In the Bungalow with DJ Artistic
In the Bungalow with DJ Artistic
After nervously circling Filter Coffee Shop three times, I come to the realization that parking is a precious commodity in Hillcrest. A short but brisk walk leads me to the counter of Filter where I order a steaming chai tea not a hair off the dog that bit me last night but hopefully a headache aid just the same. My bloodshot eyes clumsily survey the home grown atmosphere. The mix and match furniture remind me of my own apartment and the smattering of customers are mostly hunched over laptops. I’m drawn to a table with a carved elephant statue on it; I read it as a good omen. DJ artistic plucks me from my haze by introducing himself and right away, I can see that he is a high energy guy but, I won’t hold that against him.
Bill: You've been touted as "one of the hardest working producers in the San Diego music scene,” are you a California native, where did you grow up?
Arthur: Well, I originally grew up all over Michigan, Detroit, some suburbs, and inner city of Michigan. Then, I moved to California when I was twelve, a long time ago. When I lived in Michigan with my mom and my older sister, there was a period in our life when we didn’t have a TV. So I missed out on Star Wars and a lot of things like that. I had a lot of cousins that were really good at dancing and breaking. I really wasn’t good at dancing. I was really like a little nerd, I’m still a nerd. I had a lot of love for my family. I was always a big fan of music. When I was living in Detroit, they had a DJ, The Wizard and he would just like cut it up, scratch and mix and put all this music together on the radio and it was unbelievable. My friend came down when was I in sixth grade and I remember us having this little TV with Levis blue jeans around the TV screen but it had regular channels. It was crazy. And he came down with Beastie Boys recorded off the radio onto cassette and he gave me the cassette. And at that particular time, I can remember it so vividly; it had such a huge impact on today and what I do. I dreamed about being a DJ, I had these dreams of doing this and to this day, I can’t believe I’m doing it.
A nature show plays on the television above on the wall and I am temporarily distracted by a squirrel as Arthur waves hello to a friend who arranges himself at a nearby table.
Bill: I am not that knowledgeable about rap, hip-hop or DJs; can you give me a brief background of the historical evolution of DJism?
Arthur: Okay, it’s interesting how the question is represented, you know, hip hop or DJ-ing ‘cause you can’t lump rap and hip hop together. I think to the educated and people who are very knowledgeable about music and different genres can separate the two. “Rapping is something you do. Hip Hop is something you live.” That’s a quote from KRS1. It stands for knowledge reigns superiorly over nearly everyone. Anthony Keidas from The Red Hot Chili Peppers can rap. My man from sublime (Bradley), he can rap. Those are people that rap, everyone can do like a rap, that’s just kind of like a rhythmic syncopation of some words, that’s what rap is. Fred Dirst is rapper. But Hip Hop embraces graffiti, DJ-ing, break dancing, it embraces different cultures. It’s actually a voice, beat boxing, its style, its fashion, it’s an attitude. Hip Hop has made such a contribution to the world, into the lifestyles of people. It is more than just rap; rap is just one element of Hip Hop. Again, Hip Hop is like the movement, the entire culture that embraces everything round it. As far as DJ-ing, DJ-ing came from Jamaica for Hip Hop because in Jamaica, the DJ is the guy actually talking on the mic. And the Selector is the guy playing the records. There’s a guy by the name of Cool Herc who came from Jamaica in the 1970s and went o New York and he has his turn tables and his sparkers and all these DJs would carry his record crates to the park. He was so resourceful that he would tap into the light pole and get electricity from there, set up turn tables and start rockin’. The thing that Cool Herc did was he played records differently than most people. Normally, you play the entire record and stand around and watch the DJ. He played the hottest parts of the record, only the hot parts and that is what helped form break dancing because there’s a drum break in the record and when that break happens, people start dancing and break dancing. Then Grand Master Flash took that break in that record and repeated back and forth on the one-two turn tables, that created the thing we know as the loop and that’s why Hip Hop has always had such a loop based production because that’s how it was made. So, you have to credit people like Cool Herc for going out into the park and basically rockin’ out for all the kids. And the first party that he DJ-ed for was his sister’s party, so the first Hip Hop promoter was actually female, a sister so that’s why there’s so many females in Hip Hop too that love it, that support it. And so many that are against how women can be portrayed in a bad way through Hip Hop, women are also worshipped in a great way through Hip Hop. I think it is very equal, women are treated the same in all genres of music. There are rock songs that say things about women and rock songs that praise women. Cool Herc is the godfather of it all, and then you have Grand Master Flash who rocked the doubles back and forth which was a big part of break dancing. That’s how it started out, now, the turn tables pretty much heal the world, DJs all over the world, people all over the world spinning on two turn tables putting music together, trying to capture an emotion, a feeling and give it to people.
