Late-night ramblings with DJ Z-TRIP

In late July 2003, DJ Z-TRIP played at SARS-stock in Toronto, alongside the Rolling Stones, AC DC, Rush, The Guess Who, and many others. It was quite possibly the largest concert event ever, with over 450,000 people in attendance. But, one night a few weeks earlier, DJ Z-TRIP called me up for a phone interview from his home in LA. Since signing to Hollywood Records in 2002, he has been busy trying to put out his first (highly anticipated, I might add) studio album, so I'm glad to have had the opportunity to visit with him.

Anyway, what follows is the transcript of our conversation, so grab a drink, sit down, and enjoy...

SWJ: What were your earliest musical influences?

Z-TRIP: My family was musical. Everyone in my family played or listened to music. There was a definite kind of folkiness to my family, ya know.... my parents were kinda hippies. So growing up in potlucks, and hanging out with other hippies, and things of that nature there was always good music around, and there was always people playing little jam sessions all the time, so I grew up in that environment. And I heard people doing harmonies and such, and all that stuff caught my ear, but it was never something that grabbed me, although it was always around.

The first stuff that made me go "Wow, what is this?" was hearing disco and heavy rock. Hearing folky stuff was cool, because it was very soothing and good, with people playing acoustic things- guitars, mandolins, violins, whatever the hell...but then I started hearing my brother's rock records, or even some of my parents records like the Beatles, and I'd go "Whoa, that's an electric sound." Like KISS, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, stuff like that...back then that was heavy. And the Ohio Players... that stuff was like some of the first funk I ever heard. Stuff like that, and Herman's Hermits... all this stuff was coming in and adding to my musical palette I remember listening to one or two of my parent's records, and then realizing, "Oh wow, there's a whole box of these things!" Then, as I began playing them, also realizing, "This cover's really spooky, and it has dark sounds," and "This record has happy sounds and a happy cover." And that's kinda how I got up on it. Maria Muldaur was in my mom's collection, and Joan Baez, etc. Then Linda Ronstadt was in my dad's collection. And then bands like KISS, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin from my brother's collection. And I think they probably bought us like the current records that were around at the time, like the Grease soundtrack, and stuff like that...

SWJ: So, do you remember what was the first record you ever bought?

Z-TRIP: Star Wars. The first album I ever bought was the Star Wars spoken word album. When I saw that movie, it changed everything for me. I think it changed every kid's world. So, yeah, that record was it. My mom was buying me Peter Pan records (the label, not the actual record), but the first record I saw, and grabbed my mom, and said "I'm not leaving the store until this record comes home with me" was Star Wars. It had a picture of C3PO and R2DA on the cover. I was like, "That's the movie I just saw that changed my life, those are the two guys that were in it, and I need to buy that and leave with it." And I sat there, and I listened to that record over and over. I could probably narrate that record word for word I knew it so well; because it was stories and sound effects... so yeah that was the first record I bought. Well, my mom bought it, but it was definitely the first record I chose to buy.

SWJ: So, what got you into hip hop?

Z-TRIP: Once I got into rock music, again via my brother, at that point I began paying attention to the rock that I liked, which was harder and more aggressive- there was more power in it... Hearing Iron Man by Black Sabbath had me going like "Holy fuck, what is that?" And hearing KISS had me completely shook up. I was like "Look at these guys...they're blood, fire, make-up, hair, scary shoes, AHHHH!!!"  It freaked me out, but I loved it. That was the kind of stuff I was into... heavier sounding rock, and what I started to hear was these things that were the equivalent of that and also had the same attitude or the same fire that rock had... they weren't really hip hop, but shit like Art of Noise and Genius of Love by the Tom Tom Club, songs I wanna say were sampling, or were using a sampling base. This was like in 6th grade or early Jr. High, and I started hearing other people that were coming to the school that were moving in from different places, and were turning me on to different types of music. I had a friend whose sister had the Genius of Love tape, and when I heard stuff like Wordy Rappinghood, I was like, "Word! Fucking noises!" They were syncopated, and they were fresh and poppy, and sorta like very weird noises. And that was kinda the first anything of rapping I had heard. And then hearing stuff like Art of Noise, where these beats were heavy as shit, and I was like "WOW!" and I couldn't help but listen to these noises over and over. They were noises instead of guitars; they had the authority of a guitar and drummer, but they were played different. I couldn't really figure it out.

