QLS Classic: DJ Drama Part 1

Back in 2022, Questlove and Team Supreme hit Atlanta, where they checked in with old pal DJ Drama. Fittingly, in Part 1, Drama revisits his Philly roots and shares some overlapping histories with several of the QLS hosts. The Gangsta Grillz creator recalls growing up in the 2-1-5, making pivotal Hip-Hop mixtapes as a B-Boy, and taking his talents to Atlanta to pursue a dream and an education. In Part 1, he reveals how that journey led him to Lil Jon, T. I., and Jeezy. This was taped on location in T. I.'s Super Sound Studios. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 2:13Speaker 00

  Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  Alright y'all, so in 2022, we went to Atlanta for a block of tapings, and we got to kick it with the one and only DJ Drama. We brought some of Philly history to the ATL, as we spoke about his earliest days, his love of hip-hop, and some of his most recent work. And this was a really, really cool conversation, a two-parter. And we chatted until the studio and film crew damn near kicked us out. So shout out to TI for letting us use this studio, formerly Dallas Austin's lab. And shout out to DJ Drama and the whole team. Here's part one of DJ Drama.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  Warm up my panini on my Forman grill. Warm her for Nani on my gangsta grill.

• 3:35Speaker 00

  My name is Fonte. DJ Drama's my peoples. The best gangsta grills? Separate but equal.

• 3:51Speaker 05

  My name is Sugar. I don't need no drama. But I do need a DJ. Ah, fuck it, you're hired.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Ay, I'm offended.

• 4:07Speaker 06

  It's Laia. And it's a must. You know that DJ Drama? Was my college crush.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  It's DJ Drama. You know my mama? She's a white lady. She didn't go to Grady.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Oh, boy. Wow. That was fun. Yeah, so that's the episode.

• 4:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  See you next go around.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  All right, look, I will. Man. All right, so I will say this much. Back when my band started to tour, 1994, I kept receipts of which DJs were open to us and filling and supporting us. And of course, you know, some cats up in New York, Tony Toca, you know, Tony Touch, showed his love. This cat named Boo the Barber, who used to do these blends, showed his love, of course. Philly's own Koz McKev, DJ Cash Money. But there was one mixtape in particular that always got run on our tour bus. And it just said "Illadelf" on it. You know, it meant something to me because this is the first time that I'm hearing Malik B.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  and Tariq and Dice for All actually on a mixtape. And we just ran that tape over and over. Like, that was damn near the soundtrack to 1994 and 95 on our tour bus. So, cut to seven years later. You know, once the Roots sort of evolved and whatnot, and now we have two tour buses. As I've joked before, that there was this Slytherin tour bus and the Gryffindor tour bus. So I'd be on Slytherin, which was Tariq's bus. And, you know, which was, it was always popping on his bus. We were the nerd bus, but, you know, his joint was always popping. And it wasn't until like the end of maybe the Phrenology Tour,

• 6:25Speaker 00

  where Tariq's trying to explain to me that every time I hear this little...

• 6:34Speaker 00

  He's trying to explain to me that that's Tariq from back in Philly. Dramatic. And I'm like, wait, it doesn't make sense, though. It doesn't. Only because the thing was, is that that mixtape of 94, I've never heard someone just devote an entire mixtape to what we called underground or backpack rap or whatever, you know what I mean? Which is why Roots couldn't find any real estate on your SNS or your Tony T... not Tony Touch, like, you know, like...

• 7:03Speaker 03

  K-Slay or...

• 7:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, all those, like, we barely got on them joints. I was like, wait a minute, he what? And they're like, yeah, man, he moved to Atlanta and now he's, you know...

• 7:15Speaker 00

  I've always wanted to have this conversation with. If you notice, like, we never chopped it up for real. So dope. I knew one of these days, we were gonna have a conversation, so I wanted to save it for here. I'm glad. I know we've had a couple of interactions on IG about it, but never like in-depth. This is going, yes, this is our first in-depth conversation. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to Questlove Supreme, the, the master. God himself, Mr. Thanksgiving. Yes. DJ Drama. Oh, man. To Questlove Supreme.

• 7:48Speaker 05

  AKA DJ Dramatic.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  Thank you, thank you for having me. Do you get tired of those people like, always pointing out the Mason Dixon line of your before and afterlife? No, I don't get tired of nothing, cuz they could never care, so. Yeah, nothing, nothing tires me when it comes to that. Okay. It's a very important part of the story. For myself and for hip-hop and for southern culture, like, in a lot of ways, you know, like, what if I would've went to Temple? Or what if I would've went to NYU? You know what I'm saying? So, the fact that this kid from Philly who literally grew up watching The Roots as his inspiration of, wow, you can really do this, and DJing for Bahamadia, and, you know, my roommate when I got to college was Rubix,

• 8:35Speaker 00

  whose best friend was, was Talib Kweli, and I'm DJing lyricists' lounges, and then, that kid goes on to be a part of and transform like, trap music and, Movement. Gangsta Girls becomes like, the most important mixtape series literally of all time, but also how important it was to southern hip-hop culture, so. Yeah, it's one of those, it's one of those like, destiny stories to me, when, you know, and when it's told, and like, I've literally been in Atlanta longer than I was in Philly, but those 18 years of born and raised in Philly.

• 9:09Speaker 06

  Once from Philly, always from Philly, you know what I'm saying, so.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  All right, when's the last time you said John?

• 9:14Speaker 06

  I say John all the time.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  There you go, all right, just checking.

• 9:17Speaker 06

  Even at Mean Streets, like, you know, some of my employees who started interns, like, we have signs up, like, "Do not come in this John," like, or in our new building generation now, like, there's a big sign of Kobe, or we have, like, a Philly map on the side, so we still rap.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Word up, okay, that's what's up. Of course, Laia, you mentioned on your roll call that you two went to Quik, so now you're from Atlanta.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  I remember the day, it was our first day at school. No, don't do that, that's a lie, me and Nadine used to fight over you all the time, and you know that, let's not do that.

• 9:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, I thought it was the other way around. I used to have the, I used to still wear the green fatigues from I. Goldberg, like, when I got to school.

• 9:56Speaker 05

  With the dashiki.

• 9:57Speaker 06

  I still had them, John.

• 9:57Speaker 05

  And the locks.

• 10:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, definitely had the long locks.

• 10:02Speaker 05

  So that's why this is the whole interesting thing, and it's funny, because Amir, he said he would do, he said, if it was in demand, he would do an Automatic Relaxation mixtape again. I just want to say that to everybody who's listening, did you hear this, Fonte?

• 10:15Speaker 00

  You hear that, all you 50-year-olds out there?

• 10:16Speaker 06

  Right.

• 10:17Speaker 05

  Not my 50.

• 10:18Speaker 06

  Interestingly enough, just even during my most recent tour that I went on, I actually physically got my hands on one, the first Automatic Relaxation, which was the first CD, which happened to be called, it was Hip-Hop Lovables. Like, people don't realize, like, when I first made Automatic Relaxation, like, it was before neo-soul was a thing, or like, hip-hop love songs were like, you know, before everybody was like, singing, or it was so much melody, so like, you know, it was a Hip-Hop Lovables, like, I named it that because it didn't really exist at the time. And then, I just recently got my hands on my actual Illadelf tape with, you know.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  You have a copy of it?

• 10:58Speaker 06

  I do.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 10:59Speaker 06

  I do, I should have brought it.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 11:01Speaker 06

  I definitely should have brought it, I got the green cup, my, um, my own boy from Philly, who lives across the street from my mom, Dee, shout out to Dee, he found it in his crib, and I was like, if you go on my Instagram, I actually show it, the tape, and then I go, I go and then show my Grammy, like, to see where I came from and where I'm at now.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  How it started, how it's going.

• 11:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, how it's going.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  So, for you, what was your first musical memory?

• 11:27Speaker 06

  My first musical memory for me is being in Germantown. My dad lived on Rubicam Street and the older kids having the younger kids say the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, we don't need no water, let it burn, let it burn. And they left out motherfucker. Like I vividly remember years later, be like, damn, I didn't know they said let the motherfucker burn, because they used to say let it burn, let it burn. And then, I mean, my dad was a big doo-wop guy, so I definitely grew up around like him playing a lot of Commodores and The Temptations and obviously Thriller. Thriller came out eighty-three, you know, so I was probably like, I was, I was five when Thriller came out, so that was a big moment.