Whoa, I was embarrassed enough at having to admit my ignorance on the subject but I definitely learned quite a bit in that response and hopefully, I didn’t offend anyone.
Bill: Who are your top three most influential musical artists?
Arthur: I gotta go with James Brown, the fact that James brown was able to make the style of music that he made, fight through all the trials and tribulations, go through the Civil Rights Movement and become such a force in Hip Hop music. You can feel his music; you can feel the music and the notes, and the emotion and everything about the productions that James Brown and the JBs put together. DJ Kid Capri is a DJ that I’ve always looked up to; he’s very powerful, from his music to his vocals on his mic., his passion. He’s been relevant in Hip Hop since the 1980s and it’s 2010. I got the pleasure of playing with him at U31 and it was an unbelievable thing for me. And third, I’m going to have to say DJ Jazzy Jeff. He’s another DJ and a producer. I was a huge fan of DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince when I was a kid. I remember the day, I was eleven years old, I was sitting in the kitchen, my mom was doing my sister’s hair and I heard Live at Union Square, DJ Jazzy Jeff cutting it up, I was like, “Oh, my God! I want to do that!” Those are the people that I feel the most. When I put on a James Brown record, it just touches me. And when I listen to Kid Capri, it touches me. When I listen to DJ Jazzy Jeff, it touches me. Those artists are really dear to me.
His brown eyes shine in the dappled light of the stained glass lamp shade that dangles languidly overhead and he gestures his hands as he speaks.
Bill: You've worked with some pretty famous acts like Public Enemy and Ice Cube, how were those experiences?
Arthur: When I was fortunate enough to go on tour with Public Enemy and X Clan, it kind of like a surreal dream. I’ve always been a fan of Public Enemy, of Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing, and what Public Enemy stood for, and their DJ Terminator X, he never talks, he only speaks with his hands. An unbelievable Hip Hop group, the issues that they tackled and what they stood for and them pushing the lines of freedom of speech and knowledge of self and fight the power ,just trying to embrace your freedom and trying to break some of the chains, some of the stereotypes that had been built up until they came out. Just to be on tour with a group like X Clan and a group like Public Enemy, it was unbelievable and the experience, I’ll take that with me for the rest of my life. Seeing Flavor Flav, Chuck D., The S1Ws, the order of waking up in the morning, having to do your morning workout, everyone eating the same kind of food, everyone being there at the same time, just the pure amount of discipline that they instill in you can’t be matched and I learned so much from that. I am extremely humbled by the experience to play with such an iconic group like that. With Ice Cube, I did a release party for Ice Cube at an event called, The Urban Network in Palm Springs. To meet Ice Cube and actually do his party, it was unbelievable; he’s a very humble guy, very smart. Again, I’m a big NWA fan and a big fan of Ice Cube and Ice Cube’s solo record was produced by The Bomb Squad and The Bomb Squad was Public Enemy’s producers. I am very fortunate to have been able to play with some people that I’ve looked up to. Ice Cube was an artist that when I was in high school, every Christmas, I would get a Warehouse gift certificate from my aunt Brenda and I would go and buy the new Ice Cube record. Back then, they would put all the records on sale at Christmas time because they knew you were getting Christmas money.