Then I started hearing things like Nucleus' Jam on It. That shit rocked my fuckin' world! I was like "This... right here...this is it." I taped it off the radio and must've listened that fuckin' thing for a week straight. Probably everyone in my house hated me. I knew the words, I was dancing to it, and that fucking tape was with me everywhere I went. If I was in the car, and I was going somewhere with my family, that shit was with me, and I was listening to it. I started trying to listen to radio shows that played this type of stuff, which always ended up being late at night on a weekend on some shitty AM station that didn't really come in unless I took the radio, stood on my head, pointed my foot in a certain way out the window, and then it barely came in. Whatever length...if I heard a beat or anything that sounded close to the music I liked- I went after it.  And usually it was real bad R&B songs - some of the R&B groups that were coming out who were using a drum machine.  I didn't realize that what I was searching for was drum machines really.  I mean, that was what I wanted to hear, but I didn't know what they were and I didn't know about these sounds they made.  Anytime I would hear some sort of drum machine or heavy-assed beat, I would go right to it and I would turn the music up and as soon as the crappy singing would come in I would say, "Oh. This isn't hard, this really sucks"; but it had a hard intro. And that led me to be up on this style of music and find out it was being played on more Black stations. It was being played in places that I had to dig and go search for it. It wasn't on much. I'd stay up and watch stuff like Friday Night Videos and maybe there'd be some of it on - some of the stuff I was drawn to.  And it was weird, because in some places there'd be a mix of Twisted Sister and then you'd get Ollie and Jerry There's No Stopping Us.  That was the video they'd play on Friday Night Videos.  That was my only source of this sort of stuff. I'd go to the record store, looking and just sucking it up, looking at everything I could - turning the albums over and looking at the back of the covers. Finally, I realized what it was I was looking for, after I heard Curtis Blow, Ego Trip, I think was the album, and hearing AJ Scratch for the first time, Fat Boys for the first time, and Run DMC for the first time... I finally identified this as rap music and it was completely its own thing. 

And that led me to go to swap meets, which was the only place I could find this music. Which is kinda funny ‘cause I didn't realize I needed to buy this stuff on records so I would buy these things on cassettes. I went to a swap meet once and heard somebody carrying around, on a radio, they're playing Run DMC and I heard it.  I was there with my friend's mom, who was going to this swap meet to sell shit that was in her garage or something, and my friend was "Well, we're all going here for the weekend and do the swap meet thing. And I said, "Hey, I'll go," so I went along, and was wandering around looking at things, picking up things, just being a stupid kid, or whatever. But, as soon as I heard Run DMC, and I saw where it was coming from- it was this boombox, these older kids were carrying it around with them- I followed them around listening to that radio trying to be inconspicuous so I could figure out what the fuck it is they were playing. I walked up to them as best I could when they were stopped, and I would kinda get down to tie my shoe so I could look over at the cassette player and see that it was Run DMC. As soon as I saw the words Run DMC, I took a snapshot in my head, and I ran straight to the first guy that was selling cassettes, which were obviously bootlegs, and I bought the Fat Boys, Run DMC, and Whodini; I grabbed things that looked like the Run DMC record, and that was it.  At that point I identified what hip hop was - Curtis Blow, Run DMC, Fat Boys. That was when I was hooked. Obviously I got turned on to it by Art of Noise and the Tom Tom Club, but this was hip hop; this was my first real dose. Once I heard that shit, it was fucking ON!

I started hanging out with people who were into that kind of music.  I started listening to it at places that were playing it.  At that point I was going back and forth between New York and Arizona because my parents were divorced. So I'd stay in New York and I could find what I was looking for. I'd go to these record stores... I remember one of the first hip hop records I ever bought was, Jam On It.  That was the first one.  And then after that I heard Boogie Down Productions' Criminal Minded. I found Eric B is President, which was the first hip hop 45 I ever bought. That's basically it - that's how I got turned on to hip hop.  Little did I know that they were emulating the sound of what was going on in New York at the time. I had to hear it through other means that brought me back to what it was.  Once I found it, my receptors were on... everywhere. I was buying records, I was doing everything.

The funny thing, my brother was into graffiti long before hip hop came around.  So I was introduced via my brother who was into rock, but in a hip hop kind of atmosphere.  I got it a little bit before most people did in Arizona, but in New York, I was obviously just a kid who was technically from Arizona who was going up there to see my dad over the summer, and soaking it up as much as I could.  I would listen to the radio for hours and people would say, "Come on outside," but I'd say, "Nope, I can't do it, I'm listening to the radio."

SWJ: So, it was like school for you when you went to New York?

Z-TRIP: Completely. I would go record shopping, and would bring records back in my suitcases - back to Arizona. So I had music you couldn't get anywhere else but New York.

SWJ: Speaking of records, when did you start DJing?

