I kept telling myself that I will make a living off being a DJ.
I recall the exact moment when I said “I am going to be a DJ.” I was living in Los Angeles, California at the time. One summer evening, I had just got home from another 9:30-5:30 shift at CBS Television. I remember busting through the door of my apartment and running to the bathroom (as I normally would after an hour long commute home). As I set on the toilet, a clear vision of me DJ’ing to a crowd of people flashed before me. I was on stage with dancers, a huge crowd, with lights and smoke machines. I saw myself traveling the world with my packed DJ tour schedule. I was deemed the hottest female Hip-Hop or House DJ in Los Angeles and the world.
Yes, that was quite the dream and I knew I had an uphill battle being that I knew absolutely nothing about DJ’ing. Oh yea, and at that time I was just about to turn 26 years old; which I considered being past my prime. Even with everything stacked against me, I knew I had to follow this DJ dream. So, without hesitation I started studying and watching and reading as much “How to DJ” content I could consume. I replayed my favorite DJ videos over-and-over again of my favorite DJs like Kid Cupri, Jazzy Jeff, and DJ AM; watching how they handled the crowd and the turntables. I was so inspired.
I am not going to pretend like this thought to DJ just magically popped into my head out of the blue. Actually a seed had been planted long before that “uh huh” moment on the toilet, but now it had finally been watered. Before I even considered DJ’ing as an actual career, I had been heavily involved with the music scene in LA. I had friends with connections; record executives, music producers, and managers in the music industry. With that, I had the privilege of experiencing the music industry from the inside out. I got to attend huge concerts with backstage passes and green-room privileges. I even sat in on many studio sessions with several major recording artists.
At the time, I was an aspiring song-writer, but that all changed the night my music director friend invited me to a Far East Movement show and afterparty. I watched in “awe” as DJ Virman (the DJ in Far East Movement) tore up the stage. His DJ set was epic. At that time, EDM- electronic dance music, was just hitting it big in the states, and he played the most creative Hip-Hop/EDM DJ set I had ever heard. I was so inspired.
From all that research I knew exactly which equipment I wanted to buy. After purchasing my first official DJ set-up I reached out to the only DJ I personally knew from my college days. I invited him to come over, try out my new DJ equipment, and show me the basics of beat-matching. He spent about an hour going over the basics with me. He then transferred over 20 gigabits of music from his DJ Library to my (newbie) hard-drive for me to get started, and that was that. I haven’t seen him since.
After that, I knew DJ’ing was the way for me, but I didn’t know exactly what my next step was going to be. So, I just stayed busy in the “LA” scene as much as I could.
Like I said, at the time, I would write songs with my producer friends in hopes of scoring a major writing deal. I also was helping co-manage a few different up-and-coming girl groups, as well as perform in one myself.
The name of the group I was in was D.D.M.C., which stood for DJ, Drummer, Emcee. We were an all-female band consisting of myself the DJ, Brittany Brooks the Drummer, and Liberty Jayne the Emcee. D.D.M.C was pretty much the launch of my DJ career.
I had DJ’d on my own many times before creating D.D.M.C, but performing in that group at shows is what got me my first real taste of performing as a professional DJ. Although honestly, I was still completely a novice at it. At that time, I had only been less than a year into my “DJ career”.
Being in the group pushed me to want to become a better DJ, so I practiced a lot. We did a show at Coachella festival one year, a big show in Kansas City, and several little shows around LA.
Not too long after D.D.M.C disbanded, I picked up a new DJ gig with Rostrum Records recording artist, Vali. After making it past the Vali audition, we immediately started rehearsals. My first show with Vali was a video recording at LA’s top radio station, KIIS FM, on DJ Skee’s “Weekend Mixtape” show. I did shows with Vali at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, and at KIIS FM’s annual Wango Tango music festival in LA. We played for the Marines at Camp Lejuene and for the Army at Fort Brag in North Carolina. We played at the historic Roxy Theater on Sunset blvd. and I even was hired to DJ once for another label mate of Vali’s, Disney Channel’s Leon Thomas.
After several successful shows I started hearing gossip of possibly playing in London next. By now, I had used up all of my paid vacation and sick days at my corporate 9 to 5 job. But, we had more shows coming up that I would need to take more time off for to go tour with Vali.
So, I quit my job.
I took a leap of faith and followed my heart against my parent’s advice. I kept telling myself that I will make a living off being a DJ.
