By Odeisel
Planet Ill: There are a lot of EDM elements on your new album. What made you incorporate those things? Was that the focus of this particular album?
DJ Muggs: Yeah it’s the focus. It’s just fun; just the change of pace for me. I’ve done records with tricky, I did a record called dust. Every now and then I’ve done Rock & Roll just for the fun of it. Just to do something different. Making the same things, you get bored. Like I did a track with Cormega and Ill Bill a few months ago and it took me two months to do the track. It actually took me an hour to do the track, but it took me two months to want to get around to sit down and do it.
Traveling the world and DJing and just being exposed to music, I play a lot of beat music. There’s an LA beat scene out here. At The Low End Theory they play a lot of beat music, stuff like Banger and Scream and beats. Then all of a sudden you have dubstep, you know I’ve been hearing shit in England since 2005 from going over there so this stuff was incorporated.
So I got to a point where I was like, Man, I’mma make a record like this!” It was like three years ago. I sat down to do it and it was challenging to me, which is fun. I had to learn a whole new different technique, style and approach to making music because guys who make EDM music, it’s way more different than Hip-Hop; it’s a lot more technical. So what it did for me was it exercised the other side of my brain. It just made me learn again. And sit and learn and focus and learn.
Since I made that album I made about 50 Hip-Hop tracks. Hip-Hop is so fun for me again from going through that learning experience, learning all these new tricks and techniques. Now I can take that same Hip-Hop sample and I can do 25 things to it because I use the tricks I from EDM to flip these Hip-Hop samples now.
I needed this, as an artist that’s growing. You need new challenges and I think a lot of times people get bored and they quit because they don’t challenge themselves and do more different things. So this is a thing I did. I finished it about 9 months ago; it’s been turned in, it’s finally coming out now. The record comes straight from a Hip-Hop spirit but it has elements of glitch, it has elements of trap, elements of dub, elements of dubstep.
Planet Ill: You got Rahzel [Godfather of Noise] on it; 5th element of Hip-Hop…
DJ Muggs: Rahzel, Roc Marci from New York, Stephanie Brown is on there, Freddie Gibbs is on there. I got a couple singers I got a singer from the UK, one from Finland. It was just fun man, going to the studio and experimenting, just trying shit I never tried before. This is for me; this ain’t for the hardcore Hip-Hop heads, I didn’t make that. Im not going to take it to them and try to go to a hardcore Hip-Hop show and play this shit.
I play EDM. I go to the concerts and I play and even if this record wasn’t coming out, I get booked for those shows a lot. There’s not a lot of turntable cats that do it. You’ll see me, you’ll see Craze, you’ll see A-Trak and you’ll see Mixmaster Mike. And you won’ t see no other DJs that actually use turntables at those festivals. I’ve shown up to a few festivals and they go, “Ah you use turntables, you’re old school.”
I showed up to this Waffleland festival and they didn’t even have turntables. They’re like oh you use turntables. I’m like yeah, we actually play our instruments, this ain’t Guitar Band. In the EDM world, there’s a backlash that actually started with kids putting a mixtape in their computer and pushing play and pumping their fist and just using three different effects like using a filter and there’s a backlash where these promoters were like motherfuckers are going to have to start performing for what we’re paying.
When you have the Prodigy, you pay for their live band, you pay for their live set which would be the whole band and you pay that price, or you pay for the DJ set, which was a dramatically cut down rate. And now these guys are getting that same rate for the DJ stuff but the bubble popped.
I love all forms of music. Until I decide to stop making music, I’m always going to go off to the side and experiment and do different things because it cleans my musical palette and it gets me excited to do music again. Any painter ain’t going to paint the same picture he’s going to be inspired at different times to paint different things. This is for me; this is fun for me to make and have a good time.
Planet Ill: You were there when Hip-Hop was beginning to burst. EDM is slowly creeping to that place where it’s going to explode and maybe even become the dominant music.
DJ Muggs: It is! EDM is so big now. I know in LA they outsold the Rock festivals. They outsold Coachella. And the thing about electronic dance music. I liked Prodigy and all that because the shit was hardcore, but all that disco and that techno shit I can’t get with it. But EDM works because there’s no lyrics so it transcends the language. You can go anywhere in the world and play that music.