The smile on Arthur’s face is a tribute to his happy childhood memory, it reminds me of my mum and for a moment, my eyes well up.
Bill: Are there any other musicians who you are dying to work with?
Arthur: I really want to do a project with Greg Page. I talked with him briefly about it. I liked to do something with Greg Page and my group, Deep Rooted. That’s a really tough question. If I could work with any group in the world, I would want to work with the Fugees. If I had one wish to bring back any group that I think would contribute to the music scene, it would be the Fugees. They’re such a talented group, great message, that’s who I’d work with.
Just then, Arthur’s long legged, freckled faced 11 year old daughter strides over to say goodbye to her dear old dad. He tells me that he also has a 4 year old at home, bless his heart. He waves goodbye to her and a group of friends as she makes her way out the door.
Bill: Deep Rooted has six members in it, with that much talent, is it easy or difficult to write songs? Can you give us some insight into the process?
Arthur: With six members in the group, you have to realize that there’s an audio-visual experience. There are dancers by Urban Dynamics, Cessy and Boosie; they interpret the soundtrack so they’re actually the visual that’s going on. With Brie, the vocalist and she does engineering, you can find her in front of the Pro Tools doing some mixing and some tweaking and stuff like that. Mr. Brady is the emcee and the producer and Johas is a song writer and an emcee. I’m a producer and a DJ. As far as writing songs, it’s not really that challenging to write songs because we’re all huge fans of music and we can hear one piece of music and come up with an idea or we can hear a piece of music and decide in which direction should this go. And because we grew up listening to the music that our parents played and we saw the reaction that our parents would get from the records in the house and having from rock to funk to soul to jazz to blues to the early Hip Hop records and being exposed to them at a young age, we’re just looking for the music to touch people, and give them an answer, give them a scenario, give them some motivation, give them some hope and some guidance, and some direction that everything will be okay, you’ll be able to get through what you’re going through. Johas is such a smart song writer and Mr. Brady has been doing Hip Hop for so long and Brea being a good engineer and an excellent vocalist as well as a good song writer, all of us come together and are able to morph to get something that represents all of us. I think we’re fortunate because Mr. Brady and I did a record in 1996. Johas and I did a record in the late 1990s. And then, Johas, myself, Mr. Brady and Brea, we all connected and then Urban Dynamics, the fifth and sixth members of the group, who have always been in the community interpreting music as dancers, it made sense for all of us to come together and we’ve got good chemistry. That’s one thing, we’re fortunate to have, it wasn’t hard for us to maintain our chemistry so that wasn’t one of our challenges. When you have six people in the group, music is really the first love so it wasn’t challenging to create music especially when I’m paired up with such great talent as Johas, Mr. Brady and Brea.
Arthur asks what I’m drinking and promptly orders me a refill from a strong armed tattooed barista who pauses at our table a few minutes later to light a candle and deliver our drinks. I think DJ Artistic or Arthur as I’ve come to know him is a cool guy, positive but not in a bullshit sort of way.
Bill: You're a popular man in this town, which venue is favorite place to spin music?
