Mark Ronson

Mark Ronson is a record producer, DJ, and songwriter. Beginning his career in the mid-1990s as a DJ, he gained wide recognition in 2006 for his work with Amy Winehouse and Christina Aguilera, earning Producer of the Year for Winehouse’s Back to Black. Over his career, he has earned nine Grammy Awards, along with a Golden Globe and an Academy Award, for projects including “Uptown Funk” with Bruno Mars and “Shallow” from the A Star is Born soundtrack. Ronson has released five solo albums, formed the duo Silk City with Diplo, founded Zelig Records in 2018, and served as lead and executive producer of the Barbie movie soundtrack. His memoir, Night People, is a reflection on his life in music and the culture that shaped it, and it will be published on September 16, 2025. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Athletic Nicotine https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Rick Rubin?

  Tetra Graham-Atton.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  I had spent my whole life living in New York, right? Making my record, being in clubs in New York. You make a record here, you want people in New York to bump your shit. You want people to be into your shit in the place that you live. And it kind of didn't do that much in New York. And it suddenly started to do a lot in England. So obviously, it was nice to have a place where they were digging the record. And then also, it made me think like, okay, the fact that I spent the first eight years of my life in this country surely influenced my taste or did something more than I maybe absorbed before. And then by going back to England and just being around there and DJing in clubs there, I met Lily Allen. And then I met someone who introduced me to Amy.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  So there was this feeling like, okay, sure, you like to go where people like your shit. But there was also more like, I was just creatively inspired there. So after a couple of years, I went back to England. And then eight years to England, I was suddenly flying to LA all the time to make records. And I was like, I mean, just try and go to LA for a little bit. And I lived in LA for four years, came back to New York.

• 1:37Rick Rubin?

  What motivated the move to New York from LA?

• 1:39Speaker 01

  There was this thing, and it's a slightly cliched New York versus LA thing that I just was like, I'm not going to fall into all those mental traps. And it wasn't that. It was actually, I would just come back to New York for like a weekend. And I would just realize how much I missed it. And I felt like, I felt like I'd almost been on a 15-year journey to somehow come back to New York. I felt like I went to London for 10 years, LA for five years. And I knew when I left LA, I was like... I'm not gonna be in the fucking thick of it. I'm not gonna be where all the, every writer and every musician, every pop star is five minutes away. In essence, I'm leaving work on the table, but I'm gonna go back where I feel the most native.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  So that's it. So I'm here.

• 2:26Rick Rubin?

  Cool. How would you say New York has changed in your 15-year absence? What was it like when you left? What's it like now?

• 2:35Speaker 01

  When I left, I probably left in 2008, 2009. And, you know, the people that were, I was making music with in my studio, the, I think of even the rappers like J. Cole and Wale and people early in their career. There was still very much the sense that LA was starting to take over, but New York was still a place for current, relevant music, whatever the fuck you wanna call it. Hip-hop, pop, everything. And then it did feel like there was this six or seven-year thing where it was like a little bit like tumbleweeds in a ghost town. Like, I'm sure there were cool pockets of scenes going on in places I don't know about. Ridgewood, like shit was moving further out to Queens and Brooklyn.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  And then I've noticed over the past three or four years, it's really sort of coming back. I think, you know, there's, there was, there's always gonna be that cyclical thing. I think that there's very cool shit going on here. I think there's Electric Lady, which for a while, it was like that studio compass point in the Bahamas. Like, if you're rich and you got a lot of money, you could go make a record in New York. Like, almost like a vacation destination. And now it's sort of come back. And, you know, that has a lot to do with the culture of Electric Lady and Jack Antonoff bringing records in and big pop stars. And, and now there's just cool shit going on. So I definitely noticed a little bit of a swing right now.

• 4:00Rick Rubin?

  Have you worked at Electric Lady?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  I have, yeah. I've worked there a lot. The very first record I ever made.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  First sort of major record I worked on was this girl, Nika Costa. And we did that Electric Lady. And that was when Electric Lady had fallen a little bit into disrepair. You know, like it was, D'Angelo was just bringing it back. It had kind of, you know, it was this place that was once great. It's fallen off a little. Yeah, and we went in there and it was mythical. I mean, A, this is my first time in the studio. I only knew how to use an MPC, you know? I didn't, all this analog gear and all this shit. I was like, because we were on, I don't know if you remember Dominic Chenier, who had that label, he managed D'Angelo, Dom?

• 4:46Rick Rubin?

  I do.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he had his label with Nika Costa on it. Yeah, so we had Questlove and Pino Palladino and James Poison, these amazing musicians, you know, like on this first record. I was 23 years old, so it was pretty crazy. But yeah, I've worked there and I've worked there a lot since. But now that I have my own spot, I just try to stay here.

• 5:09Rick Rubin?

  How did Dominic hire you to produce Nika? If you hadn't produced anything significant before that?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Well, I had come up as a DJ. I was, I played in bands in high school. And this is kind of what the book is about. Like it's just the 90s. So it's really just, the very beginning is me playing in my high school band and then discovering Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth and just being like, holy shit, this is what I want to do from now on. And so I listened to Stretch Your Arm, Shang and Bobbito. And like that was like, but I had a very nominal knowledge of like hip hop and DJing. And I didn't know any DJs. So I got turntables, started DJing in clubs in New York, like just hole in the walls bars. I got lucky, I got a lucky break and got a gig at this club, Club USA.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  But, you know, over the course of three or four years, I got good at it. And after a while of playing just hip hop, I started to think to myself like, hmm, I wonder if I could sneak Back in Black into my set. You know, because I would go to these other bars where they played rock and roll. And the DJs were not technically very good. They were just kind of like, you know, they were getting fucked up in the booth. They would play a song, there'd be a minute of silence, they'd throw on the next song. But, but people were just going batshit and like fucking dancing on sofas and going crazy. And I'd grown up loving ACDC, but I, you know, I was so buried in hip hop. I hadn't thought about that kind of music for years.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  And I just started to think like, there was this big night at Cheetah, this, this hip hop club called Cheetah on a Monday night. And like Missy and Janet Jackson and Aaliyah and everybody went. And I remember just thinking like, I wonder if I could play ACDC at Cheetah. Like, it could be like an absolute suicide mission, but fuck it, let me try. So I was like, what, what's my foolproof way to sneak it in like this chosen horse? And at the minute, the, the song, The Benjamins was out. It was the biggest song of the moment. And there was a, a rock and roll remix of it, which wasn't very good.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  It was like a little like, probably like trying to cash in on a rap metal trend that was going on. But Grohl was playing drums on it, you know, that, that was like the saving grace. So I was like, all right, if I play The Benjamins, I'll get the whole club. And then I can switch into the rock remix on Biggie's verse. And no one's gonna stop dancing because it's Biggie, right? And then right on the one, as he come out of Biggie verse, I'm gonna drop ACDC Back in Black. And tried it and it fucking worked and nobody could believe it. And there was 500 people in Cheetah dancing to ACDC Back in Black at first being like, are we fucking dead? Oh shit, we're fucking dancing to this. And so there was a little bit of a turning point, like in my career.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Up to then, I'd been, you know, copying all the DJs I loved and people before me. Stretch, Clark Kent, whoever. And then I just started playing like rock and roll and fucking everything and Jane's Addiction and Zeppelin and ACDC and, you know, whatever. So I started to become known for that. And I would DJ at clubs like Life. And I remember seeing you there one time, I think Chris Rock brought you down because that was a very big deal. Like, I was like, holy shit, Rick Rubin, because, you know, you weren't somebody that people saw out in clubs a lot. And yeah, in this VIP room at this club, Life, on a Friday night, it would be crazy because my DJ booth was this shitty setup.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  It was like, literally, like a mobile bar mitzvah DJ setup, just like a coffin shoved in the corner. But I would see everybody come down the stairs and it would be this parade of like, you, Chris Rock, Mariah, Prince, Jay-Z, whoever. And I would play that shit. I would play Rufus and Shaka Khan and ACDC. And so Dom came up to me one night and he had this amazing, very scratchy voice and he was like, yo, I got this girl, you know, like shouting over the music. I got this white chick and, you know, I don't know what she's supposed to sound like, but the album, but I wanted to sound like one of your DJ sets. EBM D, Biggie, ACDC, Rufus and Shaka Khan. I was like, OK. So that was literally how I got it.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Like, I got, I got most of my early stuff, like a little De La Soul remix here or whatever, because I was the DJ in the cool clubs and, you know, maybe an A and R guy wanted to get on the list or whatever. So he would be like, hey, yeah, I'll give you this De La Soul remix. But it'd been in Dom's case, I got the Nika Costa gig because of the way that I DJed.

