A-Trak – The Modern Fix Interview [2007]

Just found this interview from Modern Fix magazine, which was my first published cover feature, that I never put on the site. Ironically, A-Trak would prove to be heavily involved with the dreaded Hipster Rap invasion which Unkut was so instrumental in shutting down…

While most of us were trying to score a six-pack and steal a copy of Hustler, Alain Macklovitch was in his parent’s Montreal basement at the tender age of thirteen, mastering the art of scratching and mixing on the turntable he bought with his Bar Mitzvah money (not to say that he wasn’t spending his down-time staring at nude chicks, but most likely a little less than some of us). Only two years later, he had developed his skills to such a supreme level that he was able to compete in the DMC’s with dudes twice his age – and beat all of those fuckers! After winning the deejay’s equivalent of the World Series (with the main difference being that you actually are competing against the entire planet), he was asked to join the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, which featured heavyweights such as Mixmaster Mike and DJ Q-Bert, before eventually teaming-up with a new crew called The Allies, who went on to win just about every DJ title out in both group and solo categories. By the time Alain (aka A-Trak aka Young Trizzle) retired from the competitive scene at 18, he had five world championships under his belt, and was ready to expand his range into other areas of the music game.

Back in 1997, he had started a hip-hop label with older brother Dave, primarily to release vinyl from Obscure Disorder (their group back in Canada who released several well-received 12’s, including a popular record with Non-Phixion). These days, he’s got a new label (Fool’s Gold), has toured the world as Kanye West’s DJ and has all kinds of spin-off’s from his autobiographical DVD released in 2006 called “Sunglasses Is A Must”. Having just wrapped-up a three week European tour with DJ Craze and Dominant, I spoke to A-Trak at his friend’s house in London.

Robbie: Having spent so much of your life on the road, have you grown to enjoy the hotel lifestyle more than being at home?

A-Trak: When people start traveling they enjoy the hotels. Then when you do that all the time, sometimes you wish there was a fridge. Right now I’m in London, staying at my friend’s house, and it’s so much more convenient and nicer than staying at a hotel. There’s little neighborhood shops down the road rather than another hotel next door. I’ve been traveling a lot since I was fifteen, so I’m used to adapting to whatever. It’s not really an issue, but I know that when I do get home I try to make the most of that.

How many months a year are you usually traveling?

I would say more than half the year.

As a youngster out on tour, did you have any experiences with chicks trying to corrupt you, “Band Aid” style?

I won’t go into details, but there was an adjustment when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, traveling and doing shows. I wasn’t touring then, I was doing one-off shows or week-long tours, because I was still in school. I had to get used to people recognizing me even if I’m not at a show. I had to get used to going to a city and people already knowing who I was and talking to me in a certain way. It’s weird because people talk to you like they know you, but you don’t know them. I was always a shy kid. I was into my school work, a student of the game, into music. Eventually I had to get used to people coming up to me like they knew me… and you can’t make a stink about it when it happens, because they’re your fans. Even if you did a bad show, or you can’t find the record or you’re trying to put your stuff away, when people come up and talk to you, you’ve gotta be available all the time. If not, all of a sudden you could just come off as an ass without even realizing it. It’s the same if a girl comes up to you after a show. Maybe she’s got an older brother that watches your videos all the time or whatever, so your face is like that familiar, and you’ll just be like “Why is she looking at me like this? What the hell is going on here?”

The song you did featuring Dipset last year, I noticed that was all made with turntables rather than using a sampler.

The last two or three years I’ve been working on my production a lot more, working towards an album and getting a lot of remixes lined-up. Producing myself, producing for GLC, for Kid Sister, there’s a whole range of projects that are my priority right now. I want to get more out there beyond the live aspect of what I did for years, and even before that, the battles. That’s stuff that I’m super-proud of and it’s the foundation of what I do. But I can’t still be in 2007 and have my flyers say “97 DMC Champ”. That was ten years ago, ya know? That’s not the shows that I do anymore. What I’m interested in now is party-rocking. Party-rocking in the context of mixing hip-hop with new electronic music, and doing my own bootlegs and my own remixes, and merging all that stuff into sets that are really active and involved. All the turntablist stuff is still there, but I can’t just keep stopping my show and doing a routine and then starting the music again. It’s a focus on integrating everything into one big party set that includes some skills. That musical identity is also the pretext of the new label I just started. Me and Nick Catchdubs, who’s a friend of mine from New York who’s the Music Editor at The Fader and has a big music blog, we started this label called Fool’s Gold. It gets to the point where Audio Research (the indy hip-hop label that my brother and I ran for ten years) is so branded within indy hip-hop, and I love that stuff, I’m not ashamed of that, that’s my bread and butter, but it’s a musical style that goes back to what I was really into in the late 90’s. A lot of newer projects that I want to put out aren’t restricted to that. There’s a lot of stuff that’s way more club-orientated and it came to the point where I wanted to put out what I was producing with Kid Sister. At first, it was like “Well, we can try and put it out with Audio Research and refresh the image”, but there’s so much more that I could associate with a new brand, so we decided to start a new label and have that represent this whole movement that I’m pushing right now.

The whole “Sunglasses Is A Must” concept seems to have developed a life of it’s own beyond the DVD and the live album.

Exactly. The “Sunglasses Is A Must” tour with The Rub was an important vehicle for me to show people in North America the kind of music that I wanted to really play at my shows. That tour was crazy. It was like four turntables, three mixers, three laptops, samplers, fuckin’ foot-switch pedals, effects and all this stuff. Which was a nerdy-looking set-up of things. It looked like we had a spaceship on stage, but people weren’t hearing the nerdyness. They were hearing party-rocking. They would see three deejays mixing three records on top of each other to make these bootleg mixes and stuff. We played the whole night, like four and five hour sets. We put out the live CD recently, which is a double album. We couldn’t even fit the whole show onto there. So the live tour and the live CD is an indication of the kind of music I want to push right now. What’s cool with the new label is it’s not a departure from rap, it’s between rap and electronic. It’s always the foundation of hip-hop. I’m still going to put out GLC, which is hardcore mid-western gangsta rap. There’s nothing electronic about him, but know that the people that listen to my stuff, and listen to Kid Sister and read Catchdubs, are GLC fans. We’re also gonna put out this group from Chicago called The Cool Kids. They straight-up represent the image of the label too because it’s such a bridge between these two worlds. Their music sounds like the first Beastie Boys album or old Ice-T from the era of “6 N The Morning”, or old NWA. The dudes are, image-wise, all the way street-wear’d out, like on some Hypebeast shit. It’s the bridge between those scenes, but it all sounds effortless. We’re going to put out an EP by DJ Gantman, who’s a legend of Chicago Ghetto House, like 150 BPM straight 808 sounds. Club anthems. But we’re also working with an Electro dude who does stuff that sounds like it’s straight outta the Scarface soundtrack. But I’m going to get a rapper on his shit. So bridging those worlds is really what the label’s about.

Do you feel like the turntablist scene became too self-indulgent, to the point where only the deejay’s in crowd were interested in half that shit that people were doing?

Absolutely. The Allies were just running the battle scene, and we would just tour and go to any country in the world and meet whoever was the best turntablist in that city and just do these shows. Already then, we were into party-rocking and we would do our routines and just shut it down. That scene was fueled by the battle. We stopped battling when there started being so many titles to be won. The organizations putting on the battles got so greedy, and everyone was like “Oh, well let’s just do a team battle now, and a head-to-head battle, and an exhibition battle, and an under-18 battle, and a female battle, and a bring your dog battle” and all this crazy shit. Next thing you know, there was fifteen world champion titles to be won every year. No one could keep track of what was what. Audiences lost interest andI can’t blame them. It was so intense for a few years. It was more than just about being able to do a show like Table Turns, where it’s nothing but scratch DJ’s all night. That’s the way that you approach a record, when you have that background. So of course the pure, abstract form of turntablism couldn’t survive by itself for so long, because eventually people are gonna be like “Cool, this is scratching, you guys have really fast hands and good co-ordination. I appreciate it but I wanna see the next shit.” It was really up to us, the DJ’s, to take it there. It couldn’t stay in the pure demonstration form forever. That’s why I’m so hell-bent about integrating that stuff into party-rocking.

What kinds of crowds have you played to touring with Kanye?

We’ve done all ranges. The last tour we did was in Australia, opening for U2. Like 60,000 people every night. That’s huge. It’s dope to play with him [Kanye] because he really gives me an essential role in the show. The show is centred around him and me. Him, with me backing him. There’s musicians and back-up singers that add on top of that, but the structure of the show is still really a DJ and an MC. No hypeman. That’s ill, because we go and play for these fans who love every single song, and sing along to everything. You can’t go wrong. You’re spoiled when you do a Kanye show. We could go on-stage and decide to break into a tap-dance number, and people still be thinking it’s the best shit ever. So you have to have good standards for yourself, because whatever you do at a Kanye show, people will cheer. It’s almost for yourself that you want to make it a good show.

Did you spend a lot of time studying old DJ records when you first started out?

Not so much of that era, but the one older record that I would study was the Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince He’s The DJ, I’m The Rapper. That whole album. I used to go without much access to anything hip-hop, this is of course pre-internet, so whatever I could get my hands on that had scratching was like the holy Bible and I had to study every little segment of it. So that Jazzy Jeff cassette, a friend of my brother gave it to me and he was like “Oh shit, you’re into scratching? You’re pretty good, too. You should listen to Jazzy Jeff. I used to listen to this a few years ago.” So I was like “OK, cool”. As I’m listening to this tape, Q-Bert and them were winning all these battles that I had no idea about, and re-inventing scratching, but I was in my little basement in Montreal, listening to something that was done many years prior. But I’m glad I started with those basic skills. You can add a lot to the foundation of late 80’s scratching, because it’s so rhythmic. It gives you a foundation of rhythm, and then you add more elaborate stuff. The other one was when the Return of the DJ compilation came out. That was gold to me. I had it on vinyl and I used to literally slowdown the platter and listen to Babu’s scratches at half speed to try to break-down in my head what I heard. At the same time, everything that Premier and Pete Rock were putting out, I would study. This is in ‘95, so Pete Rock The Main Ingredient album… it had mad scratches on every song anyway.

Yeah and they were all Biz Markie scratches!

It was hilarious. I never understood why that was. I always thought it was like a label-clearance thing, which I doubt, because I can’t imagine Pete Rock bending to that, or it was just his shit. If I meet the guy, that really should be the one. I’m glad you brought that up, because I used to think about that a lot. If I meet Pete Rock, I’m going to ask him that. Like “Yo, Main Ingredient is my favorite album ever. It’s probably the reason why I scratched and then won battles. I love Biz Markie too. How come Biz Markie was the scratch sample on every single song?”

Is it fair to say that a lot of DJ’s are nerdy or have introverted personalities?

Any type of music aficionado or DJ that pays attention to a certain amount of detail, whether it be a scratch DJ or someone that digs for samples, you’re talking about someone that has lists for everything. Like to-do lists, reminder lists and has color-coded closets. That’s dope, I respect that. That’s who I am too. What’s cool is, right now in music, the arts and trends and everything is on some nerd shit. Even the record industry. This whole nerdy personality that we’re talking about, naturally was drawn to the internet. Everything from blogs to MySpace, that whole reality is overthrowing the record industry right now. You’ve got these execs that are phased-out and don’t understand where to turn, and don’t understand what to do to keep up. And you’ve got these artists that have been doing the same shit for ten years, and still feel like they haven’t gotten their due, and aren’t keeping up with their music. And then you’ve got these kids that make music on their laptops in their bedrooms in different parts of the world, that are actually fueling a whole revolution in music and all the new shit. It’s dope. In that world, as much as I feel like I’m a nerd and I have those nerd habits, I still didn’t want to join MySpace until a year ago. I never wanted to get on message boards. But that’s such a big part of the music scene today. There’s no avoiding it anymore.

Anybody can make a professional-sounding record on their little home computer. It’s dope because it’s breaking down so many doors of who can have access to being creative. There’s so much more shit that gets created and gets put out there. Granted, some of that can become a little bubble where it doesn’t even seem like reality anymore. Posting pictures of some party online and be like “Yo! That’s the jump-off!” Then you’ll actually go deejay there and it’ll be fifty dudes just standing around, ready to blog when they come home or whatever. It’s not always as hype as it may seem. But as DJ’s we have access to music so much faster now. Serato fueled a lot of that too. This whole Serato, MySpace, MP3 generation made it so the music world moves fast. There’s a whole mind-state where everyone’s looking for the next shit. That’s cool, especially when you make music and when you’re starting a new label. You’ve got bigger, older labels folding and record execs not knowing what to do or where to turn and we’re just all here making our own music and knowing that it’s about to be the next shit. It’s a great context.

Plus now you’re able to do your own remixes on the road, the night before a show.

Absolutely. I’ve done edits ten minutes before getting on stage. The whole mixtape I did with GLC was recorded in a closet. For GL and myself to be out on tour with Kanye and to be able to develop that kinship and be like “Let’s work on music together” and not have to have a budget! For me to able to fly out to his house for a few weeks and record stuff on my laptop, with his mic in the closet, and put it out and have it sound professional… that’s how music is today. I’m loving it, because I go on tour with Kanye and I can still work on my music on the computer while I’m in my hotel room.

At the moment you’ve got a whole bunch of stuff spawned from the “Sunglasses Is A Must” DVD, like toys and shirts. What’s the story with all of that?

“Sunglasses Is A Must” was originally the title of my DVD and it was the name of the tour I did with The Rub for the DVD. After that it became the name that I took on for a whole series of collaborations with different people in the streetwear scene. It all started with t-shirts to sell on the tour, but I didn’t want to do an A-Trak shirt, because I have this whole conception that most self-respecting men [laughs], not to get on some macho shit, but not a lot of guys would want to wear a shirt that says another guys name on it. You really have to be a fan. There’s nothing wrong with that. But to me, it closes a lot of doors. If you make a shirt that has your name on it, you’re like “OK, I’m gonna sell this to someone who likes what I stand for so much that they want to wear it on their chest.” That’s beautiful if you want to do that for me. Thank-you. But I would rather make a shirt that I think looks good and that my friends and I would want to rock and that I hope other people out there want to rock. They’ll know it’s from me because people know that “Sunglasses Is A Must” is my name, but you can wear it without being like “Hey! I went to this show last night and bought this shirt!” Right from the start, it was getting big names like Crooks and Castles and my man Cody Hudson from Chicago, who’s really a well established designer. Lately, it’s started reaching more than t-shirts, like a Kid Robot toy with the bear from my djatrak.com website and figurines of the characters on my website. New Era is doing the Capture The Flag hat with me. Capture The Flag is a series of hats that comes in the box and they only make 188 of them. It’s super-limited.

They’ve made some with Fat Joe and Spike Lee and J-Dilla [RIP] and a lot of figures in the broader hip-hop scene. We just finished designing mine which is coming out in May. With Zoo York there’s going to be a bunch of collabos, with skateboards and some other stuff. Maybe a varsity jacket. There’s stuff lined-up with Maharishi and with Stussy. It’s cool because I don’t have to make any of it. I don’t know how to make any of it. I don’t have to sell any of it. It’s me, traveling the world, meeting people from the scene and being like “Yo, let’s do a pair of slippers together. You wanna sell ‘em?” “Sure”. I approve the design and that’s it.

Don’t forget the bathrobe.

Yeah, we’ve gotta tie that in for the DVD. I spent $200 on that bathrobe! I went to The Ritz and I was likes “Give me your finest bathrobe. I’m shooting a home-made movie, I need a Ritz-Carlton bathrobe”. They went “Yep. Here’s the price” I was like “Fuck!”

I’m surprised you hadn’t already stolen one.

I’ve stayed there before. You can’t steal those. They have your credit card! I remember when we were doing Obscure Disorder shows when I was fourteen. We would stay at a cheap hotel and be like “Oh shit, that’s a nice towel!” and just put it in their suitcase. Then the hotel would call us three days later “Um, we’re missing three towels sir, they’ll be charged to your credit card”.

Have you ever gotten food poisoning on the road?

Definitely. I was doing a show in Singapore where I had to run to the bathroom when I was about to get onstage, and everything is really on time out there. The promoter was like “OK, hurry up!” Actually, I remember doing a show in Phoenix, which is in the middle of the desert, and for some stupid reason I agreed to go get sushi with the promoter before the show. Never thought of “Where does this sushi come from when you’re in the middle of the desert?” While I was deejaying I had to run to the bathroom. I hope this isn’t too graphic for Modern Fix.

I think we can handle it. Do you collect souvenirs of your travels?

I’ve traveled too much for any of that. It’s all the same after a while. For a while I was bringing back little goofy souvenirs. I went to Texas once, and my brother’s four years older than me but he never learnt how to drive, cause he was always with his friend P. They now have the group Chromeo together, but even before that they would always be in P’s car since he drives. Driver’s side – Patrick, passenger side – Dave. I went to Texas, and at the airport they had these magnets that would say “Texas” and then somebody’s name. I could never find my name at these airport things, because I have a French name that no one thinks of [Alain], but I found “Texas Pat” and “Texas Dave”, and there’s like a cowboy on it or whatever. So I brought them back, and the great thing was these are magnets so they can stick ‘em on the car. On Pete’s car for months, on the driver’s side it said “Texas Pete” and on the passenger side it said “Texas Dave” [laughs] That was the coolest shit until I guess it fell off. That’s probably the best shit I bought while traveling. I was in Hong Kong like a month or two ago, and I found this thing on a street market.

They were selling these, you can’t really call them paintings, but what it is, is like a framed illustration that’s made out of cut-up butterfly wings. So they would take butterfly wings and take them and glue them on some kind of background. But you don’t see the background, the whole thing is an arrangement of butterfly wings of different colors. That in itself is crazy to me, but what the drawing was, was these two elephants having sex. And you could see the member and everything. But everything made tastefully out of butterfly wings. So I bought that and gave it to my girlfriend.