Arthur: My favorite place to spin music is of course, U31. U31 has been so good to me. I got a chance to be the first guy to play Hip Hop at U31. At first, it wasn’t going to be a place where they were going to have Hip Hop. At the time, in the community, in the scene, people were afraid of Hip Hop and a lot of people in the scene right now don’t like Hip Hop at the venue. There’s a lot of new venues that say no Hip Hop which is interesting to me especially with all the electronic music going on right now. A lot of the electronic music out right now have Hip Hop vocals on top of the music, a lot of the electronic music is remixes from 1980s Hip Hop records with Hip Hop vocals and people rapping on it so it’s just interesting about the community and how some of the venues are afraid of Hip Hop. With U31 and the staff and the owner, Steve, they’ve been good to me, they see the vision that I have, and they’ve always supported the vision. I was able to do shows at that venue with people that I’ve looked up to and they were with it. They’ve really embraced what we’re all about, really embraced the no sucker DJs movement and I think to this day. It is the number spot in North Park if not in San Diego to see a Hip Hop show on a Thursday, a good Hip Hop night. I’ve had the pleasure of DJ-ing there with Kid Capri, I’ve had the pleasure of playing there with Too Live Crew, I played there with Diamond D who produced the Fugees. I had the pleasure of having with fat Lip from The Far Side there. I had the pleasure of having DJ New Mar from Jurassic 5 there, just to name a few. So for that venue to embrace some of those Hip Hop staples and let us do our function there, I’ve got to really pat them on the back for believing in us and seeing our vision. So, I have to go with U31 and then second, I have to go with Bar Pink in North Park. Why? Because they let me Hip Hop there when there was no Hip Hop there, they trusted me, they believed in me. And now, we got North Park rockin’.
Bill: I listened to the song Bees on your myspace page, the beat is somewhat relentless, is it modeled after the rhythm of a colony of bees and is that how it got its' name?
Arthur: That is a band that I’m a member of but I’ve got so many other things going on right now that I haven’t been paying in it as of late. A friend of mine by the name of Rama Douglas, a great citar player, plays some of those Asian and African instruments. We met at work, we got together, he had an event, he said, “well, you play with your band all the time. Why don’t you just come out, bring your turn tables, we can kind of do this thing.” And I’m like, “Okay, cool.” So, we get ready to do it and I tell him, “My band is just rappers and a vocalist; it’s not actually live instruments and things like that.” And he’s all, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” So, I just start dropping beats on the turn tables and he starts playing the citar on top of it and I just keep changing the beats and the people started going off. So when they started going off, there were a few requests like, “Can you put some Petey P. in there?” “Can you put this song in there?” “Can you play a Jay Z beat in there?” So, I’m putting out different beats underneath his citar playing and we decided to become a collective. We got together at my studio and I played him a few tracks, a few beats and things like that, we kind of rehearsed or jammed out over some beats and we recorded them and some of the ideas that we had were very, very good. So we recorded the rough tracks at my hose and Rama took them to his studio and then he did some tweaks on them and that song Bees was born. And because Rama has such a bizarre, wild, creative mind, he called the song Bees because that’s what he saw, he visually saw bees when he heard the track and that’s why it became a song called Bees.
Bill: Would you ever consider moving to a city with a bigger market for Hip Hop music such as Los Angeles?
He furrows his brow in deep thought before answering.
Arthur: I’ve traveled. I’ve been on three national tours, ten regional runs, I’ve done a lot of playing up and down the coast and across the United States and, I’ve got a family. For me, as long as my family is here in San Diego, I can’t see myself leaving my kids at all so, I think you create the market. I’m very fortunate to be embraced by my San Diego community. And, they’ve elected me, I don’t think I have anything more than anyone else to offer, I think everyone has the same ability that I have but the community elected DJ Artistic to be the voice because I didn’t do this by myself. They embraced me, they supported me, I feel they need me, it’s like my family. I wouldn’t be selfish enough to go move to another market and San Diego has millions of people And I’ve been so fortunate to work with people like Dang and Robin from Bar Pink and Steve from U31 and those guys believed in me and saw my vision. So, if the other musicians have vision and they create the relationship, there’s no doubt that we can make San Diego into a market like an L.A. but it takes us stepping up and be responsible for our genre of music and it requires us to get smarter and humble ourselves and value what relationships can bring. I think the smarter we get and the older we get, the more mature we get, I think that we will have a market. San Diego has been voted as one of the best markets for music around the country, you may not think so but I’m going top tell you right now, san Diego has music seven days a week all over. Do you want to go to North County? You’ll find music. You want to go to the beach? You’ll find music. Do you want to go to North Park? You’ll find music. You want to go down town? You’ll find music. So, I don’t think it’s a lack of venues and I don’t think it’s a lack of opportunities to play. It may be a lack of vision. I’ve been doing this for a long time because I’m passionate about it and I’m ambitious. The more people that are passionate and ambitious about it, they’re going to shape what the San Diego music community and scene is.