• 9:51Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about going to Electric Lady for the first time, working on Nika's album. You're not familiar with the equipment. Tell me about the experience. What was going on in your head? How long did it take to feel comfortable? High points and low points?

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  I really remember really, really vividly coming down the stairs for the first time. And like, I mean, it might be still the same, the same legendary purple carpet that's there, but it had been vacuumed in a while. And there was a really famous studio manager, Mary, who had been there since the 80s. And I came down and I remember this coming down off 8th Street, coming down these stairs. The cat, fucking black cat, runs right in front of me, ah! And I hear this lady go, oh, don't worry, that's Jimmy. Like, hi, I'm Mary. Nice to meet you. And I'm like, I'm Mark. Yeah, I'm here at Studio A or something. So she leads me into the room. And yeah, I just remember like, it's fucking double doors open and

• 10:53Speaker 01

  all that analog gear and everything. You know, when there's that much equipment in a room too, there's a hum. You go in and you can like feel the hum and the warmth of it. And I'd been in studios like that probably a bunch with my stepdad when I was nine or 10. He was in Foreigner, making records when he was in there. And I remember feeling very both excited and native. I keep using that word. I've never used it before. But very at home in a place like that. And so, yes, you're right. I was very overwhelmed. Luckily, I co-produced Nika's album with her husband, Justin, who was older than me. And he was like a pretty

• 11:37Speaker 01

  well-established producer from Australia where he's from. So he knew all the analog gear.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  But I also remember feeling intimidated. Like, I remember like, he was running around adjusting microphones over snares and all this shit and Mike Prees. And you know, we had made all the demos up to then on my Mackie 16 track where, you know, I'm the lord of this domain. I at least know how everything works. And all of a sudden, I felt... They didn't sideline me, but I felt sidelined. I was like, OK, like, I don't really know how to do anything here. I was like in there, you know, we're recording Questlove, James Boyz, all these people. And I remember thinking like, I feel a little like the triangle player in an orchestra.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Like somehow I'm here, but I don't know how mandatory I am. Like, there's something about it, like, yeah, I would chime in when there was a great take and that was it. And I, and one thing I really remember, and I wrote about in the book, because the book kind of ends with, with the Nika record, pretty much. But Questlove went out on a Tuesday, because that's when albums used to come out. And he went to Disco Rama on 8th Street. And he came back with a bunch of CDs. And he had the new Fiona Apple album, When the Pawn, and he put it in. And the first shit just like blew us away and that crazy production at John Bryan with Chamberlain's and the drums were so heavy and her vocals are incredible. And we were just stunned into silence. Like, we were just, and we're, here we are, and like, the fucking second day, we haven't

• 13:10Speaker 01

  even recorded a fucking kick drum yet. And we were just left so depressed. Like, we just all had to file out the room and couldn't come back to work for like an hour. But then, you know, it started to go. And they were taking the demos and the stuff that we had worked on and bringing it to life. But at the same time, I was a bit like, oh, like, I love the, um, the fucked upness of the loops and the stuff. And here we are, replacing loops with incredible live drumming, but suddenly quite organic sounding. And then we found that middle ground anyway. But, you know, it was, it was definitely both exciting and fucking, you know, intimidating.

• 13:52Rick Rubin?

  How different were the demos in terms of, were they all looped and sampled? Were they no players?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  The demos, all the drums were loops and samples, because that's all I knew. Like, that's, I collected breaks and I had my MPC. And then we played instruments on top of it. But then we had Questlove, who obviously knows how to play like a break. Like, it's incredible. And then, and it was, it was to bring it to life in the fills. But it was, at the time, you know, Lauryn Hill, Miseducation was out. And it was just this benchmark of, of how to bring loops and these things together. And that's what I was sort of aiming for. And at first, I didn't know, like, you know, you're just hearing this here, like, it's so live. Like, what are we gonna do? Like, it was my first time at the rodeo. I didn't think like, okay, well afterwards, we could fucking layer it with the loops or whatever.

• 14:44Rick Rubin?

  Was it the first time you worked with really great musicians?

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Yes, I think so, yeah.

• 14:50Rick Rubin?

  And what was that feeling of like, first time you got to be in the studio and watch Questlove play?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  It was incredible. I mean, I was intimidated as fuck by him, you know, because back then, I was like, really, the first time. I was a fan of The Roots. You know, and when the first time you meet him as well, he's like, he used his words sparingly, you know? And I think, you know, he had his special drum booth that was like erected to, you know, make a really tight sound, this really closed in thing. And it was almost like, this is my fortress, don't fucking bother me. And it was almost like him and Pino from working on D'Angelo's Voodoo, they had like a psychic. They would go to feel changes and at one point, we had this like, this slow kind of mid-tempo rocky ballad.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  And they just went to this double time drum and bass thing. And like, as soon as Questlove started to do it, like, Pino followed him. And I was like, this is incredible. But at the same time, you know, it made me feel less like important or needed. Because my whole thing was like, oh, I just know how to run an MPC, like, that's my job.

• 16:03Rick Rubin?

  When you were in bands before becoming a DJ, what were the New York bands that were going on at the time? Who would have been the people that you would have gone out to see and maybe hoped to go on tour with?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  We loved, because the band was like a mixture of like, black and white kids. And we loved 24/7 Spies, Living Color, Follow For Now, all that like Black Rock Coalition stuff. So we loved those bands. We played at Wetlands quite a bit, so we dug, you know, the jam bands too, like Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler and some of those other bands, because they had like very tight rhythm sections. And then we loved The Roots, that came a little later, actually. So, and I think it was like The Goats as well, like, because we would bring rappers on stage. We were just trying to figure it all out. The Black Crows, Lenny, like, because that was kind of had this 70s swagger to it.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  That first Black Crowes record was like a big influence on a lot of the band. And then like our drummer, listen to Morrissey. I was starting to love all this, the brand new heavies and Jamiroquai and all this English acid jazz funk stuff. Because it was very similar to the stuff that hip hop sampled. There were these live bands playing old funk and soul. And Morris Bernstein, who's this guy who started Giant Step. I used to sneak into the parties, I was like 15 or 16, and I ran up on him at one of his parties. And I was like, hey, you should let my band play, like, you know. My band had the worst name. They were called the Whole Earth Mamas.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  And I ran up to Morris. His name's Maurice, but English people, of course, have to pronounce everything differently. Morris, and I said, you should let us play. He's like, what's your band again? Like, Mother Earth's Garden Bistro or something? I was like, Whole Earth Mamas. I was like, you should put us on the bill. And he was like, sorry, the bill's full. You know, they had like Ed O G and Pal Joey and Arrested Development, all these incredible bands. And I was like, what if I get my friend Sean to play? And I didn't even know where it came from. I was so fucking, I was almost blown away by my own fucking guile. And he said, Sean who? And I said, Sean Lennon. Because Sean was my best friend and I basically sold him out.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  I had an idea. I was like, maybe he'll help us get the gig. Morris was like, all right, if you get him, I'll let you on the bill. So, yeah, so then I had to go to Sean, fucking tell him. Like, obviously, it's not, I sold you out to get this gig. I was like, hey, my band got this great gig, you know, you want to come jam with us? I think he knew something was off and whatever, but we got the gig. And I think Morris used the thing to like get MTV down, MTV News to come down. You know, Sean hadn't made his records yet, he was still John Lennon's son. Everybody wanted to cover everything that he did. So, yeah, so that was probably our biggest gig.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And then we were so not ready for that stage that it just kind of was our last gig too. So, watch what you black yourself into.

• 19:18Rick Rubin?

  How did the idea for the book come?

