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.
There's a lot of producers that are much more technical or gear-skilled than I am. But I have a pure idea of what I like and where I want to go and I follow that.
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.
Traditionally, with a DJ set, you just go hear DJ that has a good reputation and let the DJ take you somewhere. It was up to the DJ what he wanted to play. Typically in dance music, people didn't know most of the songs a DJ played.
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.
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.
Building the scene, going out and doing shows and connecting with the fans, cultivating the fanbase in all these cities. I'm very glad that it's happening.
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.
Now I'm able to play on the main stage and play my own tracks and the crowd likes them. I feel like a lot the other DJs play a lot of the same songs, and not to knock them, but it's important to me to go up there and sort of sneak in a bunch of stuff the other guys aren't playing.
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.
At the end of the day, if I do a set at a festival and I only have an hour, which is kind of short for a DJ set, I know that I have to play at least six of my songs. Then the whole challenge is what do I weave around that. How do I stand out? Because at a festival there's probably fifteen songs every DJ's going to play every hour, for the whole day. That to me is more interesting, because I still feel like an outsider in this world.