Bill: Crazy, a song off Deep Rooted's MySpace page, is that intended to be a quintessential club song?
Arthur: I know a lot of rappers, a lot of popular rappers, a lot of artists in general and that is the difference with the maturity as what we do as Deep Rooted. The song writing, the way that Brady, Jo and Brea came together and wrote that song made it a club record. We didn’t initially intend or do make records for any purpose. We don’t make a song and say, “Oh, this is the purpose of it, it can go on the radio, it can this and that.” We just make the music based on how we feel and based on our vibing together and different travelling that we do and different scenarios that are happening in our lives. We’re parents, we’re moms, we’re dads, we’re aunts and uncles, and we’re role models. There are real things going on in our lives while we’re making this music. That record is produced by a young guy by the name of G Rocka who is out of El Centro, shouts out to G Rocka, he produced that record. He sent us the record, the beat was so dope, the production was dope that when Johas and Brea got to their parts and then Brady did his part, it just came out a good record. It was one of those Zen, automatic times where it just worked and that beat vrrm, vrrm, vrrm, vrrm, that beat with how popular electro has been and what we do as raw Hip Hop, combining them together, I think it was a perfect fit. What it really does, I think, is it just showcases the diversity and the song writing ability of Deep Rooted. I know ten other rappers that would have got that track and wouldn’t have made it as friendly and as hot as we did no disrespect. I think because I DJ all kinds of clubs all over and we’re all fans of music and we like different kinds of stuff, we know the reactions that are going on in the clubs and the songs that come on the radio, if it’s regular radio or satellite radio. We know things excite us and get us emotional, pump us up. We just try to capture the feeling that give us that while we’re making the songs and because there’s so many components I the group, I don’t think we think of a record as, “Oh, DJ Artistic can just play it in the club.” We don’t think about like that, we just kind of go into it and do it and I can say in the studio, when we’re working, at some point, I can turn into Brady, I can turn into Bree, I can Jo, I can turn into Boosie, I can turn into Cessy, I can turn into the different people of Deep rooted when I’m producing records because I’m thinking, “Oh, Jo would sound tight here.” “I can hear Bree doing this. “This part here, Brady will ready to go.” “At the show, Boosie and Cessy can be dancing right here and then the song is going to drop.” A lot of the components of us being together is what I think about when I’m producing music. I would have to say, I don’t want to speak for the guys (Deep Rooted) but I think we all think about each other when we’re with these pieces of music.
Whew, Art can talk! Luckily, he is humble and knowledgeable so, I‘ve enjoyed my time here not to mention my hangover, err, headache is gone too. Although by no means am I a part of Hip Hop culture, I at least feel that I could comfortably go to a Deep Rooted show without having to stand in the back of the room like a wallflower and Arthur has done his part to make me feel at home. Much like he brought Hip Hop to North Park, he is bringing Bungalow Bill out of his cultural illiteracy. Of the neighborhood, Arthur says, “We’ve got a real sense of community here.” And if you spend a few minutes with the articulate DJ Artistic, you’ll probably agree with him. I shake hands with him and we agree to do our best to cultivate a relationship between Yesterday Magazine and The San Diego Hip Hop scene. Arthur tries to pay me for my time and I try to protest but he won’t take no for an answer so after a few rounds of back and forth, I take the crumpled twenty that he’s offering and decide that there’s no shame in an old rascal letting a young DJ fund his 12 pack dalliance at the local liquor store.
Arthur: Thanks for the interview in real Hip Hop fashion, I have to give some shout outs. Shout out to Deep Rooted, Cross 1, Army Massive. Shout out to Abstract Groove, U31, Marc Uno No Sucker DJs. Shout out to Sleeping giant Music, everybody that supports DJ Artistic and last but not least, DJ Artistic isn’t a person, it’s a movement, peace!