• 19:22Speaker 01

  A couple of things had it percolating in my mind, but there was really one catalyst. One of my best friends and DJ partners of the past 20 or 25 years passed away four years ago. His name was Blue Gems and they were throwing a party at this club in New York called Le Ban, where he used to DJ all the time. And he was basically like the mascot spirit of the place. So even though he had already passed, they wanted to throw a party on his birthday. So they asked me to DJ and it was just as COVID was ending, people were starting to party again. And it was like, it felt like it was just gonna be a lovely thing. And I was sitting in my little library where I have all my records at home, just looking around at all these records.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Cause I hadn't DJed with vinyl in 20 years, but I just, I still kept my favorites. I'm just thinking about all these records, looking at them. And I, I see like one spine, it's just a green, Kelly green spine on a 12 inch. That instantly I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that's trends of culture. I bought it at Rocket Soul in 1994. Like it's just how visceral the memories that came from just even looking at these objects. But I don't wanna make it sound like this book is some altruistic thing. Just to remember all these fallen heroes, cause it's a lot of things. But a lot of people were dying and I just started to think, man, I wanna get some of these stories down, that some of these people that I love in this time, before they go out of my brain.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  God knows I drank enough and partied and did drugs and my brain's cloudy enough. These kids kept coming up to me too, like, like a young kid would be like, yo, you were in New York in the 90s, like that must've been crazy. Like, you know, I had fun in the 90s, but we were thinking about the 80s. We were thinking about The Roxy and Dan Teteria. Every era has the era before it, it romanticizes. But enough kids had kinda come up that I was like, yeah, there was something great about it. It was, New York was this incredible spot as far as what was being made here. It was Biggie, it was Wu-Tang, it was Jay, it was LL, it was Tribe. And they were in the clubs as well.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  And then you had Timbaland and Missy and Aliyah and Pharrell and Chad. And even, you know, the most exciting people ever were coming to New York to make records. And I would see them in the club all the time. I was DJing for them. And so I started to think that- Far more famous DJs than me have written books. But no one's really written the book that just talks about like what it's like to be a gigging DJ. Not a superstar DJ, but that shit where you're just going to work four or five nights a week, playing in bars and clubs and dealing with regular people. And, you know, I don't want to overdramatize it, the emotional highs and lows. But there are these things that are baked into it.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  You're the most solitary figure in the most action-packed sort of like surroundings. And I wanted to, I don't know, talk about all that shit. So I decided to put this book in the 90s because I just like the idea of having like a very finite window. And I'm sure there are some people who are just like, wait, what? There's a, you wrote a book and there's like no Amy? Like, what sense does that make? Like, I picked a period before I was really actually known or known outside of a very small scene in New York. But, you know, I wanted to keep it in that. And so it starts with clubbing in New York, going to raves as a kid, seeing a DJ for the first time live.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  And it ends with me walking around Soho with my daughter strapped to me in a baby Bjorn, seeing all these clubs, buildings that are no longer.

• 23:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:04Rick Rubin?

  Do you feel like the book documents your experience in the 90s? Or is it the experience of clubs in the 90s?

• 23:12Speaker 01

  That's a very good and the key question. I think that it is a memoir, it is a mini memoir. So it's very much my experience emotionally. But at the same time, you know, and I love a great oral history. And Lizzie Goodman's Meet Me in the Bathroom and Can't Stop, Won't Stop, all these great hip hop oral histories. I knew I wasn't doing that, but I did interview.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  I think I lost count, 150, maybe 200 people. Because I wanted to paint as much of the scene, if you're reading this book, that you still could get a sense of the 90s. So, you know, one night that I always remember is this party called Sweet Thing on a Tuesday that I did. And the first night Biggie came, it was obviously a fucking seismic event. And even the way that the club was shaped, this weird angle and corners, like, I barely saw him. I could feel the energy, like, of, holy shit, Biggie said da-da-da, and the crowd ripple. And you knew that something was going on. But, you know, I remember at the end of the night,

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Big Frank, his party it was, who's, you know, was security, a promoter, all of it, telling me, like, Biggie rolling up with, like, 50 dudes from Brooklyn, like, some of them had, like, guns, swords, like, sending them all back to the car. And Frank telling Biggie, like, yo, you know, I can't let 50 dudes in right now. And Biggie just being like, don't worry, I'll stand here until each one gets in. You just let them in how you can. You balance them with the girls, and then I'll come in when it's all done. And just standing there, just hands over a knot of cash, like, a wad, like, this thick, and just, like, giving a bell each time someone comes in. And, you know, those kind of stories were like, I wanted to make sure, because if it's not a memory that I remember viscerally,

• 25:08Speaker 01

  I feel like it's probably not going to translate that great on the page. But there were also amazing stories and anecdotes that I wanted to share and have in the book. So it's very much a snapshot of a very particular scene. It doesn't speak for much north of 14th Street either, you know? It's this little downtown hip-hop scene, this thing that was Stretch Armstrong, and very much came out of the ethos of what you built. Like, it's, you know, it's, it had this downtown thing. And what was cool about it, it had that mixture of hip-hop heads, fans, dancers, skateboard kids, artists, models, whatever.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  It was just that weird downtown cocktail of, of sort of what would have made The Rock see great or something.

• 25:58Rick Rubin?

  What do you think makes a club great?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  The best ones, some of them were just a fucking corridor with two speakers, you know, like the crowd is what makes the club great. I think the crowd and the DJ. But, you know, of course, there were incredible, you know, places like Tunnel and Limelight and Roxy and these places that were made to be these wild fun houses. But for me, my favorite places were always, 50% of them were basements. And I try to get into that in the book. I'm like, why was it a basement? Is there something like going underground where you're just like, you're getting a little closer to like Satan's real estate?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Like, are you just aware, like, we're going down here, like, being summoned for Dionysian, right? And it's also that, that thing, we're down here now, where we've all come to this place. We might as well be down here because it's going to take a little longer to get out. I don't know what the fuck it is.

• 27:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, there is something about basements feeling like you could get trapped really easily.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you could get, exactly, you could get trapped. There's, there was this one club, I don't know if you ever went, David Lynch has this club, I don't know if it's still there, had this club called, that he designed, called Silencio, it was in Paris. And you had to go so far down to get into this club, you just couldn't help but think like, Jesus, like, what if there's a fucking fire or something? Like, it felt like you were descending four floors underground. But once you're down there, it got naughty in there because it was just like, wow, we are down here.

• 27:40Rick Rubin?

  How does the energy of a club change over the course of the night?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say, I don't know if it's what I miss, but what made me good back then, you would play six hours. You would really play 10 to 4, you know, maybe 11 to 4. And you were there to build the whole night. So, you know, there was this kind of New York regimen back in the day. It's, it's certainly different now, but you would play classics and funk and soul, and then that would move into some. More uptempo disco and maybe some breakbeats if there were like breakdances out on the floor. And then you go to old school hip hop, Slick Rick, EPMD. Somehow 1231, you would really try and save the new hip hop like as long as you can, like

• 28:30Speaker 01

  keeping them at the, you know, like at the gate, like see how long you could really like tease the crowd before you suddenly drop Biggie, DMX, Jay, whatever it was. And then you would play one to two new hip hop, then Dance Hall. Then some new hip hop, some old school, and then maybe a little bit of house or some like classic sort of old school dance shit till the end. So it was amazing to get to architect that, you know, part of what happened later when you kind of, whether you become a big DJ or you, whatever it is, like you're just going on these festivals at this peak hour and you're going to play an hour set. So I missed all that feeling of building the night.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  There's a great DJ in New York who's from my era, but I talk about him in the book a little, his name is Eli Escobar, because he was kind of a bit of a unsung hero for the first 25 years of his career. And then suddenly in the last five, 10 years, he's just become like this New York nightlife icon. But he'll still play that six hour set. Cool. Because he loves that thing of playing the whole night. And I, I've actually, a friend of mine who read the book was like, hey, man, yeah, no, I dig the book. It just really sounds like you just miss playing vinyl again. Like that was his takeaway from the book. And he's somebody who's always come to me with a good creative idea and just like said

• 29:56Speaker 01

  it like it's kind of like gospel. I think you need to just play vinyl now till the end of the year. Yeah. And I remember thinking like, that sounds like such a pain in the ass, but also maybe incredible. So that's what I've been doing. Awesome. Just been playing vinyl again and, you know, it's certainly about 2007, after 2007, the selections get a little slim, but I just love it. And I'm going back and I'm playing. Five, six hour sets again.

• 30:27Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  There's all this nineties and two thousands hip hop that when I'm playing off my computer drive or USBs, even though I'm playing with turntables, they become almost not meaningless because they're still great songs, but it's it's one of 20,000 songs on a hard drive, three megabytes. It's sort of it's click and drag and it's there.

