While you were trying to get past third base, smoking three of your Mom's Virginia Slims at a time, and learning what a hangover feels like, Alain Macklovitch, better known as Montreal's DJ A-Trak,
was becoming the best battle DJ in the world. Actually, he was
probably doing all that dumb shit you were, and still becoming the best
battle DJ in the world. He spent his teenage years destroying
opponents in the global battle circuit, then retired in his early 20's
when he more or less ran out of worthy opponents. He pioneered group
battle routines with his crew The Allies, and became an honorary member
of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, who are like the Jedi High Council of
turntablism. Then he became Kanye West's tour DJ. Recently, A-Trak has put out
Oh No He Didn't!, a live set from a
show in Vancouver, which doubles as an instant party. He also
collaborated with Chicago rapper GLC on the refreshingly original Drive Slow mixtape. A new DVD, Sunglasses Is A Must chronicles his adventures, starting way back at age 13, when he bought his first decks with Bar Mitzvah paper.
Guest contributor Andrew Friedman spoke with A-Trak last week.
How did you link up with Kanye?
He saw me perform at this record store in London a few years ago, and then, he saw me do like a quick routine, maybe 4 or 5 minutes, and he hired me after that.
He just asked you on the spot?
It was super-crowded, it was a big performance, it was John Legend and then the record store hooked me up to play there too. Kanye was in the corner and he saw me playing but I didn't even get to talk to [him] that day, but he came up and shook my hand and was like 'dude that was really dope.' I was leaving town the next day and I wanted to follow through with him because I saw he was really into it, so I tracked him down the next day. He remembered right away, he was like 'yo, I need a DJ when we go on tour. I'm doin this tour with Usher, call my manager, let's go on tour.'
Do you feel like you were given enough room to shine in the performance?
Yeah definately. Kanye, he learned how to perform by going on tour with [Talib] Kweli and Common, and both Kweli and Common have a strong relationship with their DJ on stage, their DJ plays a central role and everything else is built around the DJ and the MC. Kanye started doing his own performance when The College Dropout came out, but he hadn't found his own DJ yet, so when he hired me. Right from the start, I was given a solo, even if it was in front of an Usher crowd, which was like teenage girls who don't even know you could scratch a record...who don't even know what a record is. He still gave me my spot to do a little something. The more tours we did together over time, the more I became involved with putting together the sets. The show is basically me and him interacting, so I'm definately very content with the position I play.
Read the rest of the interview after the jump.
So was the 13-year-old girl crowd feelin the DJ shit?
Yeah, I mean, on the Usher shows, sometimes you get the impression they cheer because they feel they should be cheering, like, 'hey, somebody's doing something! I'm gonna scream!'
It doesn't take much to get 13-yr-old girls to scream.
Any cheer is a good cheer. But after that tour we did the all-Kanye tour, and you get more of a hip-hop audience. Everything's been smooth sailing for me at those shows. Even when we did some shows with U2...I didn't do solos at the shows with U2 because our set was only half an hour...
Wait, you did some shows with U2? When was that?
In December we did a week opening for U2 in the US, and we were supposed to do another two weeks opening for U2 last month in Australia and New Zealand, but they had to cancel the end of their tour because one of them got sick or something. But last December we did those shows with U2...and we had to adapt the Kanye set for those audiences because we were playing for a rock audience who doesn't necessarily come to see Kanye and doesn't necessarily know any of the songs besides "Jesus Walks" and "Gold Digger." A song like "Get Em High" that always gets people going at a hip-hop show doesn't have the same effect on the U2 crowd. We were switching around our set at every show...and right from the start both Kanye and I noticed that whenever I would scratch on a track, people would take notice. It was cool because it helped me learn to adapt to the feel of different audiences.
So your album is coming out, when's it actually gonna drop?
I'm aiming for the beginning of '07. I can't finish it until I stop touring, so until I finish it, I can't know when it really drops. All I know is I'm workin on it.
I heard that Diplomats track ["Don't Fuck With the Dips" f/ Hell Rell, JR Writer and 40 Cal] and there's been talk about how Little Brother's gonna be on there...what other guests do you have lined up?
