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Back to the Future pt2, an interview with DJ Enki...
Continuing on from our interview with FPS founder Mark Herlihy in
part 1 of our special feature on the collective, we now speak to some
of the artists and DJs in the collective who are coming out this year
and have been entertaining heads at FPS parties for the last few years.
Second in line we have a chat with DJ Enki,
resident at FPS for the last few years and holder of the fort at the
weekly Money$hot parties. Enki is a member of the Citizens crew, alongside
Faust, Shortee and T-Rock and has been slowly working his way into things
dropping mixtapes and turning heads whenever he steps on the ones and
twos.
DJ Enki is a resident at the weekly Money$hot
FPS parties and a regular in the FPS roster for the last few years.
Coming to the Bay Area from the East Coast, Enki embodies the spirit
and philosophy of the collective in his work, DJ sets and words. Enki
is also an avid record collector and hiphop enthusiast, member of the
Citizens crew and the Oakland Faders, since relocating to the West Coast. As
a regular resident Enki is best placed to break down what the nights
are all about, the vibe, the people and the music as well as why they
work so well together, especially for those of us who have never been!
And
if you are one of the lucky people able to go and check the Money$hot
and other FPS nights and you haven't yet, well what are you waiting
for?!?!?
Sit
back and enjoy as he breaks down some history and views on the collective
and the music.
First off can you tell us a bit about yourself,
where you are from, how long you've been DJing for and how you
got into it?
Enki: I'm a born-and-bred east-coaster. I lived in Hershey,
Pennsylvania until I was five years old (Hershey, by the way, is a great
place to be a kid—the whole downtown smells like chocolate, and
chocolate is the industry that drives the entire place). Then I moved
up to southern Connecticut and lived there until I headed down to North
Carolina for college. I graduated college in 1998 and moved out to Oakland,
and if I can help it, I'm not leaving the Bay.
I've been DJing for I guess about 10 years now, though I didn't
really take it seriously for the first couple years until I met Faust
and Shortee and got my first lesson from them—Shortee in particular
broke down the basics I needed to know to improve overall. I got into
DJing because I thought it was cool, basically, and because it was the
element of hip-hop I took to the most. From back when I first got into
hip-hop in 1985 when I was 10 years old, DJs were the standouts to me.
I was always checking for the DJ on songs and later in videos. As I
grew up in hip-hop and started learning about the craft of DJing more
and started seeing DJs get busy at shows and all that, I started thinking
I should try it for myself. It took me several years, but when I finally
had enough money, I bought a crappy starter setup and taught myself
how to mix. I couldn't scratch on my old setup because it had
belt-drive turntables, but when I finally got some direct-drive ones,
I started teaching myself how to scratch, but I had problems with it
for a while. I was very close to quitting, actually, because I felt
like I wasn't getting any better after a while, but once Shortee
corrected my technique, I started to see improvement, so I stuck with
it and practiced like crazy. And it was all over after that. DJing just
took over. I'd spend all my free time practicing or digging for
records. I still am that way, I suppose.
How did you get involved with Future Primitive?
What does it mean to you being a part of the Future Primitive Collective?
E: I got involved through Future Primitive in part because of Faust,
Craze, and Shortee. When I was in college in North Carolina, we were
all in a crew together called Third World Citizens (I wasn't part
of the crew as a DJ, though—I was nowhere near good enough), and
they had gone out and done some Future Primitives and said they were
really dope. So as I was getting close to graduating, I knew I was going
to move out to the Bay, so I got a big list of phone numbers of people
in the area who were involved with hip-hop, and Mark Herlihy was one
of those people. I started calling him a couple months before I moved
out, and we would just talk here and there, so by the time I actually
moved out, he and I already sort of knew each other. Naturally, I started
going to the Future Primitive shows and started meeting everybody involved
with them. Mark knew I DJed, but I wasn't looking to play out
back then because I didn't feel like I was ready. But after a
couple years, I felt like I had gotten my skills up to speed, so I started
putting a bug in Mark's ear about letting me play sometime. After
a while, Mark would call me up when he had a show and ask me to come
through; I was the opening act for the opening act, basically. I wasn't
billed on the flyers or anything like that, but I would come play records
right at the beginning so that there was something going on when the
club started letting people in. After doing that for a while, I started
being the actual opening act, and eventually, I became a straight-up
member of the Future Primitive DJ crew. I just worked my way up the
ladder, really. I took whatever chance I had to show Mark what I could
do and how I was improving, and he recognized all that and put me down
with the crew and helped put me on in general as a DJ.