Z-TRIP: I was fifteen when I bought my first set of turntables. But in my climbing through the whole hip-hop thing, it was graffiti first; that was how I first got into it was through graffiti. Hearing the music over and over, I realized that I liked the music more than I liked the rapping. Not that I like one better than the other, but the noises they were making were way more interesting than the vocals.  I could hear that anybody could really kinda rap. That was easy. It was just kinda rhyming over beats. What they were saying was really cool, but what I was interested in was how it was put together - how they did that shit. I gravitated more toward the DJs and the DJ's tracks.

You have to understand that this was a time when DJs were getting their own songs on albums.  The DJ was always first.  It was Jazzy Jeff AND the Fresh Prince, Eric B AND Rakim, the DJ was always first. For me, it was way more accessible, but you had to kinda dig for it.  That's what I did - I tried to find the DJ-heavy records.  Once I heard somebody scratching...I think the first time I heard scratching and I heard it done really, really well...  I mean I had heard it throughout all these records, and I liked the way it sounded, but  Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's first album, Rock the House, when I heard The Magnificent Jazzy Jeff, I was like "this is someone who's really something." I think AJ Scratch was the first DJ record I'd heard.  But when I heard transforming I was like "Man, what the fuck are these people doing that just made it sound like a bird?"  When I saw somebody's scratch for the first time, which was probably Rockit, that's when it landed in everybody's living room...

SWJ: You were like, "I can make that sound too".

Z-TRIP: Exactly. I saw what was going on, and at that point it was over.  The turntable in our house was now my new toy.  So I grabbed all my parents' records and some of my records.  I only had a few records at the time, from when I first started fucking with it, but I was like, "I can make that noise, it sounds cool".  So I was fucking up all my parents records (and getting yelled at), and it wasn't long before I realized that my collection was growing, and instead of trying to scratch on my parents' turntable, I needed to go find the turntables that DJs were using. I needed those instead of just some "shit" turntables.

SWJ: So, when did you decide to DJ fulltime? I'm sure you had a day job at some point.

Z-TRIP: Completely. But, it was when I knew I had a pretty good ear for music. I started when I was fifteen/sixteen doing house parties and shit.  When I started doing my high school dances, I was like, "I don't know how much to charge for this."  But then the student council would say, "Yeah, we want you to spin our own high school dance." I thought, "Cool. My friends heard me at house parties on weekends and they liked what they heard and they want me to play at my own high school things."

That was when I realized I could make a little bit of money - I was making forty bucks/fifty bucks a gig. And then the student council said, "We'll give you 450 dollars," I said, "WHOA SHIT - 450 dollars for doing what I love to do!!"  That was when I said if I can get paid for doing this, I'm fucking happy. So that's when I realized that's what I wanted to do, you know. I didn't really know how to go about doing it, because I would do a wedding, or a party, or an office party for somebody or a friend of the family or whatever, and I would get 100 bucks here, 150 bucks there, and I was really just blown away. 

See, I was mixing stuff in my room, and then after I graduated from high school, I ran into one of my friends who was actually a DJ on the radio. During high school, he and I were into the same thing, but I was way more into the technical side of it.  I was already buying up records when he was just hearing them.  And it was funny, because I think a year went by and I hadn't talked to him and then all of a sudden he was like, "Yeah, man, I‘m on the radio mixing records." And I said "Wait a sec...you're doing what I do, but on the radio?" And I heard what he was doing - actually mixing records, and I thought, "Well, that's kinda what I'm doing at home.  They're not the same records I use, but I could use those records and do what he does."

I ended up getting a job at Bobby McGee's, which is like a restaurant/night club.  I ended up enrolling in their DJ hired program.  It was funny; they had a whole format where they taught people to DJ -which was like a very-late-70's-early-80's kind of format they came up with, where they had these old disco DJs. I think I still have the handbook layin' around here somewhere. It taught you how to categorize the records, like: "When is a good time to play this record...." It was very corny and very stupid, but required reading if I wanted to DJ this gig. So I went through their training program for like a week or two, and I had this guy named Guy Noble who was my teacher. He taught me some things I needed to know -- I was already scratching and shit by then, but I didn't know anything about programming.  I didn't know what worked; I just knew what I liked and what sounded good to me. 

It was at that point that I realized, "OK, if I play my cards right, I could keep working this job part-time.  I was only doing weekends here and there.  I kept applying rules that they made with my own decision-making and ended up really rocking these crowds.  The owners and managers of the club saw that I had this talent, this gift, and I ended up getting my own store that I was able to DJ out of, and I got to run the thing.  I did that for a couple of years with them.  The whole time I was learning how to be a club DJ for a company -- wearing a tie, going to work, playing ‘skip' music... I was actually waiting for the last hour of the night when everyone was completely fucking wasted and I could get loose and play whatever I wanted. I was taking all that information I was learning, and at the end of the day, going out and continuing to do house parties and raves, which were starting around this time. 