• 12:11Speaker 06

  And then another one for me was definitely wanting Adidas because of my Adidas, like. I didn't get, my parents bought me the wrong ones. They bought me like, they didn't buy me the ones with the three stripes. Yeah, I didn't get the three stripes, so.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  But they were still Adidas though, right?

• 12:26Speaker 06

  They were Adidas. They were Adidas, but they weren't the three striped ones.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  There was, there was like in Eckerd's Drugs, my parents were doing like a. Eckerd shit. They, they were doing a, my parents were doing a, they were doing a residency in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Anybody from Puerto Rico that remembers, uh, I think back in eighty-six or eighty-seven, when the DuPont Plaza, there was like a battle between the union staff, which I don't know if they were mob connected or whatever, and the hotel management. They threatened like, if you don't renegotiate our contract, we're gonna blow this hotel up. Because we, we checked out, we had a New Year's gig in Lancaster, PA that night, so we, we checked out at, you know, twelve PM on December thirtieth, flew back to the States and came back home with all these messages like, are you guys alive?

• 13:14Speaker 00

  And then we found out that there was an explosion in, in the DuPont Plaza. I think like eighteen people died or whatever, but the whole point was there was an Eckerd's Drugs across the street and, you know, this is when Adidas made top ten Adidas, the red, blue and green like high top thing. And so they were like, we got you top ten Adidas, but it had four stripes.

• 13:37Speaker 06

  Ooh.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  It was like the twelve ninety-nine Jordan.

• 13:39Speaker 06

  Not Adidas and not K-Swiss either.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that's.

• 13:43Speaker 06

  Ablibas.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  And that's where, right. And that's when like you had to run your shoes down before you got another pair of shoes.

• 13:50Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  So, yeah, just all in seventh grade. I just got laughed at because, you know, I got a pleather thriller suit and I got four stripes in my Adidas, so.

• 14:02Speaker 06

  Well, similar, yeah, I got the wrong, I felt like I didn't get the right Adidas. I never forget that.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  I see, I see. But for you, when did at least turntableism, like, when did that attract you?

• 14:18Speaker 06

  So for me, I grew, when I grew up, you know, I mean, the first like piece of vinyl that I got was this actual, this compilation vinyl was, it was called like Street Rap.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  It was like a K-Tale Records joint or something?

• 14:30Speaker 06

  It had to be something like that. I don't even remember where I, where I got it, but, and it had like Rock Box on it. It had Roxanne, Roxanne, U T F O.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  K-Tale.

• 14:39Speaker 06

  And I, and I remember like, you know, literally like memorizing Roxanne, Roxanne by U T F O. And it had a couple of other songs on there. So that was my first actual physical like piece of hip hop vinyl, but around like, maybe like ten, eleven, I got really into skateboarding, you know, and I was super into skateboarding and it was all about Thrasher Magazine. It was all about going down to Love Park. So this is like in middle school for me. And, you know, I came up at a time when down in Love Park, there started to be this, this movement or this group of black skateboarders. So it was, it was maybe like seven, eight of us at the time. And, you know, shout to my brother Stevie Williams. He was like the youngest of,

• 15:24Speaker 06

  of all of us, and he was also the best. Fortunately, I was the worst, so.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  What about Chuck?

• 15:30Speaker 05

  Tris, was he around back then?

• 15:32Speaker 06

  I think so.

• 15:33Speaker 05

  He's older, though.

• 15:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, he was older.

• 15:34Speaker 05

  He was older.

• 15:35Speaker 00

  And he's still skateboarding.

• 15:36Speaker 05

  And he's still old.

• 15:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, we were a little younger.

• 15:40Speaker 06

  But, you know, they they used to basically like make fun of me because I could barely land a kickflip and like, or even like when we we used to like go to Wawa and like steal the fucking the jugs of of iced teas and everything. And then like when we would skate off, I would always be like behind.

• 15:56Speaker 00

  Get caught?

• 15:57Speaker 06

  Never got caught, but I was I was like la- I was like last when we would try to skate back to love. So, yeah, I was super into skateboarding. I think Nickelodeon had like Skate TV out or something around the time. And then between eighth grade and ninth grade, I went to the movies to go see Juice. And I was just blown away. I think for a certain age group of us as DJs, like Juice was really, was really monumental in our careers because, you know, and and again, like in Philly culture, like, we always like Philly had the DJs, New York had the rappers, you know what I'm saying? So, you know, I knew early on about Cash Money and Miz and and Jeff and what ha- what have you.

• 16:36Speaker 06

  So, but it was really Juice that started my fascination with like, that's, I might want to try that. You know what I'm saying? Like, I dabbled about, you know, rapping a little bit, never was really that good at it. And then, so ninth grade, after seeing Juice, I convinced my mom to buy me a turntable and a mixer. And she did. It was a belt drive originally. I gotta, yeah, so it was tough. It was tough. So I originally got like a belt drive turntable and one mixer. Um, I remember.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  Was it a Gemini or a Technic?

• 17:09Speaker 06

  It was a Gemini. It was a Gemini belt drive. Yeah, it was a Gemini belt drive.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  For those that are wondering.

• 17:14Speaker 06

  Driver's a direct drive. Belt drive is like, you know, yeah, when you chicken chicken, exactly. It takes a long time to to rev back up, so like.

• 17:25Speaker 06

  Without a Technic 1200, that you wasn't really doing nothing. So, but I remember I did like, it was a kid, uh, his name was Ari Foreman. I did his.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Ari?

• 17:34Speaker 06

  Birthday. You know Ari? Yeah, Ari's still around. He's like, he does, he's doing production and and film and and things like that.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  He did some art for us, like him and Tramp and like they designed.

• 17:45Speaker 06

  It's so crazy how the world is still connected. Well, hi- his birthday party was my first party. So I remember the first records.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Really?

• 17:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, we went, he went to Central with me.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  Okay. Wait, you and Ari are the same age?

• 17:57Speaker 06

  We are. Yeah, we came in.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Wait, I'm older than Ari? I'm way older than you, so by the trans and vaxia. If A equals B, if B equals C.

• 18:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 06

  By a couple of years.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  Ari's so classy, like, I always thought he was, like, slightly older than me.

• 18:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, we're in the same class, two five five.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Cause he's the one that introduced me to Cosmo. Okay, so go ahead.

• 18:18Speaker 06

  So, I used to save my lunch money. My mom would give me like five dollars every day for lunch.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  What did your parents do, man?

• 18:24Speaker 06

  My mom is a, a teacher. She's in education. She's been in education forever. She was, um, she now has her PhD in education, but when I was in, growing up, she would teach in Philadelphia High School. She taught at Alny, she taught at Overbrook. Yeah, I think those were, she went from Alny to Overbrook. So she was at Overbrook when I was at Central. And my dad used to work for this Quaker organization in Philly called AFSC, American Friends Service Committee. And then, hit, part of his job was spending a lot of time in Eastern Europe. So like, he used to travel to the USSR at the time and, you know, and then later on,

• 19:05Speaker 06

  he would go to other part of, parts of Eastern Europe and like, you know, help out like what are known as gypsies, which pretty much are like, you know, people of European descent, but they almost get treated as black people over there. And then my dad, you know, both my parents were very politically active growing up, so like my dad used to be in SNC, um, Student Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, yeah, so, you know, I grew up going to like.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  Cause did you go to charter school? Did you go to one of the charter schools?

• 19:29Speaker 06

  I didn't. I always wanted to go to a charter.

• 19:31Speaker 05

  Like Lotus Academy or something?

• 19:33Speaker 06

  I wanted to go to Friends Select or GFS or Penn Charter so bad, like, cause I knew so many kids that went there. It's funny, cause I put my daughters into friend schools and they're like, oh dad, why did you do this to us? And I was like, man, growing up, I wanted to go to a friend school, but I think it might just be a Philly thing. It's Quaker.

