DJ J-Rocc was among the first Hip Hop DJs in Southern California when he began rocking parties in Huntington Beach back in 1985. The skills he developed and the crew he encouraged would g...
Jimi (Chopmaster J) Dright was surrounded by music growing up in Berkely, California. Sly Stone lived in his same fourplex, Tower of Power practiced in their garage and music promoter Her...
Gio Giovanni has a rich background in music, a passion of his since he was a kid. Gio grew up in Detroit, where he studied guitar and became a Hip Hop DJ. He took classes that incorporate...
Jimmy Edwards grew up in a musical family. His father was a singer in a rock band and Jimmy began playing drums by the time he was five and later picked up the guitar. After serving in th...
Neal Pogue has a special touch when it comes to being a recording engineer. Perhaps his talents and skills can be traced back to childhood when he began playing the drums. He was trained ...
Keith LeBlanc was one of the first drummers who used his funk music background to create beats that helped popularize hip-hop music. Keith was there in the beginning and while working for...
Jamal Batiste grew up in a very musical family and when he saw his brother’s drum kit at 3 years old, he fell in love. Raised in New Orleans he was surrounded by what he calls the gumbo o...
Dennis Chambers has always had music in his life and started playing professional gigs before he was ten years old! He joined the group Parliament-Funkadelic in 1978 and is considered to ...
DJ Chris The Glove remembers when he was a kid listening to Grandmaster Flash’s The Wheels of Steel on repeat trying to figure out what he was hearing and how he could replicate that soun...
DJ Qbert brought new energy to Hip-Hop as a DJ in the digital world of turntables. Keeping to the traditions of the pioneering DJs who influenced him, Qbert added new flare to the craft o...
DJ Aladdin’s musical career began in the late 1970s with a wooden turntable from his uncle and another from his aunt as well as a mixer from Radio Shack. He watched as Hip-Hop exploded in...
DJ Babu enjoys his journey teaching the artform of turntablism, a term he is credited for coining. Since buying his first set of mismatched turntables when he was seventeen, Babu has acco...
Keith Shocklee is a pioneering DJ who began performing at the local youth center on Long Island in 1974, only a year after Hip Hop was established. Keith gives credit to the radio disc jo...
DJ Quest thought he was going to be a rapper while his cousin would DJ but once he saw the turntable set up at home he was hooked and never looked back. Quest is a founding member of the ...
DJ Ralph M still remembers a Halloween party he attended in 1982, where he was first introduced to hip-hop and break dancing. He was fascinated by the turntable and his dream was to becom...
DJ Evil E was thirteen years old when he heard the pioneering artist Grandmaster Flash, which inspired E to get his own turntable rig. As a young DJ, Evil E was inspired by a performance ...
DJ Arabian Prince had to get creative with his overprotective mother. He figured out that by utilizing his new interest in DJing he could be the first at a party and the last to leave whi...
DJ D-Styles entered the hip-hop scene B-Boying and popping but soon realized his strength was in DJing. He has pioneered many different scratch styles and techniques over the years and ha...
DJ Revolution can still remember the first time he heard Grand Master Flash’s 1981 album Adventures on the Wheels of Steel and being blown away that this music was created with existing s...
DJ Rhettmatic is an architect of the West Coast Hip Hop sound, jumping into the role of DJ in the very early days of its development. In 1983 he became a member of Double Platinum, a grou...
DJ Melo-D saw his first mobile DJ set up during a middle school dance and was more interested in the set up than the dance itself. He begged his parents for a turntable and would seek out...
DJ Sir Jinx’s uncle played an important role for him growing up and in inspiring his passion for music. His uncle possessed an eclectic record collection and a DJ equipment set up at his ...
DJ Grandmaster Flash combined his love of music with his passion for electronics to become one of the pioneers of Hip Hop music. His innovative style of mixing records and blending beats ...
Dave Lopez grew up in East Los Angeles and witnessed the explosive evolution of the mobile DJ, beginning in the late 1970s. During high school Dave was asked to provide the music for a da...
DJ Hollywood always had the showbiz bug, even at six years old he would perform at his mother's parties. As he saw crowds gather to hear music in the Harlem parks, Hollywood brought out h...
Christie Z is an arts advocate who, lucky for each of us, focused on encouraging young artists and musicians in the Bronx, New York. She organized park concerts and later DJ battles that ...
DJ Scratch is a legendary Hip Hop DJ and producer from Brooklyn New York. He has worked with many great Hip Hop artists such as Jam Master Jay, EPMD, Jay-Z and A Tribe Called Quest! Durin...
DJ Spindarella, from the Bronx New York, grew up in love with the Disney character Cinderella. She was wearing a Cinderella watch while spinning records in her local park, the day she got...
DJ Imperial JayCee first played records in the parks back in 1974. The world of Disco had created a career for DJ Kool Herc, a hero in JayCee's Bronx neighborhood, which inspired him to t...
Kool DJ Red Alert, from Harlem New York, grew up listening to the Caribbean music of his grandparents as well as his brother's record collection. He was greatly inspired the day he first ...
DJ Mean Gene (L Brothers) from the Bronx, was not only a legendary DJ but an early Hip Hop promoter and organizer of jams and shows. Gene was Grandmaster Flash's first DJ partner. His you...
Stephen Webber is a professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and helped create the Music Production/Engineering program. After working at Mid South Recording Studio in Nashvill...