• 30:57Rick Rubin?

  If you know you're only going to be playing vinyl, would you go to the extreme of having vinyl pressed for things you want to play that that vinyl doesn't exist for?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  I think I would, actually. I think that you can press 45s. There's this DJ, this Japanese DJ who I watch on Instagram because he just has these incredible things where he's just like cutting 45s and it's just so exciting. His his body language is so like swinging and just so like, you know, I always wish I had that body language as a DJ, like sort of like gregarious and inviting. I've always just been a bit like, kind of just sweaty going through it, throwing records every which way. But he has all this new shit. I know watching it, I'm like, oh, there must be a way. I think that there's like an affordable 45 pressing machine that you could like have in your crib, maybe. But yeah, there would certainly be things.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  And I remember the first time I ever made a record that I pressed up on acetate was the Niko Costa record, Like a Feather, because it was the first time I had ever made anything that I deemed worthy to play in a club. I was like, wow, if I let's, let's see. So I remember going to Sterling and just like watching the lathe for the first time like come down. And, you know, obviously technically it's just making microscopic wiggles that amplitudes and volumes and whatever. But like, I was like, this shit is sculpting music. Like, this is incredible, you know? I remember playing it for the first time and then obviously acetates,

• 32:36Speaker 01

  you can only play them five or six times, they wear down. You can't really back cue them a lot because you'll wear out the groove. I remember one of the main promotion guys from Bad Boy Records, his name was Henrock. I remember him one time coming also to that same Tuesday night party that Biggie came to and bringing me an acetate of Biggie hypnotized and saying like, "I got the new Biggie joint. I can't give it to you. I got, like, take it to Flex, but like, you could play it right now." And I just remember being like, "Holy shit." I don't even know if I had heard it yet. It was so crazy to think there was this era where the first time you would ever hear a song was in the club amongst, because the DJ had it or whatever.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  And I remember putting it on and just like, being like handling it like a Ming vase or some shit and throwing it on and just release on beat, whatever song I was playing it out of. And just because that song just came in so heavy to that boom, ah, with the kick drum and Biggie's fucking wheeze and, and the whole club. It was just one of those moments. Like, I remember there's five or six songs from that era I remember dropping for the first time or dropping in a certain way and feeling molecules shift in the club. Like, there's something molecular heat, energy that would just, that would just change. So, yeah, those acetates were very special.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  And I also remember walking past a Brownstone in Chelsea one time and somebody had left all these original pressing, first pressing acetates outside that they must have not wanted anymore. And it was all from the first Brand Nubian album. And I remember meeting Dante Ross one time much later and was like, "Did you ever live on 21st Street? Like, I just had an inkling they were his, that he must have left out in the street." He was like, "Yeah." But I liked the way that playing vinyl only, it's just been a nice hard reset, you know? I miss some of the creativity of what you can do with Serato, the way you can just make a cappella with the click of the thing and do mixes

• 34:46Speaker 01

  and use the bassline from a Jackson 5 song over a drum beat from whatever. But I just needed this hard reset at this moment and it's been a lot of fun.

• 34:57Rick Rubin?

  Would you say it makes your DJ set very different?

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yes, I noticed that like younger kids are just watching because I'm not doing some DJ scratch crazy routine, but just cutting records, bringing them in on beat, taking them off, and maybe speed mixing, you know, eight bars of this record into this one. They're just dumbstruck, they're just like haven't seen it before. And this is one of the things I think has gotten crazy about DJing, like with DJs being huge headliners, like DJs are not essentially performers, you know, like pushing a series of buttons. Listen, Steve Aoki, there's people that are really good at it and will bring this showmanship. But most of us, you know, that's why there's 200 grand of LED lights and whatever the

• 35:44Speaker 01

  fuck else on stage and confetti cannons. But there is something with vinyl that's like at least a little something to watch. The hands are doing something, there's a grace and a performance in it. And then the other thing was, I have to think so much before the gig about what I can bring tonight, because I can't just show up with a laptop with the entire history of recorded music, right? And maybe, maybe 300 records if I really want to fucking do my back end that night. So I'm carrying all these crates, so I have to think about what the crowd's gonna be and what do I want this record and going through records.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  So I was sort of psychically bonded with this crowd before they've even got there. And it might be a totally different crowd that shows up than I imagined in my head, but I have a little bit of an idea and I'm picturing that dance floor and seeing what that might be. So I'm already like in some sort of flow, I've already thought about the record, so. And listen, doing that the past six months, it's so fucking crazy, like, you know, all our schedules are full enough as it is. I'm like, not only do I have the DJ gig now, but I have to fucking carve out an hour and a half before the gig to get my records together, like, but it does make a difference and there's something about it, it's like the warm up.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Also, to be honest, like, that was the time I was probably the best DJ. Like, I have more knowledge of music now. In the 90s, when I was playing five nights a week, I knew my crowds. So there's probably something for me that's a little bit, I'm performing and playing the record and doing it in the same way when I was sort of at my best, so it's, so I feel a little.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  I feel invincible, right?

• 37:32Rick Rubin?

  How different is the audience today than it was in the 90s?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  The crowds are pretty much completely different. I'm playing for 93% different crowd. You know, there's some old heads that come out and occasionally I'll play a party where it's like a little bit of an old school crowd like that. But, you know, when I haven't played in a while, I have a few younger DJs that are dope that I text like, hey, what's popping? Like, what's the new shit? Oh, da, da, da. And these kids are just like, man, we're just playing Urine AM's 2000 set. And I have that going on a little bit in my production right now because I noticed that music is going back to this thing and kids are, you know, falling in love with those same drum sounds that we were doing in the 2000s, the kind of old school 60s breakbeat sound and, and all that.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  And maybe it never went away, but I noticed it's really back and kids are like, yeah, no, do that shit. And it's, it's not that I'm Thom Yorke or square pusher, or I'm so entirely progressive that I will never repeat myself. But in my head, I'm like, really? Like, but I kind of did that. Like, I, I remember once doing a record with Duran Duran, who I really loved. They were one of my first favorite groups as a kid and, you know, still made great records. But I remember going in the studio with them, maybe it was 15 years ago. And I was like, can we like get some of that? The Rio, the magic of Rio, the sequences, da, da, da, da, da, 16th notes, disco hats, tough drums,

• 39:02Speaker 01

  nasty guitars and just great songs, funky bass lines, that thing. And they were like, but we did that. And I remember, like, I remember thinking, yes, but like, and it was this moment that the Killers had just broken and Franz Ferdinand and all these English bands, the Kaiser Chiefs. I was like, but like, all the coolest shit is just taking a lot of like what you did. Like, this is the cool shit right now. But I do remember them because they were, you know, they like to stay moving forward. And so now when I'm in the studio with like younger artists, you're like, no, that shit was dope. Like how you did that back then. It's, it's sort of still this push and pull. I'm like, not wanting to repeat myself. And I guess the other thing is it's interesting to me when a 23 year old reinvents it.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Or it takes some of the thing or some of those same concepts or ideals of what we were doing back then and puts it through their lens. When strictly through my lens, that's when it just becomes recycling. So with the DJing, when the kids are like, no, no, we're just playing like the 2000s, like, set that you're doing, I'm like, oh, it's nice to hear because I love that music and it's fun to play. But it's like, it's super cool when like, I watch like, a young 23-year-old DJ playing Norrie or whatever else it is. So when I'm doing it, do I just look like that old guy who's just like, kind of falling back on his same shit?

• 40:28Rick Rubin?

  Do you record all of your DJ sets?

• 40:31Speaker 01

  I actually never record any of them. I, because I'm not on the mic, the mic is like, when you hear those great old DJ set recordings and someone's on the mic and you can hear the crowd because of the bleed from the mic. And it seems to me, it's so ephemeral, it's so, there's something so in the moment about it. There are some, like, I played a set for A-Track recently and he recorded it. Also, the other thing is, like, when you're fucking playing in the crowd, like, I try to be as precise as possible, but you're in the moment and you're the, it's with the crowd and you might be dropping a record, not offbeat, but maybe not in the most like, kind of like, you know, the mix wouldn't be as exact as if you were just making, sitting

• 41:16Speaker 01

  in the studio making a fucking blend tape. So it's almost like, I don't want to hear it back. But he, he did record it because it was for the fool's gold, his label's anniversary, and I heard it back and I was like, oh, that's actually pretty good. Like, I don't really ever need to hear them again.

