DJ Magic Mike

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Let’s welcome our man Magic Mike, Michael Hampton. [applause]

EMMA WARREN

This is the man that Vibe Magazine described as the best platinum artist you never heard of. And he’s also been described as booty bass’s Master P. I don’t know how you feel about these descriptions, but you’re the don.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

[laughs]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I mean, what do you do when even Egon can’t shy away from saying, “Oh, he’s the baddest DJ.” But I guess, we’ve got enough of that honey around your belly right now. So please tell us: Florida, the South East and all that, what is bass music to start with, and what role does Orlando play in it?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Well, let’s answer the first one. Bass was really not a genre until 1985 when MC A.D.E. came out. He did a song that primarily focused on ‘boom’ and bottom end. He was the first one that did it – he was from Fort Lauderdale. So he came out and did his thing, and shortly after that, there was Luke and 2 Live in Miami, and they had their own sound, pretty much down in South. Orlando wasn’t known for anything because nobody’s ever done anything and nobody ever came out. And so I started working in Orlando at first, and did my demos, all that. Nothing was really panning out, in Orlando, so I decided to take a trip down South, and I teamed up with Clay D. First track I did when I got to Miami was “Creep Dog” and then “Boot The Booty”. I did the scratches on “Give It All You Got” and co-produced the beat, even though we got bamboozled out of the credit on that, but that’s a different story. But when I went to Miami, I took Orlando with me. I didn’t want to specifically sound like someone from Miami. Because all the DJs in Miami were moulding themselves after Mr. Mixx from 2 Live. I knew I was better than him, I didn’t want to sound like him and I didn’t want to go in that direction. So when I went to Miami I started doing my own thing. And once I started doing my thing, then everybody started moulding themselves after me.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Who is this Mr. Mixx guy?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Mr. Mixx was 2 Live Crew’s DJ. Not to take anything away from him, because he’s a very cool guy. As far as his skills, he had his thing with what he was doing. And I just did not want to sound like him, but that’s just old school mentality, you know you don’t bite, you don’t sound like anybody else, you come up with your own thing – and that was what I was doing. So nobody was chirping the fast beats, nobody was transforming the fast beats, and Mixx wasn’t doing it, because he was just using a bunch of Skillet & Leroy samples... just comedy or whatever, unless it was his megamixes. I was pretty much the only DJ in Miami that was being showcased as a good DJ on record. And then after that, everybody else started coming out. I was the first one to kind of go down there and do it.

EMMA WARREN

You kind of said that you brought your thing, because you didn’t want to sound like everyone else in Miami. What exactly was your thing and how did that develop?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Orlando was a melting pot and actually still is. You had people from every place in Orlando. So you didn’t just have Miami bass, you didn’t have just hip hop, you didn’t have just West Coast, you had everything all moulded to the same thing. I could listen to Joe Cooley, I could listen to Cash Money or I could listen to Jazzy Jeff. You know, Scratch, my cousin from EPMD, me and him, we practiced together. We had our own little thing. I could do whatever I wanted to do. If you were in New York, you couldn’t play Miami. If you were in Miami, you didn’t want to play New York. West Coast was kind of neutral but not really, because they had their own thing. It was alright being in Orlando, because I could do what I wanted to do.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What was this cousin bit all about – you said your cousin, Scratch? It is not really common that you have two DJs in a family right?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

[laughs] Everyone says that too. I started DJing when I was 12. Scratch started when he was 10. I was into sports, I liked all that. But then I was drawn to music, and that was what I started doing, and we started practising together. When I started coming up with stuff, he wasn’t into it, but then he got into it as well, and we just kind of grew into it together.

EMMA WARREN

You started DJing at a very young age. At 14, you were DJing at a local roller disco, is that right? Did you do that together with your cousin?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

No, because he was in Florida, and then he went back to New York. I stayed in Florida. I didn’t go back to New York until ’84/’85. But we constantly stayed in contact and visited each other.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Did you trade music, as in sending tapes?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Yeah. We’d always sent tapes or played our mixes over the phone.

EMMA WARREN

I’m kind of intrigued to know what your roller disco soundtrack was like? What were you playing?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Oh god, let’s go back. Prince – “Let’s Work”, Secret Weapon - “Must Be The Music”, Bill Summers & Summers Heat, the group Kleeer... it was a bunch of different stuff until “Planet Rock” came. Then everything changed, as far as Florida was concerned.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How different is playing to a roller rink, to any other places you played later on? Did you do the mic stuff as well?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

No, I’m not a mic guy at all. Didn’t do a lot of talking. Back then I had to say, “What’s up?”, “How ya doin’?”, “Good night, see you next week,” and all that kind of stuff. But I wasn’t a mic guy, I let my hands do the talking for me. As long as you keep people occupied and paying attention to the music, they don’t care if you’re saying anything on the mic.

EMMA WARREN

You have just mentioned “Planet Rock”, and said everything changed at that point. Obviously that part of America interpreted that kind of blueprint in a different way to the rest of America. It seems like everywhere took that starting point and 10, 15, 20 years on, they’ve ended up with something different. Why do you think your area developed the sound that it did?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I think “Planet Rock” was universal back then. It was a worldwide sound. But we were already doing fast beats at that time anyway. And so people took it and moulded it in their way. And when everyone else started changing and developing their own styles, Florida just stuck with the “Planet Rock” sound. And it’s still there to this day in one form or another.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

A couple of years later, you did a “Planet Rock” remix yourself. It’s always a kind of risk taking on a classic which you love, and which a lot of people know.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

You know I got paid a huge compliment from Bambaataa about the remix. He told me that my version was the only one that stayed true to it and that it was the only one that he liked, out of all of them. So I was like “okay, that’s cool”.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What did you change in your version?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

You know what, I really didn’t. When we did the remixes, they sent out the 24-track master. So then I took the master to the studio, and started listening to all the things in the tracks that he didn’t use. I knew I was going to use the vocals. But I wanted to hear the weird sounds, the ones they’d said “Ah, we’re not going to use that” – those sounds. Once I started hearing those, I was sampling them, playing them and just having a good time with it. So I used those sounds and changed the beat. It was electroish. I kept it that way, but added an old school feel to it. So I started finding loops and concocting loops for it, and I put my ‘boom’ in it. Just to bring it back down South.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