The Vali experience taught me a lot about the importance of my job, as the DJ. If my system had failed during a performance, then the whole show would have been screwed because I was the only one running the music for her. I had to run the show and hit my cues live each time. I was having a blast and making money. It also taught me how cut-throat the industry can be. The fact that I had even gone that far as a DJ pushed me to want to keep going further; even after the Vali gig ended.
6 months after quitting my 9-5 job and moving out of my apartment (into a friends extra bedroom), I had grown sick of living that way. So, I left LA., and moved back home to the Bay Area. I had been gone 11 years living life to the fullest, and to the brokest! I was really down on my luck and choose to do the last thing I said I would do, which was move back home; back into my parents’ house. I was in heavy credit card and school-loan debt, and had no other choice. Thankfully my parents are the best, they’re very supportive of me.
Once back home, I immediately started looking for opportunities that pertained to DJ’ing in the Bay Area. By now I had accepted the fact that I can actually make money DJ’ing if I try to.
The Bay isn’t anything like LA, so I didn’t know exactly how I was going to make it happen. The only DJ gigs I saw offered online were wedding DJ gigs, and I really didn’t want to be just a wedding DJ. About a month or so after moving back home, my best girl-DJ-friend, DJ Jahkova, who still lives in LA, reached out to me to see how I was doing. As fate would have it, she was the connect that I needed. She hooked me up with the folks at Scratch Music Group in New York and from there my DJ’ing career was up and running again.
My first gig with Scratch was for a Kenneth Cole appearance at Nordstrom in San Francisco. My next gig was with Nike during the Women’s “We Run” San Francisco marathon. I got two full Nike outfits plus two pairs of Nike shoes; plus I was paid over $1000 for that gig, granted I DJ’d 10 hours or so, but it was still the biggest DJ payday I had seen before. All I knew was to keep going. Why stop now?
DJ K-la-V in Oakland, CA
From there I was spinning so many gigs; like a private Diane Von Furstienberg showing, and spinning sets on the Royal Caribbean Cruise ships, and playing for parties and special events for companies like Google, Amazon, Salesforce, Mercedes Benz, and Neiman Marcus. I also started to DJ weddings.
Scratch asked me a few months into working with them if I wanted to audition to be part of Scratch Weddings, which was a separate division in Scratch Music Group. I grew a huge respect for wedding DJs after accepting to join. Weddings are special and sentimental and can be quite the production. So much planning is involved in DJ’ing a wedding. I’ll discuss Wedding DJs in a later blog post.
Along with my Scratch gigs, I started getting booked for gigs at some of the popular African clubs in Oakland, CA.
I had reached out to an ad on Craigslist looking for DJs who could spin Coupe de Cale, Zouks, Highlife, and Hip-Life music. I had never heard of those styles of music, but after I did some research on Youtube, I really liked what I heard. The videos weren’t the best quality and the music was coming fresh out of Africa.
When the folks who posted the ad replied back to my inquiry, they sent me 5 songs and asked that I send them back a DJ mix of those songs by the next day. So I did it, not knowing anything about the music besides it sounding so good. They reached back to me later that day to set up a meeting. I took a huge risk but I followed my heart and I met the freshest couple of people in Oakland, Xander and Marilyn. After that initial meeting they invited me over to their apartment and we binged for hours on African music, DJ mixing, African food, and weed, lots of weed. =) This repeated for several months after. Xander started DJing at the best Afrobeats parties in Oakland, and he linked me in with his parties.
I soon after created my own weekly and monthly events. Some of my parties were super successful and some were not. I have DJ’d to an empty room on numerous occasions, but I have also DJ’d to a crowd of thousands.
With all that said, it wasn’t easy. It still isn’t easy. Along with all the amazing moments and memories, there are just as many tough ones. The moments when nobody is there to help, or the times when it seems like no one cares to support your dreams.
When you are hired as a DJ, clients care solely about their expectations being met; however necessary. They don’t care about your circumstances and whats going wrong on your end; all they should have to care about is that the music is going and everyone is having a good time. 99% of the time, I’m by myself setting-up and breaking-down, towing-in and towing-out heavy equipment, setting-up sound, lights, and testing microphones. I got some good DJ stories for ya so stay tuned.
My DJ journey continues, but from my past experiences I can shed some light on the life of a DJ like me.