• 41:34Rick Rubin?

  How long did it take you to put the book together?

• 41:37Speaker 01

  It took me probably, from start to finish, it was about three years. So I had, you know, stop, there were music projects here and there, and we did the score and the music for the Barbie film, which probably took over like, nine months, maybe a year of my life. But I read Stephen King on writing. I never studied writing in school, so I read Stephen King's On Writing and Mary Carr's The Art of Memoir.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  And I just love Stephen King's, how austere his rules were, like, lock yourself in a fucking basement and no windows and five hours a day and these kind of things. And for the first year, I was in the basement of my place in New York until I realized like, wait, this is actually a health hazard. Maybe I should just seal the windows off somewhere else because it's just like a damp fucking New York basement with water damage everywhere. But I would try and write eight to one or eight to two and then take a break and then do whatever music stuff that I was working on. But it really did take over. And

• 42:48Speaker 01

  there was a time, certainly in the the second year of it, where I was so turning down studio work and working on records to really focus on this. And I was aware that something was pulling me to this and there was a reason I needed to do it. But at the same time, I was like, you know, I had no idea if it was good, terrible, what the fuck. I'm like, is this now I'm in year two? Is this a total waste? And, you know, I was doing it at that point. I was so deep into it. And then, at the very end, I handed in the book to my editor in January of this year. And he was like, great, that my editor at the publishing house, Colin, who's a great editor and really helped me out a lot along the way.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  And I think in some ways, he had seen the writing go from maybe being like a four to a seven and a half, was just so happy. We're like out the woods. But there was something that I just knew it wasn't done. I just was like, I don't feel like breaking out the champagne. This doesn't feel done to me. Like, and that was already, you know, almost three years in. And I showed it to my wife's cousin, who's a really incredible writer named Abe Street. He wrote a book about a Native American basketball team from Montana. It's just incredible book and writes for New York, all this shit. Anyway, and he's around my age. He loves that era of hip hop. And he said that he would read it. I was like, thanks so much. And he was like, I called him up and the first thing he said was, uh,

• 44:18Speaker 01

  "So, there's a permanence to books." And I was like, "Oh, God, here we go." Like, he was trying to tell me, like, "This thing's gonna be around forever." "I think you could spend a little time and make it better." So he came on and really helped me as an editor for a little while. And then he passed me to this, his editor at The New Yorker. And the last three months of the book, I just spent in like an 18-hour-a-day self-imposed writing boot camp. And what was cool about having her is she made me put the kind of stuff that you would expect from a New Yorker angle. Don't just say, "All Peter Gations clubs closed." Tell me how Giuliani's fucking policies and China, his war on Clubland, how did that thing?

• 45:02Speaker 01

  And don't just, we can't just be suddenly at Friday nights at Life and it's bottle service. Like, let me know why the climates of New York clubs changed and why it went from this pretty cool egalitarian place where everyone's hanging, there's no VIP rooms, and suddenly we're at this thing where it's like, you know, this total exclusive hierarchy of where people sit has become the most important thing. So, so I'm really grateful that that last couple of months, like, brought the thing to the book. Listen, the book's not perfect. It's something that I need to get out for whatever reason, and I wanted to tell a story of this time. But where it got to because of that last intense three months, I'm, I can't imagine if the old book came out.

• 45:47Rick Rubin?

  How has your relationship to that time period changed from working on the book?

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if it's like a, if it's my midlife crisis, but like, it's funny, like, carrying these, you know, 100-pound...

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Crates of gig bags, one in each hand to these gigs, like lumbering upstairs again from basement clubs. And actually, two of my good friends from that era have been helping carry the records. And there's definitely something about it that's just like, we're literally just repeating like thirty years. You could take a snapshot. We look a little older, but this looks like what we were doing thirty years ago. And there's something about it that's both sweet and like, okay, we're just trying to, you know, relive some glory part of our youth. But I've been working on a record at the same time to go with this book. And the record, I don't want to be retro. I don't want it to be like, sound like ninety stuff.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  But it has touches and some samples and some flips of things from that era. And honestly, some, most of the things that I'm flipping, most kids today will have never heard anyway. So it is, you know, hopefully something fresh. So I think the club and the DJing is informing the music in a nice way that's just like, I want the music to at least have the energy, the way it moves. I don't want to fall back on any of my like, go to easy drum patterns that I know work or what I've been doing the last twenty years. I want this shit to move in the, in the way that the music of that time that I loved did. My ears are fucking battered, holy shit. Like, I forgot, like,

• 47:36Speaker 01

  I think you just regenerate so much better, your cells and all that stuff when you're that age. So now, the pounding of those booth monitors for three, four hours is, is no joke. And I've had to start wearing molds, but even that only really takes, what, like ten, twenty dBs off? And it's your skull vibrating that's like part of what the tinnitus is. So it's, yeah, it's crazy. Like, the past twenty years, I've been rocking up to a place and playing my little fucking hour set. I'm the headliner. But this is like back to four or five hours of this, of this pounding thing. And it's like, yeah, I've had to be really careful. Like, that's also been a wake up call,

• 48:20Speaker 01

  like turning the monitors down, wearing the earplugs, because my livelihood is now the studio. So I can't really just.

• 48:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:29Rick Rubin?

  It sounds like these five hour sets are putting you.

• 48:34Rick Rubin?

  Closer in touch with the spirit of music than the connection you've had over the last, I don't know, 15 years.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 48:45Rick Rubin?

  Has to.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  It does. And, and there's all these other records, like if I'm DJing somewhere, I play my like 90s segment of the set or 2000s, you know, it's this sort of speed mix of 20 songs, Snoop, Dre, DMX, whatever, fucking 20 minutes. When I'm looking at 200 of those records, 200 records of the 90s and the 2000s, suddenly it's like, oh, how the hell did I forget about Got It Twisted by Mob Deep and fucking Souls of Mischief, 93 till Infinity. It's like all these records that, that I've forgotten. And like, and the other night I played at this roadside

• 49:30Speaker 01

  bar, fried chicken restaurant upstate in upstate New York where I have a place. And a friend of mine who threw Soul Kitchen with Frankie, he, he lives upstate and he, he opened this kind of cool fried chicken restaurant in this Twin Peaks-y looking diner. So I was up there and he just has two turntables and they have disco nights there. And so I was like, yeah, let me play. So I went and my opening song was, I think it was Papa Don't Take No Mess by James Brown into Golden Years by Bowie. And just that feeling of like, golden years, I think I had on a 45 because I just found it that day. And like, holding so delicately onto this 45, it's like spinning with the middle and like the slip mat's spinning underneath it. And you're just like

• 50:15Speaker 01

  cueing it exactly so you can drop it on beat. Cause we all know like 45s are a little like harder to handle. And it's just much more exciting. Like you said, the spirit of music, the, the breadth of music is much wider of what I'm playing. I'm playing music that honestly, I like a lot more than probably some of the shit I've been playing for a little while. And then what's also funny is to see, uh, like every generation of clubgoers has its own.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Recurrent throwbacks, right? So like a, like, like a song that wasn't even big to us when we were DJing in the 90s and 2000s is now cool, unironically, for like this generation's throwback. So, you know, there's things that, no offense, I'm not gonna play Return of the Mac. It's just not something I'm gonna play. But The Ramones, Blitzkrieg Pop, like, is a huge record for like a sort of hip hop, party-going downtown crowd. I'm Still Standing by Elton John, which is, that, that's an interesting one to me because also the beat is like

• 51:23Speaker 01

  it's not something, it's sort of like an awkward way to dance, like, yeah, like, uh, what else is big? Everybody Wants to Rule the World. I feel like these are like Stranger Things records, almost, like Loveful by The Cardigans. So it's like fun tracking these ones down on vinyl, occasionally playing them, trying them out, and sometimes just being like, nah, that's okay.

• 51:50Rick Rubin?

  How does disco fit into the picture?