We’ve got to talk about the ‘boom’. How do you get it properly?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

[laughs] When I first started doing it, it was just an 808. That was the first drum machine I ever had.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Was it customized?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

No. Before I knew how to go inside and tweak everything, I just turned the sustain all the way up on it. That was it. So you hit it and... ‘boom’ – cool. Everything was derived from there. Even before I learned how to go inside the machine and tweak it, I learned to sample it and then slow it down. Once I sampled it and slowed it down, it was a different one. Finally, I figured to go into the machine, just being young and inquisitive, just messing with the machine, I started turning a little screw, that’s right under the sustain, which kind of held the sustain from going so far, because if you go far past that point you won’t hear it anymore. I started making patterns with it. Instead of just‚ ‘boom’ ... ‘boooooom’ – I started having fun with it. But then it got to a point where that note was too short. Then you had to come up with something else. Instead of using the 808, I took the sustain and turned it all the way down to 30 Hz; until I had just the moan. I sampled it into my keyboard. Then put the kick on top of it. ‘Boooooooooom’! Now I could have it last as long as I wanted it to last – once I had it in loop mode.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When it comes to sonics on that end. How did you manage to not let a bass like that clash with the actual kick?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Well, just by looking at frequencies. With the ‘boom’, you want to feel it more so than hear it. And with the kick, you want to hear it more so than feel it. If you feel it, that’s fine. As long as you have the sustain going on, I used to keep that anywhere from 70 Hz and lower, and then I just cut it off. And so my kicks would always start 75-ish and then go up to wherever they want to go. This way they would never cross. But if they ever did cross, you would have ‘mmmmm-mmm-mmmmm-mmm-mmmmm-mmm’. Then you would get all kinds of fluctuations coming back.

EMMA WARREN

I’d quite like to know where the whole obsession with bass comes from. What is the power of the bassline?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

OK, I want to go back to the beginnings of what happened. When I did “Drop The Bass” back in 1988, someone took it – they took the song and slowed it all the way down to make the bass last longer. The average person would be pissed when something like that had been done to your song. “Why did they do this? Why did they take my song and slowed it all the way down?” I was in the process of working on my first album – the Royal Posse album. I had one song left to go. And so I said: “OK, now I have a treat for this.” I grabbed my engineer and told him: “I want to do just a slowed down song with a lot of bass in it. If they try to slow it down any more, they either will tear their speakers up or they won’t hear it.” And that was what we did. We sat in the studio for probably three days, just trying to concoct the ‘boom’. We recorded it, took it to the car, went back to the studio, until we got one that was exactly right. I sampled this bass and used it for “Feel The Bass”. That was the first track.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You just mentioned cars. What’s the relation between cars and bass?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Everyone knows that when you listen to something in your car, you really hear it because you are in a confined space. If the highs are too loud, you know it immediately. If there’s too much mid-range, you know it immediately. And if it’s too much ‘boom’, you know it immediately also. We like the ‘boom’, so we test everything in the car – especially now because I put everything on CD. The first thing I do is take the CD and listen to it in my truck. If it sounds good in my car, it’s perfect.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When you’re saying truck, we’re not talking the same cars we’ve seen on Roman streets?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

No, not really. I use my car mainly for testing low-end anyway, not necessarily for high-end. I like to test my low-end in something that’s closed and confined. Once I know that it’s perfect there, then I’m OK with it.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It’s one thing to have a rattling bass, and another to have a good sounding bass. At British raves, they used to say that the bass is only right, if you put a can on top of the speaker and it would jump. But it sounded shit.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

You can’t do it in a car that has no quality to it. In the truck that I was using there was no rattle, no shake, there was nothing. So when you put it in and heard ‘boom’, you heard ‘boom’. But you often hear cars right down the street playing and it goes ‘brrrrrrrr’, the whole car was about to shake apart. That’s not a car that you want to test it in.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Would MTV be able to afford doing a Pimp My Ride episode in Orlando style? Or would that just totally blow their budget?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

[laughs] No. I think they could handle it.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What would my ride need?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

It depends on your trunk space. It depends on what kind of car you have. Some people, when they don’t have a big enough car, they use their whole back seat and the trunk for a box. What happens is: People put it in and then it sounds good for a minute. But all of a sudden they want more. Then they’ll continue until you can’t go on any further; and then you’ll blow your front windshield out, [laughs]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Have you seen that?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Yeah, actually I’ve seen that. I have that on video.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What is a car audio battle?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Well, in the States they do it now pretty much once a year in different parts. It’s called IASCA. They have big sound-offs. The last two years, it’s been in Daytona. It’s a big sound-off during spring break.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Excuse our ignorance, but what is a sound off?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

The loudest car wins, pretty much.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Can you picture the scenario?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

They don’t do it outside, they do it inside the convention center. It’s the whole weekend. You can’t sit in the car, it’s too loud. You need to protect your ears. If it’s too loud to get in, they just put in a mic to test how loud the car is.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Isn’t this a bit like blowing up the world and seeing what’s left over?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Yeah. But that’s just the way it is.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Going back from the car technicalities to the studio technicalities. You’ve already been talking about the 808. But what’s the importance of things like the SP or MPC? What did you use when you set your sampled 808?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I came from the 808. Then I went to an SP1200. Everyone knows that the SP1200 is great for drums, but you have no time, only ten seconds. I said: “OK, I’ll start learning MIDI.” Then I bought a sampler, a Yamaha TX16W. It had just an unbearable amount of sampling time, something like six minutes mono, stereo only three minutes. But for the late ’80s and early ’90s, this was a lot of time. Everything that I needed as far as vocals, I would do a scratch and sample it. It had that much sampling time. But then you get to a point where that’s not enough. The next thing was the MPC. So I got the MPC-60. Now I had 26 seconds, when I expanded the MPC. But when the 60 MkII came out, I had to have that. And then the MPC 3000 came out. I still use this one. I bought the 2000 when it came out, but I hated it. It just sounded horrible. But my 3000 is perfect. I bought gear and everything, connected it with the computer. Now I have way more time than I could possibly ever need.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So you must have been already pretty settled back then, being able to afford all the newest gear.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Mhhh.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