So, I would take all this knowledge on how to mix and program and apply it to hip hop. During the day, I was working these clubs and doing the top 40 bullshit, and then at night it would be all hip hop at a rave or some hip hop club.  I did that for a couple of years. I realized at one point, "Man, I really know how to fucking get people off with this; I just know how to put records together to make people dance.  I know it and I know what works and what doesn't work." 

Once I realized all that, I ended up getting out of that job and moving on to do some of the restaurant/nightclub gigs, these places that had a life in the 80's, but that were dying. This was the late 80's, early 90s; I was at the tail end of this. So, I was getting the benefits of being taught by hand-me-down booklets from old disco DJs, basically.  I realized at that point, man, I don't need to be doing We are Family, and Le Freak and the classic disco records that were working at the clubs at the time.  Whatever it was - Baby Got Back (whatever the fuck was hot at the time) - I didn't need to be doing those substandard records compared to what I know. I was like, "Fuck this; I'm leaving this."

I ended up moving further into Arizona (Scottsdale/Tempe) - I was in North Phoenix at the time. When I moved into where the college was, I discovered hipper, younger kids coming out to the clubs, and I was younger than all of them.  But I was getting the gigs because I had built up such a reputation of being a really good DJ. I think I even landed New Times "Up and coming this or that" or whatever.  Every chance I got, I was spinning -- whether it was a house party, a night club, whatever, I was there. I was spinning as often as I could, sometimes for free, most times for free.  Just to learn, just to get my chops up, you know. I ended up working at the hottest club in Scottsdale. Then I got voted the "Best Club DJ" in the New Times, a Phoenix paper, which is like the LA Times, and I got and this and that. I ended up getting a lot of money from the ritziest club in town. 

At that point, my hip hop career was also taking off because I was making mixtapes and shit.  I was starting to get my music and my mixing/style out into the world beyond Arizona.  There was like b- boy events that I would spin at in town. Then they happened to be having this big b-boy summit In San Diego. So I went out to San Diego, and just attended it - I didn't spin -- just attended and soaked it all up.  I was also handing out a shit load of free mixtapes to people, just because I wanted people to hear my sound. It wasn't even about getting paid for it.  I eventually got more people to hear some stuff and I started spinning at other b-boy events, and then somebody in New Mexico would throw something, and there'd be a rave over here. I started doing the rave thing and the b-boy circuit and hip hop clubs because I could - because I knew how to play all kinds of music.  I might play techno one night, and then go play hip hop over here, and go play reggae over there, and back to a top 40 club throughout the rest of the week because that's where I'd get my paycheck. 

The biggest thing that I learned was the first time I was able to go to Europe at a b-boy event.  They actually liked what they had heard me do, and I went out and I spun for them and they dug it and they brought me back a couple of times.  Going over to Europe, the first time was awesome.  I thought, "Holy shit, man.  Hip hop has gotten me over to Europe". I didn't think I was ever going to see Europe. Ever.  Why would I see Europe, right?

I wanted these guys to hear my fucking b-boys mixtape that I made to sell and give away at the second b-boys summit. I made 150 copies of this thing. Somehow, someone in Europe got it, heard it, liked it, and played it.   That opened up me thinking, "Fuck, if there's people in Europe who like my shit, I better make up some more tapes."   So I made a couple hundred more tapes, brought them over there hoping to God that I'd sell them to somebody.  I went to every store, had people listen to it/play it. I gave it away. Later there were a couple of stores that wanted to buy like 20 tapes.  I gave them the tapes. I went back to the States thinking, "Hopefully I'll get some money back on this shit." Either way, that was 20 tapes floating around Europe. 

So that's it.  Once that all started happening, then Dave Paul from the Bomb started hearing about me.  Then I did a track.  I didn't know what the hell I was doing.  I was buying samplers. I got in a rap group for a while, DJing for these MCs...making beats for a coupla different MCs...then I was in this hip hop crew in Arizona for awhile.... one thing led to another. Things just started happening and my career just took off. 

Once I knew I was going to Europe.  This is a long answer to your question - "when did I realize I wanted to do this full time?" It was early on that I knew I wanted to DJ full time, but once I went to Europe, I knew I wanted to DJ in a hip hop fashion for the rest of my life instead of in a top 40 fashion. The top 40 and the wedding shit was big money - I was making more money than I had ever made in my life playing shit music for people. But my love was knocking on my door saying, "Come to Europe and play for people over here." How can you say no when it was about the music? It wasn't about the money.  I followed my gut.  I left that club scene and never looked back.