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Disco was Michael Jackson, early Prince, like Disco Prince, Cheryl Lynn, Got to Be Real. These were all, like, some of the cooler records and South Soul Orchestra. Those were all parts of the New York canon when I started DJing. Like, everybody knew it. But it's funny to think when I started DJing in 92, 93, Michael Jackson's Don't Stop Till You Get Enough was, what, 15 years old? Like, there are Drake records that are older than 15 years old now to play. Like, it's wild that that was like really throwbacky to play a Michael Jackson song. But also, the thing about New York clubs is, especially in the hip hop clubs,

• 52:37Speaker 01

  it was a little more, not snooty, but there was like an attitude. Like, you're not gonna hear September by Earth, Wind & Fire. Like, you might hear Brazilian rhyme song. You're not gonna hear Michael Jackson's Don't Stop Till You Get Enough. Like, these songs are kind of like wedding songs, or whatever you wanna call them. But now I noticed Especially like with like the DJ Ali Escobar that I was talking, kids actually wanna go out and hear songs they've never heard before. Which is like, that blows my mind and also I find incredibly scary. Cause I'm like, well, wait, what does that mean? Like, does that mean like not to play any of the shit they used to play? Like, is it gauche or like corny to play? You know, I'm not talking about wedding tunes, but even a disco song.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  So when I played the chicken restaurant, for lack of a better word, upstate, you know, I think there was like maybe fit 300 people. And there were like 300 people partying outside because they were piping the music outside. And the age was like 18 to 60. So that's another thing. Like now I have like people who like my music that are their 40s and 50s. And they might be bringing their kids and you know, there's this, you're trying to find this balance. And the thing that I'm, that I talk about in the book too is that as a DJ, the other thing that's definitely changed for how I play is like, people come out and they expect to hear records that I made. Of course they do. They're going to see Mark Ronson.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  They're like, okay, we're gonna hear Valerie, we're gonna hear Uptown Funk, we're gonna hear whatever it is. But for me, that almost feels like cheating or something, you know? Like if I'm playing and I don't have them enough, I know I could throw on one of my records or, and those records are 10, 15 years old. So yeah, I talk about this at the end of the book. It's like when I play Uptown Funk, you know, the crowd goes crazy. Bruno Mars is not standing next to me in the booth performing the song. You know, I think it's kind of amazing. It's like there's something psychological that happens in our brain. Like, why do people get more excited? Well, we know why. They're excited because they're dancing in front of the person who made it and they're showing their appreciation.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  And I'm beyond grateful for all of it. I'm not paying lip service. Like it's, I'm so lucky that anybody gives a shit is coming. But it always fascinates me that like the next DJ could literally get on and play Uptown Funk once I've left and everyone will clear the dance floor. It's like, you know, there's all these bizarre things that happen in this psychic bond between the DJ and the crowd.

• 55:13Rick Rubin?

  Is the New York club scene the same as it's always been?

• 55:17Speaker 01

  No, and it's changed so much that I could probably answer about 25% of this question. You know, like, there's some shit in Manhattan, but really, all the fun shit is in Brooklyn, for sure. The clubs. Then there's like, the Knockdown Center, which is out in Queens, you know, there's like, places to party. The New York shit is, New York is always gonna have its little spots, and it's gonna have a vibe, but it's like, once, a lot of cool people and artists, so many people were priced out of New York, like, of course, the cool parties were as well. And there's no huge super clubs, really, to draw people in here. Most of that shit is in, is in Brooklyn. So, yeah, so it's been getting back out.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  There's also like, been about hooking into the right scenes and being like, you know, making sure, you know, I played this, I played a club in New York last week, and it was like, it was corny. Like, cause it was just like, that's who goes out in New York. Like, it was like, oh, man, I played the same set last week in Brooklyn, and it was incredible. So, it's also been about like, finding the right people to, to make sure I'm hopping on the right gigs.

• 56:24Rick Rubin?

  Is the scene in Brooklyn as good as the scene in New York in the 90s? Or are they still different?

• 56:34Speaker 01

  I think it's good. I think it feels very vibrant and alive. I think there will always be something special about, the 80s is incredible, because the 80s was when it was very first happening, you know, it was literally the Roxy and Uptown and Downtown meeting each other for the first time. I mean, you were an architect of so much of why that was going on. And then, the 90s was the last era before bottle service, VIP booths, and camera phones. So, I think that a lot of it had to do with, people were just partying. People were partying with the absence of surveillance. It was this feeling.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  And then also, people wanted to stay in rooms, cause you weren't getting FOMO, cause you could see another party happening down the street, or just text your friend, like, you know, come over here. And then, even though, listen. Smoking is bad for you. We all know that. But the smoking ban even changed something too, because you have, people keep going out to have a cigarette, or there was like, there was something a little cool about the clubs, like just this layer of smoke. I remember going to the first live shows after the smoking ban too, to see bands. And it was weird not having that protective, like gauze of weird fucking shit between you and the state. You could just see right through to the band, you know? It was just different.

• 58:01Rick Rubin?

  What's your favorite club in the world?

• 58:06Speaker 01

  There was a club night in London, at this club called the Notting Hill Arts Club, another basement. Very special, this, uh, these two English DJs, Seb Chu and Leo Greensley threw it. And early in the night, they would have a little showcase for a new band or whoever was launching. And then 11pm, it would turn into the club. And because they just became known as the spot to play when you first came to London, it was like Lupe Fiasco, Lily Allen, Kanye, Bruno, La Rue. The list is just like, it's kind of endless. Everybody played their first UK showcase there, because everyone knew that was the spot.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  And then the party was just insane. And I remember going and playing there my first time. And actually, I remember someone saying like, "Oh, you gotta come down here. The DJ Seb is like, he's like the London Mark Ronson." So of course, I'm like, "I'll go down, I'll show them." Like, you know, as much as I ever get into that mode. And I go down, I play my, like, New York set at the time, and I just had, like, clockwork. And it's just quick mixes and clever fucking blends and wordplay and all this shit. And the crowd was like, "Oh, oh." And then- Seb just got on and the first thing he played was some like UK like garage or drum and bass record that just like they were spanging the fucking wall like he just he didn't he

• 59:33Speaker 01

  didn't do it to show me up either. It was just like, cool, that was a great set. Well, you've played all the hip-hop, so let me just play some UK shit. It was such an eye-opener, like, oh, there are entire other genres of essentially black music that will bring a fucking house down that I know nothing about. So I loved playing there. I started to go back there and play a lot. When my first record came out and the song "Oui" with Ghostface and Nate Dogg did well in England and didn't do much here, but it like kept my buzz and I was going over there to play parties and just, I just loved it. And I actually, it inspired me to come back because that was at the time where 2003, New York had just, I was just so turned off New York and the bottle service and everything

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  that it had become. And I came back and I told Q-Tip, I was like, yo, Tip, the party I just played in London, like, you're playing shit that they love and you're playing like OC, "Time's Up" and like underground records and people are just going off, like, let's just do that shit here and just see. And of course, you're doing something with Q-Tip, there's gonna be, and people are gonna come down and be excited about it. But we found a basement, this basement club called Table 50 on Bleecker Street. Actually, my friend Blue Gems, who the book is dedicated to, who passed, he found it. And he was always like the person dragging me to some fucking basement, being like, yo, we gotta do a party here, it's gonna be the best shit ever. And he was usually right, you know, we'd

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  go into a basement, a dingy basement at four in the afternoon, and he would just have some vision. And it was, and it was like this amazing party that did breathe some life back into both my love for DJing and downtown at that moment and Boston, most deaf, and people would just come and like grab the mic and shit and get on over while me and Tip were DJing. So that party, back to your question though, in London, Notting Hill Arts Club was a really special place. And it ended, I think, after about 10 years because like a lot of hip-hop parties, there was like some violence in there. But I remember for the 10th anniversary party, I surprised them. Nas was in town. And I was like, I wanna give these guys like the best and this crowd the best birthday

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  present I can think of. So I managed to work it through and then Nas came and did a surprise set. And one of my favorite Nas songs ever is Made You Look. It's just such a hard fucking record. And I was Nas' DJ for one night. And there's just this moment on YouTube. And I used to spend many a late night fucking high watching that one six second over and over. And Nas just goes, Yo Mark, hit him with that murder. And I just dropped Made You Look and the whole fucking place came down. And it was just like, yeah, just that, you know, I never stopped being a fan of the artist that I

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  love. And I'm nearly 50 fucking years old. And being on stage, getting to play public service announcement with Jay or Nas, like it will just send me right down to my 18 year old, whatever it is.

• 1:02:41Rick Rubin?

  How would you say your taste in music has changed over the course of your life?