At the beginning, all the artists usually have these stories about being fucked over. If I’m not totally misinformed, you have been successful from pretty early on.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

My first dealings in the music industry were like those of the majority of people. You pay your dues, you get screwed. I was naive, didn’t realize, didn’t know – with all my releases on Vision. When I was working with Clay D, I was young and I just wanted to make the quick dollar. I got in and I was working. But you don’t get the credit you deserve. And when you don’t get the credit, then you have nothing to fall back on because someone else gets your credit. Down the road, when you want to get your money for royalties, publishing or whatever, you can’t get it because it’s not there. And they’re not gonna give it back to you unless you have the money to file a lawsuit and all that other stuff. You’ll hate coming to all that. I use it as a lesson learned.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Do you own your own publishing?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Now I own my own publishing.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Can you explain how the whole publishing works? So far, we haven’t talked about that.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

That is tricky. When you are a writer, your works of music usually are owned by yourself – unless you sign your publishing away. But labels get a little tricky and try to sneak that away from you. You have to pay attention to your contracts. If they sneak in “work for hire”, then you’re screwed. They might not say “we’re taking your publishing”, but usually “work for hire” means that they own whatever you do. You might not realize what this means until you have to file a lawsuit.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Are there any other common traps in the small print? So “work for hire” is one thing...

DJ MAGIC MIKE

That was the one that trapped me back then. After that I started my own label. Then I didn’t really have to worry about it any more. At that point I wouldn’t look at all the other labels’ contracts.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

If I had a demo here and I wanted it to get signed somewhere – do you have any recommendations of what to avoid?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

My recommendation is: put it out yourself! Even if you put it out yourself and you don’t sell as much as if it was on a major label, you still make all the money. So you can take that money and put it into your next project and keep building and keep going. We we did the Royal Posse album, what we wanted to do was 20,000 units. We wanted to sell 20,000 units and see it on Billboard. That was all we wanted to do. At the end we sold way over 20,000. We weren’t really aware of that. We just kept selling and kept selling and kept selling. And one day someone said: “We need to count how many units we sold.” We started it in Orlando, just driving from record store to record store and doing consignments. Then we took care of all of Florida. We sold it to a little one-stop in Miami and they took care of getting it all over Florida. Once that happened, we dealt the whole South East, and then it was the whole US.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You said that you were driving from shop to shop with your car. Obviously, once it moved beyond the South West, you couldn’t do that on your own anymore. What are the things you are looking at when you start working with a distributor?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

We didn’t deal with a distributor. It was a one-stop. It was pretty easy at that point. Once the one-stop said that they wanted to work the project, it was easy. We did the manufacturing and shipped to them, they took care of all the stores. We didn’t really hit a distributor until 1991 or 1992. Then we finally decided to go through a national distributor. The distributor is dealing with so many different labels, so we needed someone in staff to make all the calls to the different stores. We still took care of our area, but now we had to check a national list of stores. We took care of states by the week. Like this week we’re going to do Texas, next week we’re going to do New York or whatever. We dealt with it, we had enough people to do it. Making sure that the stores had stock, that was pretty much the only basis of these calls: “You have stock? What’s going on with the record in your area? You don’t have stock?” OK, you write it down, get in touch with the distributor and tell them that this store still hasn’t got stock. The distributor’s not going to have time to call. They’re not going to. That was the thing when we started working with a distributor. I liked it better when it was just the label and the one-stop. It was a lot easier to deal with.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When you’re saying that you had enough people – that’s usually one of the biggest traps you can step into as a small business just starting out. You get to the point when there’s too much label and you need to employ people. But suddenly your overhead is skyrocketing.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

As long as you don’t have the money coming in, your overhead will skyrocket. But with our first album, we were selling and selling. We didn’t realize what we were or where we were at. Once we counted how many albums we had sold, we were at 1.3 million copies. When you sell half a million copies, that generates anywhere from 2.3 to 2.5 million dollars! We knew money came in, and it was a lot of it. But we couldn’t keep up with everything. So we brought people in to be able to do all of that.

EMMA WARREN

You sold your records from the back of your van. What do you get from that DIY approach to distribution, especially at the beginning of a label?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Just the humbleness to always know where you came from and how it got started. No one’s going to sell your project better than you. If you were working for me and tried to sell my record to him, you would be trying to sell it to the best of your ability. But he would respect me more if I was walking in and saying: “This is my new CD. Check it out and let me know what you think. If you can do something with it – cool.” People tend to appreciate that a lot more.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How are you dealing with, let’s say iTunes. Would you walk up to Steve Jobs and say: “Look Steve, I got the stuff. Would you put it on iTunes?”

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Probably not. I would promote it and try to build a buzz from the ground up. Once the buzz gets big, I would let him call me.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Well, fair enough. But not everyone is in that lucky situation.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

But you have to be able to maintain it – just in case. If they don’t call, well, as long as you’re doing okay on your own, then you sell your records.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How would you be dealing with chain stores?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

We dealt with a lot of chains. Once we started getting into the chains, that was more a distributor thing. The one-stops did it as much as they could until you’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of units. Then you’re out of the one-stops’ control. They can only sell so much. After that you got to have a distributor just to keep that kind of numbers going. The manufacturer that we were using, they could work on nobody’s product except ours. We had the manufacturer just constantly make our product, 24 hours a day. And they couldn’t keep up. Once you get to that kind of level, then you have to go to a distributor. You really have no choice with that.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

OK, right now, when you are at that spot, what are the common traps to avoid? I mean, the artist is always pissed off at the label, the label is always pissed with the distributor.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I know both sides of it. Artists usually get pissed off at the labels because of not getting enough money in their pocket and not doing enough promotion. Labels get pissed off at distributors because money’s not being paid in time. If you have 30 or 60 days terms in your contract, then you expect the money after 30 or 60 days. But then all of a sudden something is wrong and they don’t send the money, but they still want the product.

EMMA WARREN

What is special with your style of DJing? Can you explain that?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

That’s a hard question.

