck to it. But the girls love it, man!
You're also a regular feature at Excessive events. How did you hook up with them?
I met Callen wayyy back. I met him when I was with Face. One day Callen called me up. He wanted to borrow turntables when he was opening Excessive! So yea, I just lent them to him and from there we just picked up.
Some people accuse you of ciplak mixing... what do you say about that?
Oh! Uh... what would I say about that... well, just come and see, man. I think I proved to myself by winning the Vestax
championship, you know. For me, it's about music. I mean mixing is an essence, but mixing can be
practiced you know? Like if you go on the decks and practice mixing six hours a day, you'll be the best mixer in the fucking whole of KL. But what's the point if you
don't have music taste? If we're just mixing and just playing other people's music... what's the creativity in that? What's the fun
in that? That's not def!
What can we expect from you in the future?
I'm going to do a night that is yet to be planned. But we're trying to push this New York sound, like the electro house, '80s funk
soul-disco-dub-electro thing. Anything goes. I've got a good lineup of people who are more into the music like me, Blink,
Rokamawa, Donovan. So it's gonna be crazy man, we're gonna start a night that's totally exclusive. I'm trying to get it done by
end of this year but we're very tied up, very very busy right now, so...
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-Words and imaging: Joon
Thanks to Goldfish and Farrell!
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