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  I think COVID was like a big thing of spending a lot of time at home. I started to listen to records at home, maybe for the fucking first time, except when I'm at home. I'm listening to records to like quickly look for breaks or listen to what I'm gonna spend that night. But actually to listen as a passive listener. And I found like a lot of 50s jazz, 50s and 60s, 40s, 50s, 60s jazz, Coltrane and Jerry Mulligan. And then I know it's so fucking like, it's the cliche like rom com soundtrack, but Chet Baker, just beauty, like music with beauty and simplicity, country music, a lot of like

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  classic 50s, 60s, 70s country music. My wife like loved Willie Nelson, discovering just the beauty in those things. And then

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  I feel like as I've gotten older, and I remember now it makes sense, I saw it with all my favorite artists, you know, I want to challenge myself tonally, cordially, not because I want to be like up my own ass and make complicated music, like that's not my thing, but you know, you're just looking to try new things harmonically. So in that jazz and that playing of like Bill Evans and those people, there's something in there and I noticed like as I'm making music now, I'm trying to imbue the music that I'm making with that, but I also know that like I'm aware you get to this thing that you complicate your music a lot and you're just, you're off, you're on that next phase of your career.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  And I think, I don't know, that there's something about me, I don't know if it's my fucking ego or my ambition and I'm like, okay, I'm not ready to go riding off into my prog fusion sunset yet. Like, how do I do this and still do it with the records that I love? So it's interesting, it's interesting how, you know, we know this, all our, as when you're a kid, you just see your favorite artists and you just go, oh, they went weird. Or they've started, oh, they started to make fucking grown up music or something like that. And then now I understand it, you just, your taste kept evolving and you were trying out new shit.

• 1:04:59Rick Rubin?

  He said your early works were not well received in New York, but they were well received in the UK. What do you think it was about those records that worked in the UK?

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Well, the biggest one was this record Ghost with Ghostface and Nate Dogg, Uwe. And weirdly, like that really rang off on the West Coast, Toronto, Hawaii. I don't know what, because I was about to say maybe it's sunny places, but obviously Toronto isn't. But I made a record with Wu-Tang, right, with Ghostface. It wasn't a hard record, it wasn't like a Wu-Tang record, it had this kind of like. Bubbly, like slightly disco with the Dennis Coffey breakbeat thing to it, right? So what was I really making? I was like, in my mind, if I'd really thought about the time, like, there wasn't like an obvious Hot 97 record. I was just making some shit that appealed to like, the DJ side that like wanted some

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  hard drums, but still some fast shit that made people move. And I also, I do think that growing up in England where you would hear a song, an old school reggae song like Uptown Top Ranking by Althea and Donna next to Duran Duran, next to Bill Withers Lovely Day, next to maybe like a De La Soul record. There was much less separation of what would be played on the radio because Radio One and BBC sort of, in England, just like a little more eclectic. I always think about how, you know, Amy Winehouse and Adele and, you know, they're essentially soul singers, but if they hadn't grown up in England with that slightly more English sensibility, like you just mix a bunch of shit together because you love it.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  Which seems very inherently what you should do everywhere, but it's not quite R and B and things are a little bit more regimented here. So, yeah, I think that there's definitely something about the way I grew up and, and in the UK that just I hadn't acknowledged so much until like, oh, that's why these people all like my shit over there.

• 1:07:04Rick Rubin?

  Can you think of a song that you loved when you were young that you still love? And can you think of a song that you loved when you were young and now if you listen to it, you can't believe you ever liked it?

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  My dad had really great taste. My stepdad was the one in foreign and my dad was just like, you know, loved funk, soul, Grand Central Station, Parliament, Funkadelic, all this shit. So he loved early hip hop. So Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, The Message. He used to play that all the time. Me and my sisters would go to visit him in England. Once or twice a year, because my parents split, my mom moved to New York. And we would dance, jumping down, up on his bed, listening to The Message. So obviously, that's a song that I still think is incredible to this day. I listened to a lot of hair metal when I was a kid. Because I played guitar in bands, and that was kind of trendy.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  And I went to like a guitar camp to try and learn to be a shredder. And I fucking hated it, and I was not very good, not good enough to be a shredder. So there was a lot of like bands like Slaughter, L.A. Guns, Enough's Enough. They were, you know, had some good songs. I don't want to rip into any of them, but there was some stuff from that that I probably, if I had to, probably something I wouldn't listen to as much today. And then what's so amazing is when you hear a song that you completely forgot about. Like, there was that band, Kings X. They were kind of like a three-piece, kind of had like a little bit of a Rush proggy thing.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  And I just heard like a Kings X song from that era. Like, I think it was called Summerland. And I was like, this is a gorgeous fucking song. Yeah, just how those songs give you, give you this jolt. If they can get me for three minutes through my fucking morning run, I'm so grateful for that. Three minutes where I've just forgot that I hate doing this, and I'm fucking panting and about to fall over. And I find like that happens more often with songs that I've forgotten about.

• 1:09:15Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about your listening habits, general listening, not related to work.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  General listening is now with my two and a half daughter. Most of my passive listening is what she's listening to. And our mutual friend, Richard Russell, gave me this great like radio that's like this little radio for kids. It's sort of like environmentally friendly, kind of like it's wooden and has these buttons, and you can just program all her favorite songs into it. So she's just like there. And she loves her radio, and I got her one of those old, here I am, just like putting all of my fucking baggage and shit on her. But like- This eighties Fisher Price turntable, the one that maybe has like the Sesame Street Big Bird, like as the as the arm and her forty fives. She has her own forty fives she can like kind of put on.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  And so yesterday, you know, I try and get her like, I'm not trying to give her my taste. I'm not even trying to like make this look more attractive. I don't want her to become a DJ, any of this stuff. Or if she finds it, great. But it's more just like she seems to be drawn to it. So she has her forty fives and she's, you know, a bunch of like Disney, Robin Hood, whatever the fuck. But yesterday she was just playing The Pretenders, Brass in Pocket, I'm Special. Because I must have put that in her pile. And she was just listening to it over and over again. And it's like, it's just so cool that that's a record that she's picked out, that she's drawn to. And then she loves when we go to my record player and put something on.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  She knows that there's like an extra, that's a level up of ceremony, whatever. She's not, Dad, I put, go listen to Chit Chit Changes, you know, Bowie. Go listen to Chit Chit Changes by the Fireplace, which is where my record player is. But just letting her find her own music. She happens to love Scenario by Tribe Called Quest and Shake It Off by Taylor Swift and Kacey Musgraves, Slow Burn and whatever she loves. And she has her little records. And that's most of my passive listening right now is whatever she has on.

• 1:11:25Rick Rubin?

  Tell me the difference between curating music and having music curated for you.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  I know that part of what made me a better DJ, let's just say it, in the nineties, was that like I was going out every night to hear other DJs. I was playing four nights a week and two, three of the other nights, I was going out to hear other DJs play. Or they were DJs playing before me and I was checking out their sets with the DJs after me. You have to go see other people play, I feel like. There's so many records, especially now maybe even, that if you heard them or maybe you kind of listened to it on Apple or Spotify, you wouldn't even think, you might not think that much of it. You see it in a club with three hundred people fucking going off and pounding the walls and shit. It's a totally different experience. So.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  Then there's also like this other side of it. There's something, and I kind of touch on in the book because it was such a thing back then in the 90s. Like we were, there was a certain circle of DJs who were all kind of in each other's sphere. It was Stretch, Mighty My, Riz, Max Glazer, Goldfinger. We all kind of went to each other's sets on our nights off. And then we'd all hang in the booth because we really just all wanted to be asked to fucking get on. Like, we didn't know how to really just fully be in a club and enjoy ourselves. Like, the idea of like, being in this place and not having something to do with this fucking vibe was like, sort of drove us crazy.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  So we would just wait in the booth like record vultures for till the other DJ had to take a piss. And just be like, yo, can you want to get on for a second? So the dichotomy of like, want to go to these other sets, but then only so much? Because then you're like, fuck, well, now I want to get on. I want some of this glory or some of this energy.

• 1:13:15Rick Rubin?

  You talked about having to acetate for Biggie's new record brought to you and playing it for the first time, and the feeling in the room. We think of hip hop as so much of a poetic lyrical style. And in a club, the lyrics are not always so detectable.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:36Rick Rubin?

