Scratch:
What was your first exposure to DJ’ing?
I
was about 12 or 13 years old. I was at sports camp at the YMCA
and we had a sleepover. One of the older kids brought in his DJ
equipment for the sleepover to have, like, a little party and
from that moment that was it. At that point in my life, I decided
that this was what I wanted to do. I had been exposed to it here
and there. I went to park jams and stuff with my older cousins.
But until I was face to face with an actual DJ in front of an
actual setup, that’s what changed everything.
Scratch: Did you learn from other people that
were around in your neighborhood?
Everything
that I learned, I learned from just watching DJ’s and listening.
Once I dedicated myself to it, you couldn’t separate me
from DJ’ing. I would watch some of the older guys. There
was this guy Grandmaster Vic – he’s actually the creator
of hip-hop R&B... he was the one that I followed. If he was
doing a park jam, I’m going to that park jam. He put out
a mixtape nearly every week, I would get one... I just continued
to study him. I would go to the south side of Queens and just
watch these guys do it. There was Grandmaster Vic, there was the
Amazing Dewitt, there was JT, there was Rufus, there was Johnny
Quest. Those were the DJs when I was coming up that if you were
gonna be a DJ, you were gonna be like them, so my style came from
taking a little bit of each one of these DJ’s. Then I started
getting exposed to Kid Capri tapes, Brucie B., Starski, Hollywood,
Grandmaster Caz – the old time guys that made the game.
Those dudes set the foundation for the game and I would follow
these guys wherever they went.
Scratch: Were you always able to support yourself
through DJ’ing?
No,
I grew up in a house where my parents were hard-working people
and they were basically like, ‘We don’t care what
you love to do. You’re gonna get yourself a job and take
your ass to school and you’re gonna do it the right way.
If DJ’ing pops off, then it pops off, but I don’t
see a future in it’. So I was under that growing up. It
was like ‘I really like doing this and I could turn it up,
but I gotta get a job’. I pretty much put my dreams on hold
just to please them, and then after a while it would always be
a problem. [JWR’s jobs included a teaching aid for the New
York Board of Education, a hospital cop, and a security guard
at the Museum of Natural History]. Eventually, I came up to the
point where I didn’t need a day job anymore. It was a schedule
conflict because I was in and out of town, using up all my vacation
time so I could DJ, so something had to give. I was like, ‘If
I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna go all out’. It was
a dangerous risk, but you only live once.
Scratch:
How did you hook up with Funkmaster Flex and become one of the
Big Dawg Pit bulls?
When
I decided to get into the game, I didn’t know how. I didn’t
have any connections, I didn’t know anybody. What I did
was I politicked my way into a Lil’ Kim party at Jimmy’s
Bronx Café. I got there early and politicked with the bouncer.
It turned out he was in a great mood – he gives me a VIP
pass and everything. I’m chilling, and Flex had seen me
around the club scene a little bit, so he calls me over and asks
me my name. He’s like, 'Yo look, I’m about to start
my own thing (Franchise Records), maybe you’d be interested
in doing some work for me,' or whatever.
I
was with Franchise on the street team for about two years before
he actually started the Pit Bulls (Flex’s DJ crew). We started
the Pit Bulls and I actually wasn’t going to be on the team
– the ironic thing was that it was between me and Jam Master
Jay. So they were going to put Jay on as the last Pitbull. The
other ones were: Big Kap, Cypha Sounds, Mister Cee, DJ Kaori,
Frank Jigga, the DJ Twinz (Redman’s DJ’s), and DJ
Scratch (EPMD’s DJ). With Jay’s schedule with Run-DMC
and things he was into, he didn’t really need us to keep
getting parties and stuff so they put me in. They knew I could
open up a party, I could close a party, and if need be, I could
hold down the main set.
Scratch:
How’d you get the handle Johnny Walker Red?
When
I first got with Franchise I was on the street team and the other
guys were drinking the regular shit, but I used to spend summers
in the Hamptons with my family. There’s only good shit out
there, and my father used to drink Johnny Walker so I would always
drink that at the clubs downtown. I told the people at Franchise
when I first started DJ’ing that I didn’t have a DJ
name. They’re like, ‘We’re gonna call you Johnny
Walker Red because that’s all you fucking drink anyway’.
Cause I used to drink it 'til it was gone, all day, everyday.
And that’s how the name came and it stuck.
Scratch: Now that we know how you got your name,
how did you make your name in the New York club scene?
The
thing that made me was the Tunnel on Sunday nights. One week all
the other DJ’s were out of town. All of them. Flex was out
of town. Kap was out of town. Cypha was out of town. The Twinz
were on the road with Redman. They told me that when I arrived
at the Tunnel. I had brought all of my crates like I did every
week even though I was only gonna play for the first hour and
a half. The Tunnel was like, ‘Everybody is out of town.
You got enough records? You gotta play the whole night’.
I played from nine to four in the morning by myself. After that
night everybody started paying attention to me. I started receiving
lots of phone calls. I did that party and I stepped up to the
plate because I was prepared. I would practice all week long and
then I would practice right before I left to go to the club. I
used to literally see it before it happened. Before I was able
to play the Tunnel, I used to see myself playing there.
Scratch: Can you talk about your involvement
with the upcoming Lipton Brisk Flavor of Hip Hop Summer Tour?
The
summer tour is the biggest thing going for me since I’ve
been DJ’ing professionally. One, it’s gonna take me
all over the country. Two, I don’t even know the amount
of potential networking and meeting different people in the different
cities. We get to expose what we do at the Scratch DJ Academy,
letting people out there know that a DJ does more than just bring
his records and play them. We are important. In the same way that
an MC takes his time to write a rhyme for you to listen to, a
DJ does the same thing with preparing his records… Since
the DJ is in the background, people tend to overlook us. But you
better not sleep because DJ’s are here and always have been.
That’s the great thing about the tour – we get to
take DJ’ing to places where everybody is used to a CD player
or just buying a mixtape.
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