Now with Dub, and Drum n Bass. Jungle in London, I used to go to the clubs with all the metal heads and Groove Rider. That shit is gangster Jamaicans. You come to LA, everybody’s a fucking lollipop, with and their hair colored and big shoes dancing around like fucking fairies. Drum N Bass in the UK that shit was gangster music. You come out here and it’s the scene.
I wasn’t into the scene so I couldn’t get into the music. A lot of Hip-Hop kids and Rock kids couldn’t fuck with the tempos. But now when you take that snare out of Drum N Bass and it turns into Dubstep, and that tempo is down, all of a sudden Hip-Hop kids like it. All of a sudden, Rock kids like it. All of a sudden, all of these young kids that are growing up listening to everything because of the internet.
When I was a kid because I listened to Rock and Hip-Hop, so I brought both worlds together. Rock kids didn’t really listen to Hip-Hop and Hip-Hop kids didn’t really listen to Rock. But now these kids with computers, they listen to everything, so you can mesh all these styles and do all this music and the kids, they’ll love it all. Dubstep coming is the first time it’s like an electronic form of music that a lot of people can get into
Planet Ill: You always have a period where there’s fakers or people taking advantage of the wave whoa aren’t really talented. Last year a whole bunch of R&B people and Pop people had faux EDM shit on their album and they all flopped. How does it feel as a professional and a music lover in the industry to see that?
DJ Muggs: It’s gonna happen; it happens with anything. Any time anything gets hot, the Pop side of music and A&R’s who don’t have no vision, they want that for their artist. They eat it up they chew it up and they spit it out. And pop artists are constantly looking for the next thing where someone else is trying to create the next thing. It’ always been here man, it ain’t going nowhere. It’s always been a apart of the music game. But you know what? It’ll weed itself out. Motherfuckers will fall by the wayside. Especially when they depend on that shit.
Like when I came into making this electronic music, I came into it with a Hip-Hop spirit so it’s going to be hardcore because it’s for Hip-Hop heads. So when I bring in a Roc Marci or a Freddie gibbs, they don’t see that. When I turned it into the label they were like, “WHOOA! Wait a minute, this ain’t Cascade.” I’m like, “Nah, you thought I was?” So you know I turned this in to Ultra Records and this is what they have over there. They didn’t know what to do with it that’s why they been sitting on the record for nine months.
I told them nine months ago, I was like, “Yo Dubstep’s losing its edge because there’s one problem with electronic dance music: it’s a formula. Anybody that’s a programmer can sit down and do it. And it’s going to all start sounding the same. You can go take a beat poll right now and look at the top 50 Dubstep songs they all sound the fucking same except two or three of them that are going to stand out. And those are the groups that are gonna actually last. And here comes Trap where you’re getting gangster ass trapping parties but all of a sudden, a lot of failed fucking house guys are start making EDM/trap and bringing hard House sounds into the fucking element and using their production and their programming to it and now trap is the new Dubstep because Dubstep started it was a groove; you could dance to it. It was funky but then it got all crazy, psycho and Rock & Rolled out.
But Trap comes in and you gotta be in a crazy state of mind to hear Crazy Dubstep, it’s just too fucking much. Here comes Trap, you can dance to it, girls like it; it’s funky. Hip-Hop cats like it too. Right now it’s changing the game. You can trap about 8 or 9 months. EDM eats it up and spits it out. All these musical styles go away in EDM. The only ones that last is House and Techno. All the other ones come and go.
Planet Ill: Is there anything you want to say or promote of is there any statement you want to make.
DJ Muggs: Do your music, have fun, be original. Always try to bring something to the game. Don’t be a bloodsucker. Don’t just put your fangs in and suck the blood bring something new and inspire. What I wanted to do with this record is inspire. I got inspired by Public Enemy. They inspired one kid which was me to have changed at least 50 lives of the people around me around the world.
With this record if I can reach at least one kid to go, “You know what? I don’t have to do one thing, be pigeon-holed and do one thing I can actually do all kinds of things. I can experiment and be myself. I can push the fucking boundaries.” And If I can reach that one person, then my job is accomplished. I’m still inspired. I’m still a student. My job now is to just inspire the youth through professionalism.
