Anyone that knows me personally knows that when I’m
just hangin’ out, I like to share my thoughts on music, videos, sports, art and other things that inspire me. This usually means breaking out the laptop for some goodies or pulling a record out that I haven’t listened to in a while or just found recently. Typically over a meal or a few beers. To extend this beyond something I do at ’social gatherings’, I’m going to start upping new posts entitled “My Favorite Things” and invite you into the conversation. We’re all friends here, right? K, cool. I’ll post something that I think is interesting, shocking, mind-bending or light-bulb-in-the-brain-inducing and give you the goods on what I know about it or how I feel about it. Hopefully in turn, it will inspire you and pass on some love to artists who have worked hard to make great things! Or artist that maybe just lucked out or were so damn dope it just came naturally. Whatever the case, the content I post in here will be worth checking out, so tell a friend and join in on the fun.
For my first post, I spoke about DJ Roc Raida. I’d like to continue the vibe of that post and share a few DJ battle routines that inspired me as a DJ coming up and still to this day.
The first time I saw a DJ scratch was DJ Jazzy Jeff with The Fresh Prince on some awards show. I THINK it was the American Music Awards or possibly the Grammy Awards. I will be playing this Halloween with the man himself and I will report back! Anyway, he was cutting up “It Takes Two”, which is one of those records that you pretty much have to have two copies of. So many great parts to juggle. I would love to be able to show you that footage, but I’m pretty sure my mother taped an episode of Jeopardy over it and I don’t even have THAT tape, so just know that it was enough to get me inspired to DJ.
Further on, as my best friend and I absorbed just about everything we could get our hands on DJ wise (mixtapes, CDs, VHS, radio, albums), we found out about DJ battles, where DJs actually went head-to-head at a set time limit and judges picked a winner. We tracked down some video tapes and one of the first tapes we found was the ‘96 US DMC Finals. We had no idea what was on it and at that time and these shitty bootleg VHS cost about $40 dollars a piece because they had passed through 8 hands to get to Halifax, but we were so hungry to find out what was on it that we didn’t eat lunch for a week. But thanks to youtube, you can view many of these routines while maintaining a balanced diet. Read the full post to see four of the routines from the tape I’m talkin’ about:
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