3. DJ RashadDouble Cup
Oh wow. He was out doing a tour, I knew he was travelling, and he reached out to me when he was back in town. This was around the time I’d signed my first album, Legacy, with Planet Mu. Rashad said he was playing Pitchfork festival, which was happening in Chicago [in 2013], and he was also doing a Boiler Room party. Next day I got a call asking me to be part of that. He said he’d pay me $600 to come and play. I said, ‘Boy, you don’t have to pay me!’
When I got to the Boiler Room, which was Saturday, the day before the actual festival, Rashad was spinning all these tracks. I said, ‘What is this? Where is this coming from?’ I didn’t know it, but I was hearing him pushing Double Cup. I was blown away. The music, these tracks and how he’d produced them, was next level. I put two and two together to realise this is what it’s like travelling. It was being able to go to different places and let his ideas out, wherever he was at. As it was coming to his mind, he was able to lay it out on the spot.
I learned from that if you’re able to travel and have the gear you need, or you’ve got some place to go and to work with someone, if you’ve got a fresh idea, lay it right there. When he played what he produced while he was out, compared to what I’d heard before he started travelling his style had elevated over ten times. After that I bought an MPC Studio, so even if I was in a hotel and I had ideas, I could produce.