As for what it means...it means I'm part of a strong organization
and that I get to work with very talented, like-minded people. We all
have our own stories and history of how we came up in hip-hop and all
that, and we have a similar outlook on things, but we're not all
the same. That's important—we can't help each other
get better if we're all essentially the same. Being a part of
the crew means having a wealth of talent to tap into. Each one of us
has something to offer. When I first started hitting the Future Primitive
shows, I looked up to people like DJ Zeph and Romanowski. I still do
look up to them, but now I'm also doing shows with them and learning
about records and beats and production and all that stuff. It's
a trip, really. And being a part of Future Primitive is also like having
an extended family. That's important to me, because there are
tons of DJs and hip-hop people all over the place, but I only want to
align myself with people who are not only on a similar wavelength as
far as hip-hop goes, but are straight-up good people. And of course,
Future Primitive stands for a certain level of quality and a certain
aesthetic. Even if people haven't heard of me, if they see I'm
part of Future Primitive, then they already have an idea of what I'm
about and what calibre DJ I am. It's not just that I represent
the crew, the crew also represents me to people who don't know
me yet.
What would be your best memory from playing a Future
Primitive gig?
E: Oh man, that's hard to say. Of course, the first one
always stands out in your mind, and my first official Future Primitive
gig was pretty major for me because I was incredibly nervous and really
paranoid that I was going to suck horribly, but I didn't let that
nervousness get the best of me, and I actually had people cheering for
me and coming up to me telling me how much they enjoyed what I did.
I had this giant grin plastered on my face the whole night. People who
come to a Future Primitive show expect something dope—they expect
you to entertain them. You can't just come with some okey-doke
material and expect to come off well. So to get such a warm reaction
from such a crowd was really big to me.
I also have a great memory from opening up for Kid Koala in November
of 2002. I rocked for a good two and a half hours—part of that
time by myself, part of it on a 2x4 with DJ Zeph. And I felt like I
was really in the groove that entire time—I didn't even
realise I had played for so long. The crowd was loving it, I was having
a blast, when Zeph came up and joined me, it got even better. And then
I got to introduce Faust and Shortee and watch them wreck it, and then
I got to watch Kid Koala put on an amazing show on three turntables,
and then I got to pick my jaw up off the floor. From beginning to end,
that was an incredible night, and I was glad to not only be a part of
it, but to have spun well and for so long and to really have held it
down at the beginning to set the tone for an amazing evening.
The last one is the night my man DJ Platurn and I did a 2x4 at the Money$hot.
That was one of those nights where everything came together beautifully.
We were both in the zone, and we were right in tune with each other.
We were laying acapellas over different beats, layering beats, all kinds
of stuff, and it seemed like everything we tried came out tight. We
hadn't rehearsed it or anything—everything was freestyled.
We had a great time, the crowd had a great time, so that was a really
dope experience.
As a resident DJ for FP how would you describe
the nights to someone who has never been there and what would you say
is the key to the nights' success?
E: Well, I'm the resident for the Money$hot, which is
Future Primitive's weekly event. It's two guest DJs every
week, plus me. It's a really fun night because it's just
three DJs bugging out having fun. The night has been going well, and
I'd say a big part of the success is the fact that we have good
DJs come through and bring something different to the table each week.
We've had Shortkut come through and rock reggae and dancehall,
Mr. Scruff came through and did his thing with the uptempo breaks, we
had Zegon from Brazil come and drop crazy Brazilian breaks. On the more
local level, we bring in DJs who can cover a wide array of music—funk,
hip-hop, old-school stuff, Latin breaks, dancehall, whatever—so
that we can take the crowd all over the place. The focus is always on
the dancefloor, of course, and the goal is to keep the floor packed,
but we like to do it in a way that isn't just your regular old
hip-hop club. You can go anywhere and hear the same-ol' same-ol',
but we're not really about that. We want to provide something
for the hungrier folks who want a different, funkier piece of the pie.
We bring deeper science every week because that's what we need
to do to distinguish ourselves from all the other functions going on.
I know I try to bring something a little different every week, and then
the guest DJs will take each function in a different direction as well.
Of course, we stay rooted in hip-hop—that's always the foundation—but
there are so many places to take hip-hop, and it seems like a lot of
functions only portray a very narrow segment of the big picture. We
want to paint with a bigger brush.
Do
you also produce? If so are you planning on releasing anything this
year? Have you got anything else planned this year in terms of work
solo or with other people? Mixtapes, albums anything like that?
E: I have been getting more and
more into production these days—in fact, I probably spend just
as much time working on production as I do DJing. It's a natural
progression, I think, because as DJs, we listen to music in so many
different ways and come at it from so many different angles. And of
course, when we're DJing live, we're putting music together,
rearranging it, that sort of thing. So eventually, a lot of DJs expand
into production. It's a lot of fun, I think; I don't know
that it will ever eclipse DJing for me, but I'm really enjoying
production and learning the nuances of how to make tracks sound right.
