| I
hate writing about myself…but I guess I'll start at
the beginning. I'm an 80's baby that grew up in San Jose,
California. I have early memories of Mom listening to records
like the Rolling Stones, Billy Joel, Joan Jett, AC/DC, Queen,
and Bruce Springsteen. I guess this is pretty typical of
lady in her 20's in the 80's. I remember being maybe 6 or
7 digging up Dad's old Led Zepplin self titled album. I
guess you could say I developed an early fascination with
music. I didn't have the patience or attention span to really
take up an instrument like guitar, or piano. I tried sports
like baseball and basketball growing up, and wasn't bad,
but they still didn't satisfy me completely. I knew I wanted
to do something musically. Where I grew up in San Jose particularly,
there were a lot of kids that were into hip hop and breaking,
and there were an abundant amount of dance crews around.
(I.E. Jedi Clan, D.I., Jughead, Boogie Unit, etc) At the
time, I sort of saw this as my way in. Of course I gave
it a try, but me being the clumsy guy I am, I guess it never
really panned out the way I really wanted it to. Now, looking
back, if I hadn't gotten into dancing, and hip hop, I probably
wouldn't have been exposed to one element that really defined
the next stages of my life…djing.
Like a lot of the dj's in the Bay Area from my generation
and before, I started out as a mobile dj with my boy Nick
(Ngobility) and Germel (G-Wrex) doing house parties, school
dances, cotillions, and any other events that we would be
able to convince people to hire us for. Literally anything
we could get into. I went to my local high school (Silver
Creek) where I would meet the rest of what would become
the Fingerbangerz Crew, which if you don't know was the
crew that pretty much put me where I am in terms of djing
now, specifically in regard to production, style, attitude,
and general outlook on djing.
Soon after we formed the Fingerbangerz, I started doing
competitions. I've always said that the whole reason for
me to join battles and competitions was so that I could
use that to gain some type of credibility so that I could
dj at more places like clubs, shows, etc. So I started out
doing local battles with the rest of the Fingerbangerz at
various hip hop functions, car shows, etc. To be perfectly
honest, when I started battling, for a long time, I was
horrible, completely wack. I don't know too many people
that do great at their first battle (with the exception
of my boy Replay). But I honestly wouldn't change that,
because it put me through a process of growing pains and
paying dues, which seems to be a lost concept now days but
that's a whole other topic. So I kept at it, just bombing
at my first 10 or so battles running into mistakes that
could have easily been avoided, but me being the rookie
that I was, didn't know or think of at the time. It was
a learning process that continues to help me to this day.
Fast forward through those first 10 or so battles and I
began to pick up on things and began winning a few of the
competitions such as some of the Zebra Dj Battles, DMC SF
regional, ITF Team Competition etc. I have always been pretty
happy about that but I didn't want my djing career to just
end there so after that I focused on taking that and building
on it. |