Lupe Fiasco...Kanye's probably gonna jump on a song...there's a bunch of songs that are being put together. I got Consequence...there's some people I'm reaching out to that may or may not come through. I've been talkin to MF Doom. And I'm definately gonna have a song with some southern mc's but I can't really say who...I wanna keep some surprises.
If you could work with anybody, who would you work with?
If I could work with anybody? Man, I would love to do a song with Ghostface.
I know the album is all sample-based, and you've that's where you've taken your music, to these turntablism sample-based beats, but at the same time Oh No He Didn't! isn't particularly turntablism-heavy. It's very much just a straight party set. I was watching your DVD and I was thinking how a few years ago battling was the shit and everybody was all about battling, and it was very confined to hip-hop. But now the idea of being a DJ has spread across so many genres, it's kind of lost the hip-hop element. As hip-hop, DJing and turntablism spread more and more apart, where do you see turntablism going?
Well, on one hand, it's hard to predict where turntablism as a whole will go, but most people think the turntablism scene has been stagnant for a few years. It's not moving, people are just doing the same shit at battles. I feel like music is evolving, and DJing is evolving, and it's kind of up to us to keep turntablism moving by figuring out new ways to integrate it, and keeping it a relevant element of different styles of music and different styles of djing. In other words, what I try to do is take my foundation as a turntablist and not turn my back on it and forget about it, but take that foundation and try to apply it to building interesting DJ sets and producing interesting music, and working with somebody like Kanye...just seeing where I can go from that foundation. And from there, knowing where the whole scene will go, I don't really know, but I personally, I'm always trying to see how I can see that as a starting point and go wherever music goes today.
So basically you're just trying to stay flexible.
A lot of what turntablism became in the last few years was centered on battles...the actual structure of a typical turntablist routine is based on something that somebody would do at a DJ battle. Battling, as much as I love it and as much as it's how I paid my dues and made my name, doesn't have to be the be-all and end-all of what a turntablist does. Right now, I'm trying to reinvent the whole way I actually play my records when I do a DJ set, because I feel like there's gotta be more ways to treat records without having it be a super-condensed routine strictly made to wow people. There's gotta be more ways to do a DJ set like a mix set so people are dancing, where you're actually doing stuff to your records and it stays interesting for people who are watching, without hitting you upside the head and tearing you up for ten minutes, the way that an intense routine might.
It really is an all-or-nothing thing right now, where you're either making people dance or you're showing off.
That's what I really want to change. When you look at people like Z-Trip or DJ AM, any DJ that rocks parties while still freaking a lot of record while they're playing, that's kind of what they're doing still, taking the turntablist elements of converting your records, and applying that to a DJ set that's not made strictly to wow people.
The Drive Slow mixtape was really good, you working on any other tapes right now?
My main focus right now is finishing my sets for the tour I'm about to start, but I just finished this mixtape that's coming out in Japan. They asked me to do a soul mixtape using only songs that Kanye sampled. It's interesting because you're given a playlist to start with and you have to find a common thread. There are some songs you know you won't put, even if it's a recognizable sample, it's not necessarily something you want to listen to. Like I didn't put the "Gold Digger" sample even if it's the sample from his biggest song because I didn't really feel like Iistening to that whole song instead of something that might be deeper in the soul sound. I didn't put the Doors sample ["Five to One," used for Jay-Z's "The Takeover"] because at the end of the day, it's supposed to be a soul mixtape. It was a cool challenge to see if I could figure out a way to make a mix that you actually want to listen to, once you get past the novelty that it was all songs that were sampled.
Why'd you decide to do a DVD?
It started off with me just wanting to make some sort of catalog of my routines, just to compile everything I've done over the years DJ-wise. I want people to see what I've done with DJ routines. And then, when I realized how much footage I had, and how much I'd been filming over the years, and how much of a story I had, then it became making almost a movie of the story and how it came up.
So as you put the footage together, you saw a plot coming together.
Right...I remember watching Tupac: Resurrection and I was like 'man they made all this out of pictures,' you can make a whole narration about somebody out of little bits of footage and pictures. That made me think I could really tell a story with my footage.
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LIVE
A-Trak will be performing at the Knitting Factory this Friday, 4/28, with special guests The Rub, GLC and DJ Orgasmic of TTC.
WATCH
• The trailer to Sunglasses Is A Must
• One of his DJ battle routines
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