I've mostly been making uptempo b-boy breaks, very danceable instrumental
stuff, but I've also made a few beats that I'd like to have
MCs rhyme over (can't name any names just yet). I'm looking
to put out some of my b-boy stuff sometime this year, if not through
a label, then on my own. But of course, I don't want to put it
out just to say, "Hey, look, I have a record out!" There
are tons of records out there as it is, so I want to actually contribute
something solid. It's very easy to get lost in the sauce when
it comes to putting out music, and I don't want to get ahead of
myself with the releases. They'll drop when it's time for
them to drop.
On the mixtape front, I've always got some stuff in store. DJ
Platurn and I are working on a mixtape together—all hip-hop blends
and remixes and stuff, sort of branching off what we've done with
2x4 sets—and it's coming together nicely. We should be dropping
that this summer and hopefully will get to do a mini-tour in support
of it. DJ Faust and I are already recording the second instalment of
our "Cause & Effect" series—the concept is hip-hop
songs and the songs they sample—and it's looking pretty
tight so far. We're digging a little deeper this time around to
come with some crazier cuts. And I've already got one solo mixtape
in the hopper which should be coming out this year, and I might do one
more.
Are you still working with the Citizens crew? What's
happening with that?
E: Oh yes, very much so. The Citizenz was my crew even before
I was an official member of Future Primitive, and Faust and Shortee
are like family to me. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten to do
a lot of stuff together as the Citizenz because I live on the west coast
and they live on the east coast, but they're hopefully moving
out west soon, and then we'll be able to work together a lot more,
which I'm really looking forward to. Basically, we've all
been trying to elevate ourselves because the better we each do, the
better The Citizenz crew is. But hold tight, because I can see some
Citizenz projects happening in the future. The mixtapes Faust and I
are doing are just the beginning.
What is your favourite aspect of the work you do
as a DJ?
E: Probably getting people open to new music. It's always
rewarding to rock a crowd and make everybody there have a great time
and all that. But it's even more rewarding when you rock a crowd
and educate the people at the same time. I love it when a crowd is willing
to follow me into some lesser-explored areas of music. Of course, you
have to give them some hits, some classics, all that, but the trick
is to flip it on 'em and make it like, "If you like that
song, then you'll love this one!" Playing a song you know
most people haven't heard and getting them to dance to it like
it's their favourite cut...I love that feeling. That, to me,
is what DJing is about—more than just playing hits and taking
the easy way out. When people come up to me after a show and say, "I
loved your set—you played so much cool stuff I've never
heard before," that's such a great feeling. Or to have people
wanting to get my mixtapes because they want to hear good music they
aren't already familiar with. I love getting feedback like that—"You
have all these great records I've never heard!" It feels
very rewarding to have people check for you because they know you'll
hit them with something different. It feels like more of a connection
with the crowd when it goes down that way. If you hit ‘em with
something unexpected, and their reaction is like, "Oh, man, what
is this? It's dope!" then it's like both the DJ and
the crowd are really paying attention to each other—the DJ to
what the crowd will respond to and the crowd to the different avenues
the DJ is taking. When that connection is there, I feel like I could
play forever.
What
is your opinion of the turntable music scene right now and where do
you think it is going right or wrong?
E: I think it's in a decent
place right now. Obviously, the whole scene has entered pop culture
with all the DJs in commercials and scratching in background music and
all that, but at the same time, we're also at a place where Mixmaster
Mike can go out on tour with Jazzy Jay, and both of them will get props
for what they do. That's important and significant because it
shows that it's expanding, but it's not pulling away from
its roots. To me, it seems like we're about to experience another
wave of people coming into the scene, which has its ups and downs. The
new kids who are serious about it are always a good thing, because they
contribute and keep it fresh and alive. But of course, whenever something
enters mass consciousness, you're going to get people hopping
on the trend. DJing is pretty cool these days, so you'll find
a lot of people trying to DJ just so they can look cool, and it's
kind of wack when people who don't know or understand DJing and
hip-hop culture try to jump on the bandwagon and put no effort into
it. But that's to be expected, and most of those people will go
jump on the next trend anyway, so that's not a huge problem. It
can be frustrating sometimes to see so many wack people who don't
get it totally misrepresenting what DJing is all about, but quality
will persevere in the face of trendiness.
Any
last words?
E: To the up-and-coming DJs out
there: Take your time. Don't get ahead of yourself as far as putting
out mixtapes or playing shows and all that. If you take shorts, you'll
only be screwing yourself down the road, so take your time, pay your
dues, and come up correctly now. Study and learn hip-hop culture and
how the DJ functions within it. There's a science to DJing that
you'll learn through study and experience, so don't sell
yourself short with that. Get out there and dig; don't expect
everything to be handed to you. DJing doesn't work like that.
Stay dedicated.
And to those who have supported me, come to my shows, talked to me after
sets, bought my mixtapes, and introduced their friends to what I do:
Thank you very, very much. I wouldn't be able to do any of this
stuff without all that support.
Many
thanks to Enki for his time. For more info on his upcoming projects
and work check out z-trip.com and
faustandshortee.com/enki.htm.
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