EMMA WARREN

What kind of skills do you need to be a bass DJ?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

See, I really don’t classify myself as a bass DJ. I’m not a genre orientated DJ, I’m just a DJ. I just like music. So it doesn’t really matter what kind of music it is as long as it fits what I like then I can get something out of it. I’ve got the biggest hip-hop night in Orlando right now, it has been going on for three years. When we go on the road, I play hip-hop, reggae, soul, but more so stuff that I’m into now. I like the new school, just tweak that sound and all kind of weird things. Sometimes you can’t really play it, but we found a way to get it in. I try not to make myself known as “he’s this kind of a DJ”. It’s just: I like DJing and I like all aspects of it.

EMMA WARREN

You said you found ways to work it in. What are those ways?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Once you get the crowd in your control, then push the envelope. Don’t be afraid. And we push it. We will push the envelope to no end. When I show up with a record bag, you never know what’s going to play.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How many records are there?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Oh... [laughs], it depends. I’m still using my Shure record bags. They hold probably 60 records. And I usually keep doubles of every record because I never know what I want to do. Also in the bags I probably have three to four different genres of music. We play everything from new school to drum ’n’ bass, to reggae, to hip-hop. The thing is also that most DJs can’t do that now. They just can’t. If someone is doing a party, you will get one DJ for hip-hop, one DJ for reggae, another DJ for doing a live PA or something like that and then the drum ’n’ bass DJ will play new school, he won’t play breaks. It’s kind of weird. When we show up, we play everything. And we’re doing it in a way you’ll like it. You won’t even realize that the music’s been changed when it’s changing.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I guess you must quite like it to see that in mainstream American hip-hop you got a lot of these electronic sounds being very dominant again, also a lot of ’80s references that are very bass-ish.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Our hip-hop night is intelligent, to say the least.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Now that’s going to be an interesting one. What do you mean with that? Backpackers?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

No, not backpacker. The scene in Orlando has changed a lot. You get a lot of ‘push button’ DJs, a lot of DJs that download a song. They play hip-hop, they have no choice. Not because they love the music, they have to play it because if they don’t, they will not be paid. That kind of a DJ brings a certain type of crowd. And it’s not going to be a crowd that’s in tune to what they’re doing because they’re not doing anything. Our hip hop crowd is intelligent because they know what we do and how we do it. They get into the style more so than the song. I won’t leave a record alone; you might hear 30 seconds of it. Nothing plays all night. You hear 30 seconds, you might hear a minute, you might here a hook, you might hear a record that starts at the third verse – we take the night and make it a melting pot. Like a big mastermix, and then it is what it is.

EMMA WARREN

When you slip your bass tunes into the mix, what do you do if there’s going to be a shift on the dancefloor?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

You have to find the time for it. I don’t play bass all the time. And even so, I very seldom play my songs. Every so often I slip one in. But even then, people might hear 30 seconds of it. If they hear a minute of a song from me, they’re doing good. It could be the biggest song out. I don’t care. As soon as I get bored with, my crowd will get bored with it. Then I’m moving on.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How far can you stretch that total alertness in the crowd?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

As long as it falls within the reggae/hip-hop genre then we’re OK. But I couldn’t get away with an electronic song. People are not going for it. We can’t stretch it to those kind of boundaries. But as far as what we play, we stretch it pretty far.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What about other types of bass sounds? There’s a lot of other cities where they try to combine various styles as well. But the whole Lil’ Jon thing is totally different to Detroit ghetto tech and stuff like that. Could you enlighten us how those styles came about and how you learned about them?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I’ll start with Detroit. There was a time in my career where I was playing in Detroit probably once every three or four months. Just because of what I was doing, the South had started getting national appeal, we were always in Detroit. And when we did “Drop The Bass” it was just so huge. Actually, it broke in Florida first and in Detroit second. That was when I realized that everything that was going on in Detroit was totally different to what was happening in Florida. As far as bass was concerned, they had the ghetto tech and that was just their style of bass music. It was like a hybrid of bass, techno and house. But it was just so fast. Down South, they weren’t buying it, they didn’t want to hear it at all. So Detroit wasn’t working as far as the South East was concerned, but the South was working as far as Detroit was concerned. What they would do with Florida music was to take it and just speed it up. Where we were just 130-ish, as far as bpms, Detroit was 160 plus. If a record wasn’t fast enough, they would pitch it up positive 8 on the turntables. Everything was just constantly moving that fast.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Were there common signature tunes at the beginning of it?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I don’t know a lot of Detroit music. I know DJ Godfather and I’d know the songs if I heard them, but I’d never play them at home. The only time I would hear these songs is when I went to Detroit. But I wouldn’t play them there because that’s what they’re hearing anyway. I would never play anything from Detroit unless I knew the person. At home, I couldn’t play it anyway.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What about stuff like Dynamix II? Earlier you mentioned Cybotron and their song "Clear". Was that big down there as well?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Dynamix II, that was from Florida. Clear was from 1982/’83. This record was big at home, but it didn’t fall into the Detroit sound for us. It was pretty much like the “Body Mechanic” stuff. Quadrant Six was coming out at that time. It was so early in the game that nobody really paid attention to where it was from. "Clear" was huge in Florida. Almost every bass song that I can think of sampled "Clear" in some form or another. Once you start getting into the ghettotech and stuff like that, none of that made it in Florida.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What about the other cities then?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Atlanta and the whole Lil’ John thing, that is a totally different game. Lil’ John derived from Jermaine Dupri and the So So Def Bass All-Stars.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When are we talking then?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Ooh, when did “My Boo” come out? Must have been 1994-95. That was when Lil’ John started doing his thing with bass because he saw what’s happening with it down South in Florida. Everything from Florida was huge in Atlanta, but Atlanta didn’t have a sound at that time, other than Outkast, which was their thing, but that wasn’t classified as bass at all. When Lil’ John started that he kind of took the bass thing and changed it. His sound had mass appeal, but it lost the street credibility. Nobody really paid a lot of attention to the So So Def Bass All-Stars. The first one did great because of “My Boo”. When they did volume two, the sales went down, and of volume three, nobody really knew that it existed. And that was it pretty much for their relationship; Lil’ John started doing his own thing and the rest is history with him. A couple of months ago, he was credited in Scratch Magazine saying that I was the reason that he was doing what he is doing to this day.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You were saying that everything that was big in Florida came out of Atlanta. What’s the connection there?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

None, really – other than the strip clubs, that’s pretty much it [laughs].