  Especially on a complicated rap record.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Rick Rubin?

  So if something's not known and you're playing it for the first time, it's hard to even know.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think this has even maybe been to my detriment as a, as someone who makes music. I think because drums were my first instrument and I always came from groove first. The beat has always been the first thing that I react to. And I think it wasn't even until I really got into like Bob Dylan was the first time I really appreciated. I was like, who cares what the chords are doing? Like, the story is the thing that's important. And I, and I feel like it's fairly obvious from, from your work that point of view and story is always the. Driver and then there's always great music under it. So.

• 1:14:26Rick Rubin?

  For for me, it's really the beat like it's always been the beat as well.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Really? Okay.

• 1:14:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, of course, for the early records, the beats were crazy too. So, yeah, I feel like as a DJ. And I think that was something we used to talk about when they started to use the thing hot record all the time. Hot record, yes, but is it a good record, right? Hot record makes you think the beat comes on, it's hot, it reminds you of something you heard before. Da da da da like hot, hot, like, you know, the difference between hot and good started to drive me a little bit crazy. But yes, for a song like Biggie Hypnotized. And I think because rappers like Biggie where the the timbre of his voice.

• 1:15:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  Was almost like as exciting, it was like the Afro D Jack in the club and that that unmistakable wheeze that.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Like with the beat, the way it dropped, boom, ah, boom, ah, like just came in. I think it was it was just like a meteor hitting the club and it was something. Biggie had so many hits at that moment. It was just before he passed. He was the king of New York. It was like there were this moment that you could hear Biggie's voice on anything and it would probably have worked in the club. But that was especially special and and you know, it was like that era of that production of. It was kind of, for lack of a better word, jiggy. It had all those like triangles and shakers. Some of it has aged better than others, but that beat just was heavy.

• 1:15:54Rick Rubin?

  How do you decide what to listen to on your morning run?

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  It's so different because I only started running recently, like I I always hated running. I had to run in high school because I was so bad at all the other sports because I came here from England when I was eight. You know, like I didn't know, like baseball, football, that shit had already been going on. I was bad at soccer, which everyone assumed that I would be good at soccer at least. So I had to run cross country because like I just I just didn't want to do PE. So this running, it's it's stamina, endurance, anybody could get through running. So I I hated it for most of my life and then I really fucked up my knee four years ago and. I went on a run for the first time in five years,

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  fucked up my knee and did something where I couldn't basically use it for a year or two. And I, and I thought that I was probably done with it. And I didn't really care either because I wasn't a runner. And then when it came back after some like, you know, a good trainer got it back, I was almost like so thrilled to be able to use this thing that I hadn't cared about. I just suddenly like, I kind of want to run now. Like, it was just a, just an interesting thing. So, running for me is either furious guitars. So, a lot of that is like, for me, is like sort of nineties and two thousands, like alt indie guitar, just heavy shit. Because that has tempo.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  And sometimes it's quickly making like a playlist of songs, like the songs that we were talking about that you kind of forgot about, that you're like, oh yeah, I used to love that song. Because those are nice distractions. And then I found podcasts, actually, like does take your mind out of anything that's going on. Certain podcasts, like I can't listen to current events. I don't want to hear fucking how shitty the world is blowing up while I'm doing this. I just want to hear intelligent or funny people take my mind off shit.

• 1:17:57Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about Fatherhood.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  That's the best one. I don't know, it's so, again, cliche, but it is, you know, I, I didn't have my first kid until I was 47. I have two daughters. And I'm so glad I didn't do it. Even though I, I thought of myself as being a good dad, you know? It's like, I can't wait to like give myself to something. But to be honest, the way that I worked and the way that I traveled for work and studio and DJing and all that shit, like, I wouldn't have been around. So, if I'd had kids back then, I'm sure I would have worked it out and I would have changed my life. But I'm also really grateful for so many reasons it happened when it did. Also because that's when I met my wife.

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  And it's amazing, you know, lucky enough to be working mostly in New York. I ride my bike, I'm five minutes from home. I can go for bath time and if it's important, come back to the studio. This is the first record I've ever worked on since I've become a dad. And it is a little tough realigning my, that old part of me that was just like, if you're not in the studio 14 hours, who are you? If you're not doing that fucking, that work ethic or... There are certain things that are true. I think you, you leave the studio for an hour and a half. You are maybe offsetting a, a, a, maybe some kind of zone or some kind of flow state that you might have been in.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  But that all just sounds a bit like what ifs and excuses to me because I want to be there. You know, I want, I want to be present for my kids. But yes, as I'm working on this record, it is, there is this slight like push and pull between like, but no, but I used to be the guy and like I would, I would drop everything and fly to LA the next day for the chance of working with like X person. And it's just like, it's not that anymore. So I know that of course, a certain aspect of the music is going to pay the price for that.

• 1:20:02Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about your experience composing for movies. That's a relatively new thing for you, yes?

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Yes, that I love. Right now it's working on a film at the same time as I'm working on my own record. And when I'm working on my own record, I'm picturing dance floors. I'm picturing who's listening to this. I'm picturing this, there's certain constraints and things that go on my mind. And when I'm writing for the movie, I'm kind of just going off of pure emotion from what I'm getting out of the script. And I know that we'll shift it and whatever will happen when the, when we start to put it to picture there, these things, you know, there's a director above me and they're going to be telling me what they want. And sure, like, but there's something without the, without some of those rules of pop music.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  I find a little bit freer and say what you want about it. The I'm Just Ken song from the Barbie film. Like, I had never really written lyrics for a song before. I never really sat down at piano and done like the whole thing, you know? I always work with such great lyricists and people with such a strong viewpoint. But I was so inspired by the script and reading it. And I just sat down at the piano and came out with that chorus. Like, if I was thinking in any way, shape or form that Barbie was gonna be some blockbuster movie or that anyone was ever gonna hear this song, like. And I think it goes a little bit back to what we were talking about before, stretching out a little harmonically and genre-wise and getting more experimental and weird,

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  which is what some of my favorite people do when they make pop music anyway. But for some reason in my head, I've decided that when I make pop music, it's this. And when I make film music, it's free. I should be fucking bringing some of my film energy into my own music. And that would be a good thing to do.

• 1:21:56Rick Rubin?

  Maybe it'll happen eventually. Maybe you'll talk yourself into it.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder how Trent Reznor, who I don't know personally, but like Nine Inch Nails is one of my favorite fucking bands as a kid. Their first album. And he manages to do great Nine Inch Nails records and do really weird score shit and, you know.

• 1:22:17Rick Rubin?

  Is the club all about dancing or is there more to it?

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  No, there's definitely more to it. And that's why I called the book Night People, because part of it, outside of just the DJing and that side, that emotional side of it and the 90s. This isn't what I set out to do when I started, but what started to unravel is like, oh, yeah, we were all out at night. And I say this in one of the chapters, there's like, it's a difference. There's people who enjoy a night out and then there's night people. Night people is like, you kind of live for the night. You're kind of like, maybe you're a little broken, a little damaged. I mean, everybody is, right? But like, there's something in the day that makes life like, it's just a little bit tough.

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  And night gives you this coat of armor or maybe this extra sense of sort of confidence or swagger. And also, you know, God knows, it's like, if you took drugs, it's probably most likely you're doing that at night. There's something that we're. Running from, running to, I'm not sure. But there was a community of us. And there were also people who are night people because they really just love to dance and they love music or they love the sense of commune. And there's people that loved it because they wanted to fucking go and get laid. People want to get fucked up. But I wanted to look at that. And there's no set definition to this. It's a term I kind of made up. Like, and there's no, I'm not a psychologist.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  Like, I'm not getting to the bottom of like everybody's thing of why they're out. But I just noticed in my community, there was that. And I know for me, I liked it because I loved DJing because I grew up in a kind of like broken home. And it was some, it wasn't the most pleasant place to be. And I liked the idea of this booth. It was this thing that I could like shut out the world essentially. Like, I am the command of this thing. And every fucking fader and dial bends this fucking place the way I want. And there was a little bit of that. And I also, I took drugs and I'm sure I was like running. I was, you know, I presented as being so together and like functioning.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  But, you know, then a couple nights a week, when the gig was over, I would go and obliterate my mind, you know? So nightlife is, yeah, it's more than just, certainly more than just about the club.

• 1:25:11Speaker 02

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