• 19:49Speaker 05

  Quaker, okay.

• 19:49Speaker 06

  And that's like a, a PA thing, but I, I went to public, like, my parents couldn't afford me to go to those schools. So, I went to Masterman and I went to Central. So I always went to like, good academic schools. Like, I, I had good grades in. School and what have you. So yeah, so I I used to go downtown between Armin's Funko Mart and Sounds of Market.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 20:09Speaker 06

  And I would buy my records and I would, you know, the first records I bought was like the Who's the Man soundtrack, Heavy D was Who's the Man, Party and Bullshit was the B-side.

• 20:19Speaker 00

  So you spin album cuts and the grooves are this small and not loud enough.

• 20:25Speaker 06

  Super ghetto red. Ghetto red hot. Super Cat, Ghetto Red Hot, Fat Joe, Flo Joe. Yeah, and I, you know, this was around the time when like in Philly, like it was, there was the GOATs and then there was the Square Roots. And, you know, that was like, that was, you know, my introduction to like hip hop and DJing and it was, this was all around that era.

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  Behind every chart topping hit, you know by heart there's an original. Writing at someplace where nobody was listening. Some basement, some bedroom, somebody with headphones on at three in the morning chasing a thing they couldn't even name yet. Behind the culture that marks a generation, there's an original. Already moving, already shaking things up, already looping that one bar, already off tempo. On purpose, because on purpose was the point. Behind every night that changed the room, somebody had to walk in first. Not knowing it would land, but doing it anyway. Originals are out there, living stories worth telling. What's yours?

• 22:49Speaker 00

  Behind every original, live in Levi's.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, you know, even for me, like to be a drummer as young as I was, and I would get these catalogs, these Sam Ash catalogs, whatever. Drums were like 7,000 bucks. Right. And so, I mean, lucky for me, my dad had like access to stuff, usually like band members that succumbed to an addiction or whatever, whatever, leave the equipment. That's how like would inherit drum sets when I was younger. But like DJ equipment though, man, was like. Right, expensive. Were you just on one turntable and one cheap Radio Shack joint or like a mixer? For a while, I had the, what was the, um, I guess it was a Gemini mixer that had the eight second sampler. Yes, scratch master. Yeah, I had that. Oh, my God. How do you know that?

• 23:41Speaker 00

  I had, well, I had access to one, always had one. That was like, you were DJ too? No, no, no, I used to make beats on it. Oh, yeah, because you had the sampler. Yes. Yeah. You could loop and you had to like turn the thing to catch it, you know, perfectly. And yeah, my finger was like all tore up. I had the, yeah, that's true. I remember I used to write my grandparents, my mother's parents, like letters. And like when I would get good grades, I would like write them letters like, hey, I got good grades, like, can you get me this?

• 24:10Speaker 06

  And you know, and then, you know, my, my, my grandparents actually, I think, were the ones who bought me my Technic twelve hundreds. So they bought me my Technic twelve hundreds and then I would do little gigs here and there. And I think, you know, at Armin's at the time, like, or not even Armin's, I think at Funko Mart, you know, you could buy, speakers weren't like that expensive. So you could, I could, I bought like, maybe like, you know, these big ass Wolfers and everything. And it might've been like two, three hundred bucks, four hundred dollars for a set.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 24:43Speaker 06

  And then you would have to buy a receiver. And what else would you need?

• 24:46Speaker 05

  That's all gift money, no job. You ain't got a job yet?

• 24:48Speaker 06

  I didn't have a job. No, this was all, this was before a job. Yeah, I didn't get a job till like eleventh, twelfth grade. So, yeah, it was all, it was all pretty much like gift, birthday and, and Christmas type gifts and stuff. But, you know, lunch money is, is my, how I did my record collection.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Starve, just starve in school.

• 25:08Speaker 06

  Starve, yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  Steal somebody's.

• 25:10Speaker 05

  Somebody's stuff.

• 25:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, maybe go across the street from Central and go to the pizza spot and maybe get a dollar slice or something. But, you know, definitely I would save up to, to get my records.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  So were your parents encouraging, or did they see this as just like a hobby?

• 25:25Speaker 06

  Definitely just saw it as a hobby.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  Did you see this as a career or a hobby?

• 25:30Speaker 06

  You know, interestingly enough, my sister was like, is a filmmaker and she used to do like, make independent films. My, and hence how we first met, because she brought me to, I guess it was, was it at Temple? It was, it was for the premiere of Pass the Popcorn video.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  Damn, wow.

• 25:49Speaker 06

  And there was a, there was a, a young lady who used to direct videos. Cause she did, um, a Three Times Dope video. I can't remember her name, but my sister was friends with her. And then, but she's the one that, that's how I wound up coming to the premiere of Pass the Popcorn. And that was where we originally first met and I like, came up to you as a young lad and just introduced myself.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  Shout out to Abdul Jackson and Kevin Dreher. I forget.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  Damn, man, you just hooked me back on some joints, man. I totally forgot.

• 26:21Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 05

  Y'all had a premiere party for that video.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  For the video, right.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  So, yeah, like, my last, my last day at Rough House, just, you know, I, I just threw spaghetti on the wall and see if it stuck. And I just happened to ask Chris Worts right after lunch, because I would notice after lunch, he'd be

• 26:42Speaker 00

  in a different mind state.

• 26:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  And I was just like, hey, you know, or Ben, he knew about The Roots and, you know, saw some shows or whatever and always wondered like, how come we didn't get a, you know, an offer, but he just, he was just, that day, he just like, okay. How much? I was like, five thousand?

• 27:00Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  So, you'll need seven thousand. So he was like, seventy-five hundred thing and I'd

• 27:06Speaker 06

  To do organics?

• 27:07Speaker 00

  No, to, to do the past popcorn and we shot past the popcorn on Thanksgiving morning.

• 27:12Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Like, yeah, it's like, shout out to Chris Worts of Rough House Records.

• 27:16Speaker 06

  And I remember too, my other friends used to be cool with Kenyatta. I used to look up to, yeah, I used to look up to, to Yatt, like, but, but no, there was a, it was, for them, it was a hobby. For me, it was still, you know, I thought I was gonna wind up going to NYU and being film school and be a director, like, at the time, that's, that's, but I loved DJing, like, it was, it was my thing, so I definitely had, you know, without even realizing, was putting way more time and effort into my DJ career. And then, you know, I, I had my stuff in my, in my room at my mother's house. And then it got to a point when the traffic of the friends coming over and us trying to make little freestyle tapes and everything,

• 27:56Speaker 06

  she, she got fed up, because it was like ten, ten-thirty, and she was like, yo, it's too loud. And so she allowed, she let me move to the basement. And I moved, you know, that was my first studio in the basement of my mom's house. And we used to be down there boom bapping all day after school, every day, and that's where I made Iladelf. And, you know, I started, my sister took me to New York between ninth and tenth grade. And we went to Harlem and on one hundred twenty-fifth, they still had The Vendors. And I bought, that's when I bought my first mixtape, DJ S and S, Old School Part Two. And the reason why I bought that tape was because all the songs that were on there, when I would go to To the record stores, I couldn't get those songs on vinyl anymore because they were,

• 28:40Speaker 06

  unless they were the, you know, the bootleg copies and everything. So I bought S and S Old School Part Two and I was just literally blown away like by that tape. I, S's Talk Game, like how he was putting records together. And hence that just really started my fascination with like mixtape culture. And then, you know, Clue kinda was coming up on the scene. And when I would get Clue tapes from the layup and things like I would, I would feel like when I would go to school, I'd be like, oh, y'all don't know about this yet. Like y'all don't have this premier Ja Rule remix. Or, you know, this, this new Biggie, Grand Poobah Tupac song like. So I would feel ahead of the curve and, you know, I was just that, you know.

• 29:21Speaker 06

  And when it came to like DJing and like, you know, there were battle DJs, there was radio DJs. There was, you know, party DJs and there were mixtape DJs, but the mixtape DJ for me was always just like larger than life.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  So for Philadelphians, uh, the layup, my current production manager, uh, Keith McPhee, kinda opened kinda like Philly's, I don't know if it's the first culture store, but it was like the spot where, yeah, it was like the spot where you could get like, what was that first skateboard and get like Fresh Jive?

• 29:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  Or.

• 29:54Speaker 06

  Stussy.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  You could get.

• 29:55Speaker 06

  Stussy, yeah.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Those.

• 29:57Speaker 06

  Triple Five.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  Triple Five Soul.

• 29:59Speaker 06

  Those hoodies.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Early Echo.

• 30:01Speaker 06

  It's not the hoodies like, yeah, those, I can't remember. It's the.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Or even those skateboard pants that are like the big at the bottom.

• 30:08Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  I forget what they're called.

• 30:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, the forty waist jons that were super big.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that's, and that's pretty much like, that was just like the cultural epicenter. That's where like mixtapes were.

• 30:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  You get Krylon, spray paint.

• 30:21Speaker 06

  Yup, you get the caps.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  All those things.

• 30:23Speaker 06

  And everything.

• 30:23Speaker 00

  Get a source magazine.

• 30:24Speaker 06

  They have the white man dashiki, the, um.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Yes, with the.

• 30:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, those things.

• 30:29Speaker 05

  Oh, I know what you're talking about. The hoodie that got the pockets right here and it strikes. It looks like it made some.

• 30:33Speaker 06

  You see like five white boys at lunch playing hacky sack and shit.

• 30:36Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 30:37Speaker 00

  I would rock that shit all the time, yeah. And never shower. So all the fuck of the world's just. Side of that, those.

• 30:45Speaker 05

  I love your honesty, it's just true.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, come on, dog. I mean, the only, the only reason why dudes would shower in their twenties is if a woman is involved or whatever. Like their future partner, but you know.

• 30:57Speaker 05

  Come back, come back, come back, come back.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm coming back. Anyway, who is the DJ? Okay, I'm gonna try my rock the bells thing, just like Jeff does.

• 31:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  My cash money thing, whatever. But for me, I will say that like Cosmic Kev is probably the cincy DJ that I always have in my head.

• 31:18Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  When I'm doing a set or whatever, like, you're always gonna emulate someone because, like, if you're making beats.

• 31:25Speaker 06

  Right.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  When you get your drum machine, you start to, you know.

• 31:28Speaker 06

  Right.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Alright, let me see if I could do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That sort of thing.

• 31:32Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  For you as a DJ.

• 31:34Speaker 06

  Who were those DJs?

• 31:36Speaker 00

  Who was the cincy, like, who was the mix that was sort of like, damn, I gotta?

• 31:40Speaker 06

  Well, I mean.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  Or were you even into turntablism or blending?

• 31:45Speaker 06

  I was gonna tell you, I mean, cuz there was, so for me, it was a few. I mean, definitely, probably first, it was DJ Rand because.

• 31:53Speaker 05

  Wow, yes, Rand.

• 31:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, cuz before, you know.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Rand's still spinning, right?

• 31:57Speaker 05

  He was like with the WWF forever.

• 31:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, okay, I'm not sure. Shout, shout to Cosmic Kev too. He, he just took me on a super history lesson, like.

• 32:06Speaker 05

  Was he nice about it?

• 32:07Speaker 06

  Who, Kev?

• 32:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked for like two hours just about.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  Kev has been gentle lately. We've been exchanging nice words.

• 32:14Speaker 06

  We discussed like his relationship with Rand and how.

• 32:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 06

  Things came about and how, you know, it went from Rand to Kev and, you know, but when, of course, as a, as a, as a youngster, like, it was Kobe Kobe and DJ Rand on Radioactive every Friday night. So, you know, people don't real, like, this is obviously before we had, you know, you can go and, you can go on YouTube, Hulu, anything and watch anything hip hop you want. Back in the day, we only had certain outlets, so you would run home to catch Rap City or Friday night I would be tuned in to Radioactive to hear it. So, oh, you know who else too?

• 32:50Speaker 00

  What?

• 32:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was fucking Jay Ski.

• 32:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, oh, yeah, talk about Jay's, god damn it, happy 50th birthday, Jay's fucking DJ.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  He did, he turned 50, yes, yes.

• 32:58Speaker 06

  Cuz what was the station? It was, uh, 103?

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, 103.

• 33:02Speaker 06

  103 something.

• 33:02Speaker 00

  You stupid, with the Jay Ski and.

• 33:04Speaker 05

  With Zulu and the family.

• 33:06Speaker 00

  What is Zulu?

• 33:07Speaker 05

  Zulu's around, he came to his birthday party.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  Zulu was there?

• 33:10Speaker 05

  Yes, yes.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 33:11Speaker 06

  On, so on the radio side, it was definitely Rand, Kev and J Ski. And then in Philly, for me, it was DJ Ghetto. And Ghetto was like,

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Yes, DJ Ghetto.

• 33:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, Ghetto used to be our, our DMC champion. He would, he would go up against Rock Raider, rest in peace, and you know, do his DMC thing and like, you know, Ghetto has another cousin named Evil Tracy too. But, but Ghetto like, Ghetto kinda like, you know, took me in as a youngster and was trying to kinda show me how to really cut and scratch and, you know, do things on his level. I could never get it down to, to, to that degree. But Ghetto definitely like befriended me as a, as a young DJ too in Philly, so I salute to him. So those were the guys that I was around or were listening to early on.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  So when you're in the dramatic era, are you, do you have a regular residency? Are you doing high schools?

• 34:07Speaker 06

  So Dances is the first club I ever DJed at.

• 34:09Speaker 05

  Bobby Dances, yes.

• 34:11Speaker 06

  It was for Jawan Lee's birthday party.

• 34:14Speaker 00

  Oh, the Eagle, no, no, Jawan Lee.

• 34:15Speaker 06

  Jawan Lee, he's a director, he works with Benny Boom. Um, he does a lot of stuff now too. My, my brother to this day, I just saw him the other day. But yeah, that was my first actual club gig was, was Jawan's birthday party at Dances. This might've been like 11th grade. And then I was just doing like, I would get hired to do like block parties or like birthday parties of, you know, kids that I went to school with or, you know, that I knew around town or what have you. And, and then, you know, we had, I remember we had this crew, um, that, uh, it was this crib off Gerard Avenue that we lived at and I used to do a lot of their functions. So, you know, I, I was, I was getting, you know, gigs here and there, just like around Philly as a, as a kid.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Now, as far as your creative output is concerned, and, and I specifically wanna kinda go step by step, which is why I'm like leading there.

• 35:07Speaker 06

  We got, it's a lot.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  So for you, um, are you in the mind state of?

• 35:15Speaker 00

  Serve my audience, or like I'm very selfish with my DJ. And I do it like I'm like Prince doing Darling Nikki. No one cares about the music but yourself.

• 35:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:28Speaker 00

  And but I also know that I have a shield of protection that will allow me to play a Mr. Rogers song. Or I could play the number song by the Pointer Sisters on Sesame Street.

• 35:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  Kind of get, you know, like, what the hell is he playing? Like, yeah, that Questlove's so crazy. Like, I know I can do rogue shit.

• 35:47Speaker 06

  Right.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  And, you know, and oftentimes the openers are like, yo, man, like, that was crazy you did that. Because even one time, I think Fonte mentioned that someone spun Return to Forever or something.

• 35:59Speaker 06

  It was, uh.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  Or Weather Report.

• 36:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was out of, uh, who was it? It was Detroit. It wasn't, um, I think it was Theo Parrish.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  Theo, okay, Theo, okay, okay. Well, he's known for daredevil shit.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  But my whole point is that as a DJ, you kind of have two choices, which is serve the people.

• 36:15Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Or establish yourself.

• 36:19Speaker 06

  Right.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  So at the time, and oftentimes like opening DJs have it the hardest because they gotta, you gotta keep them on the floor. You can't. I remember once an opening DJ got in trouble. He had like an early copy of Brooklyn Zoo.

• 36:33Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  And I think that might have been too, you know, I would, of course, you know, it was like, yo, the new Wu-Tang joint, Brooklyn Zoo, okay? But.

• 36:43Speaker 06

  It wasn't.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  The club owner was like.

• 36:45Speaker 06

  No.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  No, you know, that sort of thing. So for you, were you facing any sort of venue structure that would tell you like, this is what we want and just play R and B or?

• 36:57Speaker 06

  So not in Philly. When I was in Philly, I was very stubborn and very east coast with my taste in music and what I would play. Like, I remember I would do parties and want to play Dr. Octagon.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  Wow. Oh, Jesus H. Christ.

• 37:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, like, that's where I was at. Like, I wanted to play.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  You tried to make Blue Flowers work, huh?

• 37:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like, I was, that's where I, that's where I was at in my Philly days. But, and, you know, I wanted to play fucking Smith and Wesson album cuts and.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Album cuts.

• 37:29Speaker 06

  Just, you know, I didn't get to. To the stage or era of pleasing the crowd or my audience until I moved to Atlanta. Atlanta, Atlanta did it.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  And I don't want to, I don't even want to frame it like it's a compromise. Cause I, I do think that you're either gonna be an effective DJ.

• 37:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 00

  Or you're gonna be a teachable lesson DJ.

• 37:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, I was blessed in my career to be able to be that later on because of who I became and who I was. So, once I became DJ Drama, it's like, okay, when they come to see me, they also want to be able to, I can, you know, introduce them to something or be a little more stubborn. But it's really going to Clark Atlanta University and being in the AUC. For me coming from Philly where I would have people from DC who wanted to hear Go Go. I would have, you know, people from the West Coast who wanted to hear shit from LA or the Bay. Or I would have people from Texas who wanted to hear Screw or what, what have you. So it, it taught me how to be well-rounded.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  So, okay, so, and that's, that, where I was gonna go next. You know, the whole, I mean, especially now, you, you kind of morphed into your Draman-ness before the age of cell phones. So the whole idea of someone putting their phone in your face.

• 38:51Speaker 06

  Same, yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Like I hate, I'm a no request person.

• 38:55Speaker 06

  Got you.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  And that's where my ego gets me in trouble.

• 38:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm not like that.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  So you're, you're people, you're a person of the people.

• 39:01Speaker 06

  I am.

• 39:01Speaker 05

  Thank you guys.

• 39:02Speaker 06

  I'm definitely a person of the people.

• 39:03Speaker 05

  I thought it was, I thought that was old school.

• 39:04Speaker 06

  No, no, no, no, I like when people like, if I go to Vegas and it's eight women who keep putting Bad Bunny on their phone. I gotta play fucking Bad Bunny.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  So even to this day, you're not offended, like, motherfucker, I'm DJ Drama. Like, I created stars. Um, you don't tell Picasso what to paint, don't? See, that I got an ego. But it's a part of the job. But that's not, and that's not the, that's not the capacity he's there to serve that night. You know what I'm saying? It's like.

• 39:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, there's, it depend, like, it depends on the gig, too. Like, if I get a, like, a hipster New York gig for, like, I did something for United Masters and, you know, I, that night, they booked me, like, I know they wanna hear drama shit. Like, I'm gonna play Cannon remix and I'm gonna, you know, go in and play some Gucci or go here with it. But, you know, if I'm at my Vegas residency, like, I'm there to do the.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  Vegas shit.

• 39:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, like, no, I'm not, at the same time, like, I'm still DJ Drama, so I'm not about to fist pump that thing out.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was gonna say, have you ever had a, a, a.

• 40:13Speaker 06

  I mean.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  Moment, or at least that was sort of the shit back in 2014.

• 40:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I've, I've played those records at times, like.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  What?

• 40:21Speaker 06

  But that's not the majority of my set. Like, I know when they book me, like, they wanna, they come there for a certain reason.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I get it, I get it.

• 40:29Speaker 06

  Like, when they, when I go even to Vegas, like, and you know, Vegas has had a transition at times where it's become much more hip-hop driven than it was. But I'm just saying, like, when I go to gigs, like, people wanna hear DJ Drama be DJ Drama. You know what I'm saying? So it's like.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  But is it confusing now, at this stage in your life, where, okay, so say, an album that I would associate you with, like, any Cannon record, so let's say, like, Go Crazy.

• 40:56Speaker 06

  Right.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  Which came out in, in 2009, 2008.

• 41:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  Which, to an old guy, to me, I'm still like, oh, that's new rap, even though that's old school, right?

• 41:07Speaker 06

  No, no, no, so, no, I mean.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  So is it confusing now?

• 41:10Speaker 06

  No, not for me, because I go with the times and I go, like, I just got off a tour with Wiz and Logic, for instance. So, but, and, and the blessing for me is, though, is that that's not, like, as much as there is an audience that knows me for that, when I get on stage at the Wiz Khalifa and Logic show, I start with a Tyler the Creator record. And then I go into a dream, I play Stick off the Dreamville. Tape cuz that's still my shit like it's still off gangsta grills.

• 41:36Speaker 05

  That's when DJ Dramatic to me kinda enters the thing I hate I know you I don't know if you hate when I go DJ Dramatic versus drama but it's just how I can define.

• 41:43Speaker 06

  I knew you when you was a man.

• 41:44Speaker 05

  No it's not.

• 41:45Speaker 06

  But I was drama first though I mean it wasn't like I was dramatic I was drama and then I tried to change it to dramatic and then I went back. So it wasn't like I was originally DJ Dramatic I was I was DJ Drama first.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  But you okay I'll I'll accept that but you know when I say dramatic is also like to an era a time when you did have a certain lane that you were in that you have kinda left sense.

• 42:04Speaker 06

  Well what happened was it I didn't know I mean like as much as much as I was putting into gangsta grills I was putting into automatic relaxation. One just took off from the other.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  Okay so let me ask you when you decide to go to Clark University.

• 42:19Speaker 06

  Yep Clark Atlanta.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  Clark Atlanta.

• 42:22Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  And I assume that you're transporting your your equipment with you.

• 42:28Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  So and that's important like you already know that in your dorm that your big ass speakers and your records and your turntables.

• 42:37Speaker 06

  All had to come with me.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Are coming with you okay.

• 42:39Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  No question.

• 42:40Speaker 06

  Without it.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Were your parents like what the hell you doing like you're in a dorm.

• 42:44Speaker 05

  In a dorm yeah.

• 42:45Speaker 06

  They you know I mean by that point I was already like kinda you know they had they it was clear that I was on a certain path and I was you know this DJ thing was.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  So it's gonna happen in college not just some high school thing and.

• 43:00Speaker 06

  Yeah I don't yeah I don't know if they knew I mean clearly they didn't see this happening like you know I mean my mom even after school was concerned about me getting a real quote unquote real job but. Yeah I mean when I got to school like it was you know I I brought my Philly hustle with me like like he'll tell you like freshman year when everybody was freak nicked out. I I bought a bunch of T shirts from this guy named Moot and I was hustling T shirts during freak nick like I didn't partake in none of the activities like. Or I would set up on campus on we had these green trash cans and I had this little yellow radio and I would like hustle my mixtapes in between classes so.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  How did you find an outlet to establish yourself in Atlanta?

• 43:42Speaker 06

  Well I mean outlet was the AUC it was our world I mean there was enough.

• 43:47Speaker 05

  And marketing Marcos you feel like working at Marcos too was.

• 43:49Speaker 06

  I mean Marcos Peter would.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  I didn't go to college. A U C.

• 43:52Speaker 06

  The A U C. Atlanta University. Atlanta University Center. So that's Clark, Atlanta, that's Morris Brown at the time, that's Morehouse and Spellman. So you literally have four historically black colleges and universities right in one epicenter. So there's multitudes of parties and gigs available. So I was.

• 44:13Speaker 00

  Did you try to find your flock or?

• 44:15Speaker 06

  No, I can't.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  Or were you like, okay, what are they into down here?

• 44:18Speaker 06

  It it just happened naturally because, you know, as you start doing gigs, I mean, you realize, oh, I got people from everywhere. So, you know, and I learned very early on. And I shout to my my man DJ Sense and Sense is also from Philly. We met freshman year and he kind of was a little more commercially driven than I was at the time. Like I was real backpack rap and he was like bad boy, you know what I'm saying? So us doing gigs together, he kind of helped influence and inspire me to get, you know. He yelled at me one time, I cut the Benjamins off too early.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 44:53Speaker 06

  At a gig and he was like, bro, like you can't cut it off at this part. And he was right, you know what I'm saying? So us doing gigs together, I kind of got more into my commercial bag. And, you know, because I still, even when I was in school, when I was doing these college gigs, I was still DJing lyricist lounges. I was still at Ying Yang Cafe. Ying Yang, yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:13Speaker 06

  You didn't know you was at Ying Yang. You know what I mean? Like I was, I was still into that world. So I was, I was bouncing between worlds in a way.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  Who was the DJ down here that was your, oh shit? Or your Kaiser Soza coffee mug, slow drop realization thing that this is some neck shit down here that I have to.

• 45:35Speaker 06

  First, it was DJ Nabs. Nabs was the ultimate. I mean, he was on the radio, he was on television, he was, he had Kai, he had Nabs in the lab. At Club Kai a Sunday night, which was just the ultimate experience. And then I think for me, it probably was DJ Mars. Mars also at the time was, you know, he used to be on, he. He had a BET gig, so he was doing, what was that show called? It was one of them shows. Mars was on the radio, you know, he was on every day. And he was in the club, so he was like one of, you know, one of those,

• 46:16Speaker 06

  like the guys that we looked towards as like, damn, that's the next level. So, and he, it's funny because I did the same thing with you too. I know you don't remember this, but I used to like write for this like little magazine or like little zine. And I went and did an interview with Mars. That's how I, I like got, I introduced myself to him. I went to go interview him at the station and then I'd handed him one of my mixtapes. And he was like, yo, this shit's hot. And oddly enough, when you, you guys came to Atlanta one time, I did the same thing with you. I was, I did an interview with you for the magazine. And that was how I first found out about Dilla. Cause this was the era where you were dill it out.

• 47:00Speaker 06

  And you were just, you told me like, yo, all we do is listen to Slum Village. And this is mid, late nineties and everything. And yeah, so I would kinda, you know, wiggle my way in however, whatever to, to, you know, get my name out there or get my tapes in people's hands.

• 47:17Speaker 06

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• 48:34Speaker 00

  Behind every chart topping hit, you know by heart there's an original. Writing it someplace where nobody was listening. Some basement, some bedroom, somebody with headphones on at three in the morning chasing a thing they couldn't even name yet. Behind the culture that marks a generation, there's an original. Already moving, already shaking things up, already looping that one bar, already off tempo, on purpose, because on purpose was the point. Behind every night that changed the room, somebody had to walk in first. Not knowing it would land, but doing it anyway. Originals are out there, living stories worth telling. What's yours?

• 49:19Speaker 00

  Behind every original, live in Levi's.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  Like, I feel like Atlanta really found itself with what Organized Noise and Outkast and all those guys established.

• 49:33Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 49:33Speaker 00

  So, but the thing is, is that I didn't call it anything. Like, I know, like, New Orleans is bounce and there's bass music in Miami, but what was Atlanta's culture before trap? Like, does, first of all, does Atlanta own what we know as trap?

• 49:50Speaker 06

  Absolutely, 100%.

• 49:52Speaker 00

  So what was before the B.C. era of that?

• 49:56Speaker 06

  It was Dungeon Family. I mean, so you, I moved here in 96.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 50:01Speaker 06

  96, El Adolph Half-Life came out, 96, ATLians came out. Muddy Waters, Redman. Muddy Waters came out. Reasonable. Mob Deep, um, second album came out. Hell on Earth, yeah. Um, Hell on Earth came out. The score.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  And I have, and I have an elevator's question to ask you.

• 50:18Speaker 06

  I came right when elevators kinda hit.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  Okay, so let me ask you something. Alright, and I, why is elevators like my new Latin quarters?

• 50:26Speaker 06

  So many tangents, we can go so much, I gotta talk, I wanna say like.

• 50:30Speaker 00

  So, ju- just while we're here, alright, so when we asked, you know, L.A. Reid and Organized Noise, my thing was, I would ask them, why would they take such a risk with the sonic choice of elevators? Yes, it's a masterpiece of a song, but.

• 50:47Speaker 06

  But who knew at the time?

• 50:49Speaker 00

  I was just like, yo, who would ever put like a song that's like 86 BPMs, which was very slow at the time compared to what was hitting? And it was just, everything about that song was just like, it was a risk, it was a Hail Mary throw that got caught. And you know, Organized Noise explained that, you know, they leaked it first and of course, L.A. Reid really wanted ATLians to come out first.

• 51:12Speaker 06

  They put it, they took it to the radio station and just like.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  Enforced it, right, right. And then, but as a DJ, like, could you explain to me the effect that that song had on, or just at the time, like?

• 51:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, it was Atlanta, so, again, there was, when ATLians dropped, just, you know, the pride and the the sonics and the creativity of that album, you know, Southern Playistic was already a thing.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  Right.

• 51:44Speaker 06

  And then ATLians came and it was like, oh, these, these boys is different, you know, I mean, that was the era when 3000 was walking around with the turban and, you know, Goody Mob had, you know, dropped and everything, so it was like, I just think the pride and, you know, I hear stories about before OutKast about how you would go to certain clubs in Atlanta, like Warehouse and things, and people would almost wanna kinda act like they were from New York, you know, and then.

• 52:13Speaker 00

  He just said, yeah, he just said that, yeah.

• 52:16Speaker 06

  And then it was OutKast that was, almost brought that pride out where it made people in Atlanta feel proud to be from Atlanta or from the south.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  I get it, man.

• 52:25Speaker 06

  So, yeah, so before the trap era, you know, Atlanta was, was defined by Dungeon Family.

• 52:33Speaker 06

  By So So Def and you know by La Face Records and that was that was the you know the the trifecta of what Atlanta was.

• 52:43Speaker 00

  So when you are down here, at what point the cast of characters that were known as the affiliates?

• 52:50Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 52:51Speaker 00

  How are they amalgamating themselves in in your life? Like, are you meeting?

• 52:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 00

  Them now at this point?

• 52:57Speaker 06

  So I met DJ Sense literally the first day I get to school in Clark Atlanta. I get in, we go to the dorm to Brawley Hall and I'm my my room number was two one five.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 53:13Speaker 06

  Crazy, right? And and then somebody told Sense, hey, you know, there's a DJ on the second floor from Philly and he had told he told me he had kind of already heard about me in Philly like, you know, it's crazy to think I had a little buzz, but.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  He had a rut.

• 53:29Speaker 06

  He had a, you know, he knew about me. So we like battled it. We battled in my room like the first first day we met, just kind of going back and forth on the turntables, cutting and scratching. And then, you know, we were doing parties together and we were, you know, like a dynamic duo and just, you know, people would book me or book him or we would go together and we'd do all the parties. And then my next year, this tall lanky kid gets on campus and like he had heard about me and he kind of was like, yo, my name's Donnie Brasco. I'm from Philly and I'm a DJ. I make beats and I was kind of, you know, Kyle, you know, him and Kyle went to school together. So Kyle kind of like put a sour taste in my mouth early on, like that that cannon was a nut.

• 54:13Speaker 05

  Kyle was Kyle was part of Tyree and them school. It was a whole crew of Philly dudes.

• 54:16Speaker 06

  We went on Philly. So it was it was Dane, Dame.

• 54:20Speaker 05

  Well, that yeah.

• 54:20Speaker 06

  Dame was there.

• 54:21Speaker 05

  You had a North Carolina. Yeah.

• 54:22Speaker 06

  Yeah. Uh, it was Chris, Chris and Illy. It was Dame. It was me, Sense. And I had like my school crew and then I had like my Rubik's, Jaxx and you know, my my hip hop, my Binkas crew. But.

• 54:35Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 54:37Speaker 06

  Rest in peace to my brother Jax. But so finally, Cannon wound up giving me a beat CD. And I went home and I listened to it and I was like, yo, this shit is fucking fire. So, next day I see him on campus, I'm like, yo, I've listened to your beat tape, that shit's hard, like, you know, come through the crib, so. It went from me and Sense to me sensing Cannon and then we were just, the three of us were like, you know, damn near inseparable, like, while we were in school and we would do a bunch of gigs together or just support each other or, you know, when I was selling tapes, like Cannon and Sense would make their tapes and I would, you know, I would sell them all and, um, we would just do events together, but the way the affiliates came about is because

• 55:22Speaker 06

  there was a crew called the Super Friends, which was DJ Mars, DJ Trauma, um, uh, Cowboy was in there, Fahrenheit, Shakim was Super Friends and they made us part, we were like the youngest of the crew and they, you know, invited us in.

• 55:39Speaker 00

  And the DJ Trauma that is currently with Shabba, okay, okay.

• 55:43Speaker 06

  And you know, that was one of the reasons why I tried to change my name to Dramatic. It's because of Trauma, because Trauma-

• 55:49Speaker 00

  Trauma and Drama.

• 55:50Speaker 06

  And his name is Tyree.

• 55:52Speaker 05

  And y'all both had locks.

• 55:53Speaker 06

  Had locks at the time.

• 55:54Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 55:55Speaker 06

  And he was on the radio, he was on fire and it was like everywhere I would go and try to say I'm DJ Drama, they'd be like, Trauma? And I'd be like, no, Drama. And it just used to frustrate me, like, like, man, I'm about to just change my name. And Mars, you know, interestingly enough, was like, yo, don't change your name for nobody. And Trauma was his best friend, but he, you know, he said, don't change your name for nobody, like, if that's your name, that's your name. So, we were part of the Super Friends and we were really trying to be focused like on mixtapes and Super Friends were very party-driven and we kinda, we went through a little disagreement at the time. As my memory serves me, Jacob York offered the Super Friends, uh, opportunity to do an album.

• 56:38Speaker 06

  And we were kinda already, you know, feeling a certain type of way, because, you know, we weren't, like, they were getting all the gigs and, you know, we were trying to make our name. We couldn't get no sponsorship for the mixtapes because they were getting all the sponsorship for the parties and everything. And they were like, yo, if we do an album, let's call it Gangsta Grills because that's the strongest brand out of all of us. I was like, I don't, nah, I don't wanna call the Super Friends album Gangsta Grills, like, that's my shit. So they basically like-

• 57:03Speaker 00

  Wait, when did you morph into Gangsta Grills?

• 57:05Speaker 06

  I was, I started Gangsta Grills in 2000. So by like 03, 04, it had become a thing, like, where it was, you know, I, Little John was the first person to host it. So I used his voice on Gangsta Grills 4. And it was still just like a compilation at the time. And, you know, I did like Gangsta Grills 5 and I just kept using John's voice.

• 57:29Speaker 00

  Right. How did you, so how do you approach an artist? Cause for a lot of artists that weren't Gangsta Grills mixtape, like, as an outsider, I didn't know none of those people. So, you know, I'm hearing TI for the first time, I'm hearing like everyone that you put on.

• 57:43Speaker 06

  Right. Jeezy?

• 57:45Speaker 00

  Trapadot, yeah, yeah, Jeezy and all those things. Even like, really the first time I really paid attention to Wayne and all that stuff is really on Gangsta Grills.

• 57:52Speaker 06

  Right.

• 57:53Speaker 00

  So, like, how are you propositioning them and approaching them to do these things?

• 58:01Speaker 06

  Each situation is, is, differs in a way, but like Little John was, since was working at the station. And Cersei and Little John were partners in BME. And John used to be up there all the time and, you know, John was, he's one of the most down-to-earth, humble guys in the world. And I, I literally just asked him, you know, this was the time when I was paying attention to what was going on on the East Coast. And I asked him like, yo, would you host a mixtape for me? And he was like, sure. And he came to my crib in a Ford Ford and hence the Gangsta Grills drop was born. And, you know, he hosted the tape. Jason Jeter is the first person to ever call me. He got my number off the back of a mixtape from the barber shop.

• 58:47Speaker 06

  Now, think about this, I get a thousand DMs a day about artists trying to get on. The first phone call I ever got was from Jason Jeter and he was like, hey, my name's Jason Jeter. I have this new artist signed to La Face. We have a song with Beanie Siegel called Two Glocks Nine. I got one of your mixtapes, I wanna bring him through to freestyle on one of your tapes. And I was like, alright, sure, cool, whatever.

• 59:11Speaker 00

  Sight unseen, you don't know.

• 59:13Speaker 06

  Never met Tip, never, wasn't even familiar with the Two Glocks Nine record yet. So he literally comes to the crib, Jeter and Tip, super shy and quiet at the time. You know, I had my equipment in like where the laundry room would be. He comes in there, I pick a beat, I picked for the fan beat, um, the Rockefeller.

• 59:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:34Speaker 06

  With the one with a mill and everybody on it. And he freestyled on that. And at the end of the freestyle, he said, you know, the king of the south. And I remember, once him and Jeter left, I went to sense like, yo, this nigga said he's the king of the south. Like, he's tripping, like. So that was literally our introduction and then, you know, Jeter was also from Jersey. So he was paying attention to my mixtape grind and what I was doing. And they were kinda, you know, once things didn't work out between them and L.A. Reid, they got on their mixtape grind, so we were kinda both coming up at the same time. Where I lived, on Glen Iris, Coach K lived around the corner from me.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  Ah, okay.

• 1:00:14Speaker 06

  We got cool with Coach K, he had this group called Jadis, who Bobby Creekwater was a part of, who later got signed to Shady.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  He was on Shady, yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 06

  That was Coach K's first group. And then he also used to work for, um, Allen Henderson in Hindu, when Allen Henderson had a record label. But we got cool with Coach K, and then he told me like, yo, I got this, this artist from Macon. His name is Jeezy. And he had an album out, the first album they put out was called Come Shop With Me. And then Jeezy, I would, Coach would bring Jeezy over, and I would make show CDs for Jeezy. I would charge him like a hundred dollars, and he would come, and I would, he would just, he would, he was doing shows in Macon.

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:00:54Speaker 06

  And I would like make CDs, he would take instrumentals, whatever instrumentals were hot at the time. And I would just make them little, like, show CDs to put together. As Gangsta Girls was becoming a thing, so then I did like John Tape, then like, I think Scrappy hosted one. Then Jeter called me and was like, yo, I've been listening to the tape. I got this idea, let's do a all TI and PSC Gangsta Grills. And I was like, bet, you know, and at the time, I'm, I'm just fascinated by Green Lantern and Who Kid? And what Fifth is doing and what they're doing. And so Jeter and Tip gave me the opportunity to do the type of mixtape that I wanted to do.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  So you felt, cause I'm, I'm just amazed that your amount of faith is, it's so weird. Like I need to have this conversation, cause I'm such a no now, no, or who gonna be there? Who are gonna be there? Like that sort of thing and uh, get me out of this or whatever. But it seems to me that your, the key to your success is the word yes.

• 1:01:57Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  Yes and.

• 1:01:58Speaker 06

  Absolutely. Like I'm the type of guy, I give, when I go outside, I give my number to everybody.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:02:05Speaker 06

  The worst thing I can do is not answer.

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  It's not, right.

• 1:02:09Speaker 06

  Cause I think about that all the time. What if I would've told Jeter, no?

• 1:02:13Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:02:13Speaker 06

  So.

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  Now I think about all the no's I've told the Jeters in my life.

• 1:02:17Speaker 06

  Now, don't, now don't get me wrong, I've, you know, I mean, I've missed out on some things.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  Have you, yeah, have you passed up on a moment that like, damn, I could've had blah, blah, blah?

• 1:02:26Speaker 06

  Of course.

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  Name three, three notable, you probably worked with them since, but at least like, you could at least introduce them to the world or whatever.

• 1:02:34Speaker 06

  I mean, I've said this before, but Drake definitely wanted a Gangsta Grills very early on.

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  Alright.

• 1:02:39Speaker 06

  For sure.

• 1:02:40Speaker 00

  And you didn't know about him or it was just like you were too busy or?

• 1:02:44Speaker 06

  It was, I just, it didn't happen. You know, I mean, he went and he, cause he, I mean, he did a Southern Smalls tape, like DJ Smalls. So at the time, there was, there was Southern Smoke and there was Gangsta Grills. So, so, and then Bun B was a very early believer. So then I did the Tip, I did the Tip Gangsta Grills and that just like took off in the streets. And it was like, you know, Tip was on fire, Gangsta Grills was becoming a thing. And you know, that's, that was the soundtrack of the streets in Atlanta, the TI, PSC meets Gangsta Grills. And then I did a tape for Bun and then. I did a Gangsta Girls party and I had like, I had it, it was in Buckhead. And I think Tip hosted, Bonecrusher hosted, I think David Banner.

• 1:03:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, I did a tape with David Banner and Bonecrusher hosting. I was Gangsta Girls like seven. And it was like, that, that was insane. That, that was a big one. But it was still a compilation at the time.

• 1:03:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:03:37Speaker 06

  So then Coach and Jeezy took me out. They wanted to take me to lunch one day. So they took me to this spot called Harry and Sons. And Jeezy tells me, yo, I was at your party. Yo, I don't know how much you know, but the streets like fuck with you. You know, and I'm like, where, like, you know, I'm, I'm in the streets selling.

• 1:03:54Speaker 00

  You're unaware of this?

• 1:03:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm very unaware. Like when he, his, his ver- his, what his streets are wasn't what my streets were.

• 1:04:01Speaker 05

  That part.

• 1:04:01Speaker 06

  My streets were like.

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  Even being in Atlanta?

• 1:04:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, I was familiar, you know what I'm saying? Because I was doing parties for like BMF and things of that nature. But the streets for me were like going to the flea market and selling boxes of CDs, you know?

• 1:04:16Speaker 00

  You're not going to Bankhead or?

• 1:04:18Speaker 06

  I'm going anywhere. I'm going anywhere that they sell CDs, I'm going.

• 1:04:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:04:23Speaker 06

  But I'm not, you know.

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  In the streets?

• 1:04:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm, I'm selling mixtapes.

• 1:04:26Speaker 05

  Out the car, just dropping in the.

• 1:04:27Speaker 06

  I'm not selling nothing but mixtapes.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  Right, that part.

• 1:04:30Speaker 06

  You know, yeah, so then, you know, Jeezy tells me like, yo, when Meach goes to campus, that's where he goes and gets his Gangsta Girls from, like, he, he's listening to your shit. And he's like, listen, I got this vision, like, I want to do a Gangsta Girls with you. Like, he had it all mapped out. And I was tuned, I was listening like, no doubt. But at the time, I had never done a tape with somebody who wasn't known yet. And that was the first time I got paid for a tape. They gave me a thousand dollars. And we did the tape. It was called Streets Is Watching.

• 1:05:00Speaker 00

  God damn.

• 1:05:01Speaker 06

  It was a.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  I could've changed my life with just ten one hundred dollar bills?

• 1:05:04Speaker 05

  Right?

• 1:05:06Speaker 00

  What the fuck? Why did we go to you?

• 1:05:07Speaker 06

  Back then, right.

• 1:05:08Speaker 00

  I had a thousand bucks, shit.

• 1:05:10Speaker 06

  They paid me a thousand dollars to do the tape.

• 1:05:12Speaker 05

  You was already working good.

• 1:05:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, you was on, like, what are we talking about?

• 1:05:15Speaker 05

  Right, you're like on fifth record.

• 1:05:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, how many Grammys did you have by this?

• 1:05:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 1:05:20Speaker 06

  Come on.

• 1:05:20Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, you, yeah.

• 1:05:21Speaker 06

  We, we still, to this day, we, it's almost like we cut.

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  Like someone took us to the front of the bank line on a Friday.

• 1:05:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  And I got, we gotta go back to Baltic Avenue and Mediterranean Avenue and Oriental Avenue. Like, we got Park Place and all that stuff, but we realized that there's an early gap that we skipped. And it doesn't matter. Like, I could have 42 Oscars. We have to scratch that itch with black people.

• 1:05:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, they never did, like, the conferences and stuff, like, the How to Be Down, Jack the Rapper, Impact.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  We wanted to, but, you know, Geffen wouldn't have it. So, anyway, so go, go.

• 1:05:58Speaker 06

  So then, yeah, so originally the tape was called Jeez Up, but that was the name of Scrappy's group at the time. So we changed it to Streets is Watching. So when I did Streets is Watching, again, Gangsta Girls was a bigger brand than Young Jeezy at the time. So we put the tape out and we put it out around Birthday Bash era. And, you know, within a couple of months, I mean, I remember the first person to ever tell me, my man Jay, who does Raw Report, who wound up doing the DVD with Jeezy for Trap or Die, but I was on Glen Iris with my dad and he drove, he was driving by and he was like, "Yo, that Jeezy tape, that's the best Gangsta Girls you've ever done." And I'm like, "Word?" I just told Jeezy this the other day. And I was like, "Word? The new nigga? Like, because I'm TI'd out."

• 1:06:42Speaker 06

  You know what I'm saying? Like, it's Tip, the king, like, I'm on fire with Tip. And he's like, "Yo, the Jeezy tape, like, that shit hits different." So, you know, a couple of months in, Coach K is like, "Drom, you gotta come on the road with us." Like, "You gotta see what's going on." Like, they're doing this word for word.

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  There's one thing you're skipping. I gotta know this. As far as the marketing and the distribution.

• 1:07:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  Is there only one place to get this? Because how is Tariq, well, I mean, I guess y'all, I don't know how he got you joined.

• 1:07:12Speaker 06

  Nah, so really, thankfully, the bootleggers were like...

• 1:07:17Speaker 06

  Taking my shit to the next level. They were doing a lot of legwork for me.

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  So you didn't know that you were national?

• 1:07:22Speaker 06

  No, I went, I, when Gangsta Girls 7 came out, I wound up finding out where the bootleg spot was. And this was around the time, no, I'm sorry, it was Gangsta Girls 6. Gangsta Girls 6, but it was 50 Cent Get Rich or Die Tryin' had just came out. We wound up finding out where the bootlegs spot were, um, in the West End. And we went there and I literally saw as many Gangsta Girls 6s as I did Get Rich or Die Tryin' bootlegs. And I was like, I was like fascinated. I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Not thinking, damn, like, I'm not really making a lot of money, but these niggas is making a lot of money off my shit. But it's a mixtape. So it was for me, it was a, you know, it was a calling. Like, I mean, it was my calling card. Like, so I was

• 1:08:04Speaker 06

  just excited and I was moving around. Like, I would, I would come to Canal Street in New York and I would, you know, even at a time when they were telling me like, nah, we don't really check for su- south mixtapes. I would just be like, listen, take this, it's all yours, like, you know, and let me know how it does. And I would call back a couple of weeks, months later and they'd be like, yo, send us some more. So.

• 1:08:26Speaker 05

  When did that start? Is that like after 6? Is that from the jump? Or is that like?

• 1:08:29Speaker 06

  That was, that was all around the time. It was all around that time, around 6, around the, by, by the time Trapper Die came out, Gangsta Girls was the thing. So it was like, I didn't go anywhere in the country. I was on tour with TI at the time and I was hearing my shit come out of every car. And then I was like, damn, what am I gonna do next? And the next tape I did was Dedication.

• 1:08:52Speaker 05

  Okay, y'all. So that's gonna conclude part one of our conversation with DJ Drama. But wait a minute, you need to stay tuned for part two, where we speak to Drama about making mixtape classics with Lil Wayne, his evolution from making those tapes to platinum hits and why he is so proud. About working with Fonte and little brother on Separate But Equal. Oh, y'all don't want to miss that conversation. It gets deep and so good. But listen, stay tuned because we got more with my family repping C A U all day. DJ Drama.

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  What's Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  If you love music and great artists interviews, check out Before the Moment, hosted by Nile Rodgers. This new series follows Nile as he travels across the country, talking with some of today's most fascinating artists about the moments that shaped their lives and careers. From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Nile explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the point where everything changed. And this podcast tells the stories that came before. Listen to Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series, on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:10:17Speaker 06

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