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But what is the connection between strip clubs and bass then?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Booty shakin’, [laughs].

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Uh-huh, OK. Someone said the other day that you were the first one to actually have ‘booty’ in a record title.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

“Boot The Booty”. Yeah, you might be right. I can’t think of one before that.

[one of the participants queries this statement]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Well, we’ll put that on the forum. We can discuss it there at length. The same person explained to me that in the 1920s, women in bathing suits or with their backs exposed were already a huge fascination luring people to come to Florida for their holidays. What is that all about?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I don’t know. I have always been more on the bass side than on the booty side. That was because I didn’t wanna be like Luke and 2 Live Crew. I didn’t become a part of the whole booty side of bass music.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So you don’t appreciate the booty?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

No, I appreciate the booty [laughs]. But not as far as my music is concerned. I like to listen to it, I like to play it, but with my music I didn’t wanted to go in that direction.

EMMA WARREN

But your song title was “Boot The Booty” and not “Boot The Bass”.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

But I didn’t title that one. That was Cool Rock and Chaszy Chess. They were part of the Clay D staff. I worked with them in my early days when I went to Miami. The whole song was about nothing. It was just about booty. There was no lyrics, there was nothing going on in that song. We were just inside the vocal booth and talking, having a conversation. It was just ‘boot the booty’. And then we went back to talking. So there was no structure to the song at all.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What would you be talking about then?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

We talked about booty, but not in the form or fashion of a booty song. There was no verse that you could sing, there was nothing that you could rap to, there was nothing going on in that song. It was just the hook ‘boot the booty’.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I may be a little bit narrow-minded, but what’s the difference between a song talking about the booty and a booty song?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Actually, that’s the same. There really isn’t any difference. But I was doing bass music, more so than booty music. There’s a big difference between those two...

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

...which is?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Booty music has bass, but bass music doesn’t talk about booty. (laughs) It’s easy. Mostly our booty songs have bass in them. But just because it’s a bass song, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s talking about booty.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So you’re free to talk about everything.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

It could be an instrumental as well.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What’s the percentage of instrumentals and vocal songs?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I was the first person doing instrumental bass music. It was pretty much just instrumental songs with a lot of ‘boom’. They were more so designed for the cars, more so than anything else. Some DJs started playing these records in clubs as well because people liked the sound of the songs in a club. But these were instrumentals, so there was nothing really to go on at that point. The first single from my fourth album Ain’t No Doubt About It was “Feel The Bass III”. Radio picked up on it and that album went gold. It’s kind of weird. It just has to be at the right time or the right place.

EMMA WARREN

Bass songs are either instrumentals or about booty. What other things do bass songs talk about if they’re not instrumental?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Bass. That’s pretty much it.

EMMA WARREN

Bass?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

It’s pretty much just about bass. There’s really no other subject for the conversation.

EMMA WARREN

Have you ever had a non-instrumental bass track that wasn’t about either bass or booty?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

An instrumental?

EMMA WARREN

A track that isn’t instrumental...

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Umm... no. Because, if there’s a lot of low-end in the song and it’s instrumental, it’s still a bass song. It’s more about the music than about anything else. Because if you take all the bass out of the song, it’s still an instrumental song at that point.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How is something like L’Trimm considered in that part of the scene?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

They really weren’t part of it. It was pop at that time.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But did you feel like that was taking away anything from you guys?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

No. At home, they really didn’t play it too much. They didn’t acknowledge it. Atlantic picked it up and it became a crossover thing, almost like a fad; that’s pretty much what it was. They had this one song and tried to come back with something else, and that was it for them. It was just a pop-oriented hit that took off into the pop world, but not with the street.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How many of those cycles have you seen throughout your career? Cycles like being in the public attention, having all the journalists ringing your house, not ringing your house 12 months later anymore and coming back after three years or so.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Quite a few actually, but not as far as bass music was concerned. As long as I’ve been doing this, I’ve seen a lot of things come up and a lot of things go down. But my motto is: always sit right here in the middle. I don’t want to be on the top, I don’t want to be on the bottom. I just want to sit right here in the middle.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What were the grossest things you heard about stuff that you’ve been doing?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

One thing that I heard that was real gross: if you’re in a car and it’s too much low-end in the song, it will make you poop on yourself. [laughs]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Well, we’ve heard that physically there might be a connection between the sphincter muscle and bass. Mr. Rosner talked about that subject. That might be probably the dark room end of the car audio battle, stuff going on in the backroom, hmmm?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Yeah... [laughs]

EMMA WARREN

So we’re going to hear one of your tunes now.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Yeah, I’m going to play the last one I did. I recorded that about a month ago. It just kind of shows where I’m at and what I’m into now.

(music: Magic Mike - “unknown” / applause)

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So people have glow sticks in their cars, no?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

[laughs]

EMMA WARREN

There was definitely some rave bassline, hoover business going on.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Just a little bit.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Seriously, in a club, you would have played how many records by now?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

It depends. If I’m playing some place where I can play breaks tracks, then nine out of ten tracks will be my own stuff. Sometimes it leaves me in that direction, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I like it harder and angrier, it just depends on my mood. But I always try to play my own stuff when it comes to this.

EMMA WARREN

So how does that fit into your angry/hard spectrum?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Not really angry, not really hard, just kind of groovy.

EMMA WARREN

What did you have to do to that bassline to make it sound that way?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

We did all kinds of stuff to that. The bassline came out of my MS-20. This is an old machine, you have to sit and play and tweak. Once I got my sound, I took it and ran it through my BBE to just kind of fill it up and then bottom-end it out. I ran it from there to my Avalon, just to compress it. Once I compressed it, then we recorded it.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What was your first feeling when you played it in your car?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I loved it. When I did the song, it was just a joke. The cowbell thing was like a phrase we were going through at home. I did it for my MC because we always joked about it. When we played our show at the House Of Blues, I said to myself: “I’m gonna surprise him with this one.” I played it and he just started laughing on stage because it started off as a joke song. Now I gave it to a couple of key DJs at home. And they have been playing it. The cowbell buzz is out, everyone wants the song.

