It’s the month of music. This week we feature DJ Knotts. Discover his experience, inspirations and challenges.
Transcribe
[00:00:00.090] – Speaker 1
It’s the one and only Africa Allah and the B Team DJ’s by Playmass dot today you’re familiar. It is the
one and only Africa Allah. And you are now tuned into another episode of being Africa Allah right
here on Discover Music Channel by playmass today. And today I have the pleasure of having a
conversation with my steam colleague and friend DJ Knox. Knox was good.
[00:00:25.630] – Speaker 2
Well, it’s good. yo, how are you?
[00:00:27.360] – Speaker 1
All as well? All as well. So today we are going through the month of music and today is all about DJ
Knots. First and foremost. Before we get into who DJ Knots is your inspirations, et cetera, I want to
know what song lives rent free in your head.
[00:00:45.630] – Speaker 2
I don’t know if it’s an actual song, but probably more different bars or different songs. Live rent free in
my head. It’s like when you’re part of this culture, like we’ve been for so long and you hear so many
different lyrics and you just interact on a day to day basis with people. Just different situations call for
different songs and different lyrics and different bars to be used. So I don’t know if I have just one. It’s
like way too many. So I have like pieces of different ones who I’ll just pick up and use randomly.
[00:01:14.570] – Speaker 1
Okay. Now they don’t do vibe at a month or quotable, right? Hip hop quotable. Tell me, what is a lyric
that you feel barred on? Is the hardest lyric that you ever heard?
[00:01:28.590] – Speaker 2
Hardest. Oh, and actually it’s a conversation that I probably bring up myself about once a year just to
start some stuff and just remind people how ill the line is. I assume you and your listeners are familiar
with Triumph by Wutang Clan.
[00:01:43.650] – Speaker 1
Of course.
[00:01:44.790] – Speaker 2
Of course. And you already know which bar I’m talking about just by saying that, don’t.
[00:01:49.590] – Speaker 1
You go ahead and split the bar? I might know, but I’m sure there are portions of the community
because I just realized that, wow, like 90, like hip hop. Like 93 was like 30 years ago.
[00:02:08.560] – Speaker 2
Well, thanks for that depressing note. I don’t know how that came and became a part of the
conversation, but Triumph was like, what, 98, 97. Anyway, one of the greatest, actually, to me, the
greatest opening four bars in a hip hop song. Obamatomically, Socrates, Philosophies and
Hypotheses can’t define how I’d be dropping these mockeries liberal, could perform armed robbery,
believe with the lottery, possibly they spotted. Come on, come on.
[00:02:38.880] – Speaker 1
And then the surprising part about that bar is who it was delivered by.
[00:02:47.590] – Speaker 2
Why do you say that?
[00:02:48.680] – Speaker 1
I’m just saying. Anyway, so now that we know bar none, what you think is the hottest bar?
[00:02:55.510] – Speaker 2
Hottest opening bar? Yes, indeed. I want to specify that.
[00:02:58.650] – Speaker 1
Okay, hottest opening bar. Let’s specify that. What inspired you to become a DJ?
[00:03:04.250] – Speaker 2
It’s pretty simple. Seeing people really enjoy themselves and thinking how to make the moments even
more memorable. I remember coming down, actually, before that, but just the energy. Growing up in
Brooklyn and spending time in some time block parties and basement parties, things like that.
Remember what that energy was like and wanted to provide that. So I went to high school down in
Orlando, and a lot of times we’d be out chilling. This is mid to late 90s, actually, the mid 90s. So we
would be around kicking it. And I was like, man, you know what make this better is somebody with DJ.
And that’s really where the love and the energy and the focus wanted to come from. Wanted to
provide the soundtrack, the backdrop, shit the front drop to whatever was going on.
[00:03:49.210] – Speaker 1
Saying that. Who are some of your idols? