Darrell D- How did you get started Dj'ing?
Swamp- I grew up in Cleveland and there were tons of Dj's. Back then the radio station was WDMT. It sounds tripped out now cause Dmt is like a crazy drug now but that was the name of the station, 108 WDMT. Every night they had the "club style master mix" and Dj's like GrandWizard Johnny O, Dj Cochise, & Dj Cruz would spin. I was just a kid, like 15 or 16, breakin on cardboard, listening to those guys. After that station went off air 93 Wzak started doing 20 minute workout mixes by Dj Mix Master Quick every week on the rap show they had on Saturday night and people would bug out on those mixes. Then they had this college radio show and the Dj was this dude named L-Dog and he would invite other Dj's to come up and mix and that's when I got in the game. People were making 4 track cassette mixes. I worked odd jobs and at Wendy's to get my first 4 track. I didn't even have a 1200 turntable. I was using a Gemini 1100 and an Edis mixer with a reverb in it but the 4 track was my secret weapon because I could put an instrumental on one track, scratch some rock stuff on another track, throw an acapella on another track, and just keep layering the mix for a 30 minute mix that sounds flawless and insane like you were a professional. You could also do "shout-outs" on the air so everybody in my school would ask me give to give them a shout-out. Even the teachers would ask,"You gonna give me a shout-out too?" So I would and when I would get back to school I was like a little celebrity Dj at 16 years old at my high school.
D- What was the first record you ever bought?
S- Rod Stewart "Young Turks". It was a 45. I was 9 years old. That beat was tight and I ended up acquiring the same drum machine he used on that song. It was the LM-1 drum machine. There were only 300 made and it was also the same one that Prince made all his beats with. All that 1999 stuff, "When Doves Cry", all the hits were made with that Linn LM-1 drum machine. I've had 3 in my lifetime.
D- Any crazy digging stories?
S- Back in 1991 me and my boy Mike would go digging all the time. One day we were on the west side of Cleveland and we drove past this house that just had "RECORDS" on it. That's all it said was "RECORDS". It was just a regular house filled from top to bottom with vinyl. They were everywhere. The owner was this guy named Larry who smoked a big cigar and sat in the back. Me and Mike thought we were in heaven & Larry would look at us like we were just a couple of crazy kids. We bought a ton of records that day and returned the next weekend and got real cool with the guy. He had two record players in the store so we would go there every Sunday and listen to records all day and he was always getting new stuff in. We would dig for beats and find doubles of stuff like Herbie Hancock "Rock It" and Divine Sounds "Do Or Die Bed-Sty". We'd find sealed James Brown Lp's, just tons of stuff. After a while we started bringing in records to trade. Most stores rip you off in trades but this dude would do even trades. We could bring in a stack of records we didn't like and trade them for really good stuff and he was cool with it. When we realized we could get away with that we started asking anyone if they had any old crappy records they were getting rid of or we would go to garage sales and buy the most worthless records and Larry would just trade us "straight up" for the best stuff we could find in his store, it was ridiculous. He moved to another location that was bigger and crazier then the first one. We did that until 1997. My collection eventually grew to about 27,000 records and about 80% came out of that store. The only reason why it stopped in 97 was because Larry died. We milked it for as long as we could.
D- Top 3 favorite rap songs?
S- "Natural Born Killers" by Dre and Ice Cube. I loved that song as soon as it came out. I wish they had recorded that Helter Skelter album like they had planned.
"3 Am" by Eminem. I think that was his best song ever.
And "Follow The Leader" by Eric B & Rakim. I go through phases, like, I love a bunch of stuff by Organized Konfusion. I loved "Prisoners Of War", "Bring It On", I have a lot of favorites.
D- Top 3 Producers?
S- Dre
Rick Rubin
Mannie Fresh