EMMA WARREN

Did you shift bass into a new direction with this track?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

It’s not bass. It’s more so what I like and I’m into. I just tried to make it an universal thing. If you like it: cool. If you don’t, well, there’s other music to listen to. I’m not going to push what I’m into to everyone, unless you come to one of my gigs, then you have no choice. It’s just what I like. I hear a lot of songs that I don’t like and I tend not to play those, so I like to record my own. And when I play out, I play my own stuff. So people have something to look forward to when they come to my shows.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How did you feel like when people like James Lavelle approached you a couple of years ago? He was someone of the crate-digging kind trying to reclaim some street credibility by putting bass music into the limelight.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

That’s a whole different story. Boy... You have to know the music in order to do the music. When I say “do the music” that means: whether you are recording it or whether you are selling it, you have to understand the music and where it came from. And if you don’t, it makes it hard to sell it because it’s kind of off the beaten path and no one is really used to it. For the average consumer, this music just doesn’t make sense. It can be quite difficult to sell this sound. So that’s pretty much what happened in that situation.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How do you learn about the music?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Learning is hard. It’s more about the feeling. If you listen to it and you like it, you tend to get more into it. If you listen to it and don’t like, then you don’t get into it. But my thing is: you can listen to me or not listen to me as long as you know me. That’s all that really matters to me.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Don’t talk, just listen.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Yeah. How did you know about that? [laughs]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Your MC, that’s another universe as well, especially if you’re not in the classic hip-hop situation.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

If you only knew...

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How does the interaction work?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Our interaction is not like the usual MC/DJ interaction. It is a show. When we show up and perform, it is a physical show. We like to entertain the crowd and give them something to get into, participate and just have a good time.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Can we get the karaoke bits to get a better idea?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

It’s hard to describe. He knows me and I know him. I know what he’s going to do before he does it and the other way round. Most of the time, he’s on the front of the stage, I’m on the back of the stage, not even looking at him. I’ll turn the music off, and in that very moment he’s going to say something. People get amazed and ask us: “How did you know?”

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

An experienced couple.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Right. It’s a great show. It’s just fun.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Do you have that on video?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Yes, actually we do have videos on my website. Condensed versions of our shows, because a show is usually two hours long, depending on what we’re playing. It’s on www.djmagicmike.com. It’s just a cool show. We like all kinds of different music. He knows hip hop, I know hip hop, he knows drum ‘n’ bass, I know drum ‘n’ bass, he knows nu school, I know nu school. We like the same music – which is important. We like the same artists, we hate the same artists.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

When you are making your tracks, do you make them specifically for the dancefloor?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Not really. I think about the dancefloor, if it’s something that I want to play out. But I tend not to think about that anymore. I tend to just do what I like. If I can fit it in – fine. If not, then I have to like it first.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

And when you’re DJing, do you keep the different sounds that the crowd responds really well to at the back of your mind?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Not really. When I’m working on stuff I specifically try not to make my next song sound like the one before. If I notice that I’m going into the same bank of sounds, then I just forget that day. I try not to gravitate to something that I’m used to. Whenever I go to my computer or keyboard, I make sure that I’m using something different.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Besides testing the tracks in your car, is there another place where you test your music?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

In my house now because I can knock stuff off the walls now.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Do you have a special person that you test it with?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

No.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Do you like to go to a certain place, like a hip hop bar or something, and test it there on a shitty soundsystem just to see how it responds or on a good one to feel the bass?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I have a very close friend. He’s DJing at the House Of Blues on Sunday nights. Every once in a while when I get a track done, I take it there and let him play it on that massive soundsystem. Then I just listen to it and make sure that it’s where I need it to be. Most of the time, I don’t let anybody hear anything until it’s totally done. And when I feel it’s totally done, I’ll share it with anyone else.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Do you get influenced by what people say?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

No, that doesn’t bother me at all. I guess, I have been doing that too long now. You kind of get through that whole thing. Nothing fazes me, just whatever, whatever.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

At the height of bass music’s popularity, there were a lot of producers, especially in Atlanta, who were just making the music because it was selling at that time. Once it became commercial, did you feel like they weren’t appreciating the actual history of bass music, or like they didn’t understand where it came from and what the purpose was?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Yeah, actually you’re right. You’re very accurate in that. A lot of people tried not to acknowledge the music, the sales or what I had done. You kind of say after a minute: “Was it worth it?” But as long as I was able to take care of myself and people around me, then usually it’s alright at that point. I don’t like how Atlanta went about doing bass music because they jumped on and then they jumped off because it wasn’t going where they wanted it to go. It goes back to what I said before: you have to know the music in order to do the music. A month ago, I got pissed off real bad. I read in Ebony magazine that Nelly was the first artist to put two albums out at the same day. I got really pissed because people are not really paying attention to history. I already did that in ’93. If people don’t pay attention to the history, then its not going to live.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

How is the bass response different between cassette and CD? Does that change the sound a lot?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Oh yeah, drastically. Believe it or not, you can get a lower response for bass on a cassette than on a CD. The CD doesn’t reproduce it the way it needs to be done. But it’s still clear, you can get it louder on CD which overcompensates for the depth loss.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When we’re talking tapes, there’s always a big voodoo about mastering. Do you go all digital or do you include tapes somewhere along the line?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I used to, but the more you process it now, the less you have to go to tape. Everything I used to do as far as it goes to bass was to bounce everything to a half inch and go as fast as possible, maybe to 30 Hz. To make sure that it had my tape quality, I would bounce everything and then go to a DAT. If I’m doing something like that now, I get everything to my Avalon. Once I got everything tweaked the way I want it, it’s still all on the digital field. Then I’m doing the master. The bass isn’t as deep as naturally going to tape, but it’s so close now that the average ear can’t pick it up. People won’t even know it.

Audience Member

Recently I was talking to Barbara Tucker, American house singer, and we spoke about drum & bass, how drum & bass can't grow bigger in New York at least because of ethnic structure of listeners. We compared it to London. Do you think that drum & bass can be as big of a genre as house, techno, maybe trance, in New York or any big city in the USA?

DJ Magic Mike

I think so but I'm prone to it. Realistically probably not, just cause it's so different and it's off the beaten path, you know? And house is almost like a universal music, you know? I like stuff off the beaten path so when it gets to house music I get bored. I can listen to it for a hot minute and after that I'm like, "OK." I need something to pick me up and keep me going. And I think that's probably pretty much the general thing with house versus drum & bass. D&b is just off the beaten path. So if you like d&b then you like d&B, if you don't like d&b then you're not going to like it, you know? But once again if it is played right and people present it in a nice way, in a decent way, and just try to pull you into it, then it's okay. Cause we've done it, we've changed people that were hardcore hip-hop heads and made them like d&b. It's all in how you do it, and how you play it.

Torsten Schmidt

When you're talking drum & bass, and you said earlier, you know your drum & bass, obviously you can hear, as you said before a bit of Reinforced in there, now and then from your perspective, what are you top five pre-'94 hardcore classics?

DJ Magic Mike

[laughs]

Audience Member

I wanna hear this one!

DJ Magic Mike

You know 'em all already. Well, he knows what number one is. "World Within a World," Omni Trio. "Renegade Snares," the "Hey Jude" bootleg...

Audience Member

[inaudible]

DJ Magic MIke

What's that? "Wonders Of The World"? Yeah, yeah, "Trip to the Moon," it is quite a few things that we like. Where were we at and I played, we ended our set... Once again, I surprised him, dug through my wall and started pulling out all kinds of old '91, '92 jungle and then we ended our set with it. And just tripped people out cause they weren't suspecting it.

Audience Member

[inaudible]

Torsten Schmidt

That is a bit of a scenario, playing '91 hardcore tunes in Alabama. What was that like?

Audience Member

North Carolina?

DJ Magic Mike

It might've been North Carolina. Cause I mean that song was a "Sesame Street." [laughs] Yeah it was.

Emma Warren

What was the response from the dance floor when you did that?

DJ Magic Mike

They lost their minds. Because either they had never heard it, or remembered it. So usually your response is, you know, hands up and everybody having a good time, and that's what it was. We ended the set with it and they enjoyed it.

Audience Member

America wasn't as harsh on that record as they overseas was, truthfully. As I just jump into the conversation.

Torsten Schmidt

Do you have to put like extra low end on to these records when you play them these days?

DJ Magic Mike

No, just leave it as it is. Just leave it. Cause they are all original records, they are all originals. Which he is surprised I even have. I just leave it as it is. Every once in awhile I might turn the low end up on the EQ on the mixer but I tend to like the original sound of the record. So I tend not to overcompensate or push anything. I just leave it as it is.

Emma Warren

So what was your feeling about those records at the time?

DJ Magic Mike

Well that was at the height of my bass career. So once again, off the beaten path. It was different than what I was into and what I was doing. I wasn't playing it, it was just like I would go to a record store and it was just something cool, like, "I like that." And I'd buy it and I wouldn't play it but I would listen to it. That's how my collection just continued to grow. So when he started bringing up these records, and I'm like "I think I have that," you know? He was like, "You don't have that record," and I would go home and I would start digging and all of the sudden I'd find it. I think the last thing we did that with was the original soundtrack Omni Trio Volume Three. Was it three or four? Three? Yeah. He was like, "You don't have that record," and I'm like, "That sounds familiar to me." Then sure enough I went home and I started digging and I found it and gave it to him and he's been happy ever since.

Torsten Schmidt

Did you ever meet any of the guys?

DJ Magic Mike

Never met them.

Torsten Schmidt

Is there anyone you would like to meet?

DJ Magic Mike

No. [laughs] you know what, I'll explain that. I've always liked to meet people, whether they were artists, entertainers, or whatever. What wound up happening is, I would meet people that I liked their music, was into their music. And then once you meet them, their whole attitude determines how you feel about them at that point.

Torsten Schmidt

Top three disapointments?

DJ Magic Mike

Oh boy, I certainly don't want to put that out there. How can we get away from that. Let's skip that, if I have nothing good to say about someone I'd rather just let it be. But I've met people and been huge fans, and met them and they were assholes. It turns me totally off from them and then I don't want to listen to their music anymore, and I have nothing good to say.

Torsten Schmidt

How long does it usually take you to overcome it?

DJ Magic Mike

Never. Never, never. I never play it again, and I just say, "Whoops, that's that." I'm not a groupie, so it's like I want to shake your hand, I want to like it, I like your music, "Good job" or whatever so don't be a snob about it, you know? That tends to happen quite often.

Torsten Schmidt

How do you keep yourself from not being a snob about it while you get that sort of attention?

DJ Magic Mike

Cause we all play records for a living. We play with machines and we play records, you know? We aren't building rockets, were not doing any of that. So it's just a hobby for most people, everybody is into it. So there's no reason to be that way. I enjoy meeting people, I enjoy talking to people, it's always a fun thing for me.

Torsten Schmidt

But how about wrong timing? We're experts when it comes it to that.

DJ Magic Mike

Well you know, when someone meets you, in their book there isn't a wrong time, and we go through that all the time. I can be using the bathroom and somebody's like, "Hey how you doin!?" And they want to shake your hand. Or you could be sitting, eatting dinner, whatever, but it took me a long time to realize that person would probably never see you ever again in life. So then you have to remember that and just chock it up, be nice.

Torsten Schmidt

Wash your hands.

DJ Magic Mike

Right. Because if you are nice to them, then you will have a fan for life. If you're an asshole to them, then you will probably have an enemy for life. Cause that's how I am.

Emma Warren

They'll go home and say, "I'm never playing his records ever again."

DJ Magic Mike

Right, "I'll never buy another Magic Mike record ever again." So you know, it's just nice to be, just be polite. A minute out of your time, two minutes out of your time, be cool about it, then all of the sudden, "Oh man he was cool." And then everybody is all happy.

Audience Member

[inaudible]

DJ Magic Mike

Yeah, I can name quite a few actually. Some of them start turning around, after the fact, after you've done something or they need something. Then all of the sudden they want to talk and I'm like, "Nah, no thanks." That's how it is. I don't want to say no names. We'll let that be.

Audience Member

It sounds like you've, over the years, embraced computer production and technology. I'm just curious as to how it's influenced your style and sound over the years?

DJ Magic Mike

Changed it totally, actually. I went from the days of laying one track on a 24-inch tape, and making track one SMPTE and having to lock up to that for three, four, five passes to keep laying stuff in. Technology can ruin you also, because you tend to over produce, you tend to experiment more because you have the technology. It changed my style totally. From what I did back then to what I'm into now and what I want to do now. But sometimes I have to get a grasp and say, "OK, that's enough." This one song I did I got extremely technical on and it took me probably about a week. And I'm just sitting and tweaking and having fun and there's only so much stuff you can do before you start over producing. That was the problem I started running into. Coming from the days of just drum machine and playing a synth on top of it, or running a record on top of a beat, to where it is now it is just a night and day difference. There's not a lot of people that can experience both. Either they were doing something back then, they're not doing it now. So, it's a change, it really is. It was a learning curve at first because I've always liked equipment, and tweaking and getting in and playing. Now where it is it's just how nasty can I make this sound? And that's where it is.

Torsten Schmidt

So maybe another tune? But not before we give the man a big hand for sharing with us. [applause]

Later on, when we go to our little studio you can show how you’re doing on the decks in the meantime?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Yeah, I’ll play around a little bit. This is the song I was talking about when I got a little bit too technical, but it’s fun.

(music: Magic Mike – “unknown” / applause)

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I wonder how do we’ve made it to get through all of this without talking about mixtapes and compilations? That’s where you're coming from, right?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I kind of started with mixtapes. But when I started out, they weren’t called mixtapes. It was just you playing in a club and selling your tapes at the end of the night. This was back in ‘81/’82. I recorded probably three or four tapes in the course of a night. And at the end of the night I would sell them. But then the demand started to get bigger. So I bought more cassette decks, made master tapes, started duplicating them at home and took them to the club. People didn’t want a tape from the night. They just wanted a tape from me. But once I started making records, I stopped doing mixtapes. My last two projects were like a trip back to the mixtapes. The Bootyz In Motion one went through Interscope and did 300,000 copies, part two went through K-Tel. This did 250,000 copies. They want me to do a third CD, but I said that there are not enough songs left. But if I find enough obscure bass songs that people have forgotten about, I’m going to do another one.

EMMA WARREN

What’s the key thing to do a really, really killer mixtape?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

In the States, mixtapes have lost their meaning now. It was something DJs used to do to showcase their skills. But now, when you hear a mixtape, it’s just exclusive songs people get their hands on or that they have done themselves and aren’t released yet. Anybody who can hold a mic is doing that. For me, that’s not a mixtape. MCs are just rhyming on top of instrumentals, once they have 12 or 13 of those, that’s their mixtape. The word just doesn’t have the same meaning to me.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Are these people missing out on skills somewhat?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

No, they’re not missing out on skills, you’re not getting skills at all. Where it started at and where it is – that’s just two totally different places now. When it started it was about DJs showing their skills. A DJ could show what he was doing, get his name out and make some money at the same time. Now it’s an MC thing. To me, it’s just kind of weird. I don’t listen to them unless a DJ gave it to me and said: “This is my mixtape,” or whatever. Most of the time, when a DJ gives something to me, I’ll listen to it. Because I never know when I’m going to run into him again. I want to be able to say: “This is cool, but such and such,” or that I don’t like it. But now mixtapes have not the same meaning. They are all MCs yelling and doing whatever they do. You don’t hear a lot of DJs making mixtapes anymore, unless it’s somebody like Flex or DJ Clue. But I don’t classify them as DJs.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Will a DJ be able to reclaim the spotlight?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I say yes. But you got to want it. If you’re after to get it, then you can. But don’t assume that it’s going to happen just because you’re a DJ. I think that’s part of the problem now. If you’re afraid about it, you have no talent. Then just come up with something else.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

When doing a mixtape, is it better to keep it short and sweet or make one that is 45 minutes or an hour long? Would you listen to a one hour mixtape? Or is it better too keep it at 15 or 20 minutes?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I think it’s a personal preference. Some people want to hear more, some want to hear less. I want to hear talent. I don’t care if the song is there or not. You can go from mix to mix and take the whole song out. I just want to hear what you did. And that’s pretty much where your talent comes from. I don’t want to hear the song I might have heard 15 million times already. I want to hear what you can do with it. In an hour you can get a good gauge of how a person’s talents are and where the talents lie.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Would you listen to the whole hour?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

I’d scan through the songs until it’s time for the mix. That’s usually where the talent lies. I’m more technical. I want to hear you put some thought into it. I don’t want to hear just going from one song to the next with a little 16 beats mix. That’s nothing to me. Put some thought into something. Put some songs together that I wouldn’t expect to go together.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Talking about the technical aspects, much probably you have heard more tracks than we have. But is it only about mixing skills? Or can that tune selction maybe go above standards and arouse your interest?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Sometimes you can hear a DJ that can’t mix to save his life, but his track selections are great. But to me, if ‘DJ’ is in your name, then you should have the craft. I’m a hard ass when it comes to that. It’s just because I’ve been around such a long time. I know what I like, I know what I don’t like, what I’m going to get into and what not. So I’m more the technical person. I want to hear what you’ve done; more so than just hear the songs.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So what are the 36 chambers to go through to earn that ‘DJ’ in your name?

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Number one, first and foremost: be original. I don’t want to hear something that you heard the guy at the club do last Friday. If you want to sit up and mock or copy somebody, that’s fine. But use that talent to further yourself and don’t use that talent to make yourself. Use it and incorporate it in a different way, in a way the average person wouldn’t think of. But people don’t want to give it though anymore. They want to study a tape or listen to someone and copy it exactly, word for word. And suddenly they can do it. But that’s not talent. That’s just doing what you’ve learnt.

EMMA WARREN

So you’re definitely representing for DJ skills.

DJ MAGIC MIKE

Of course.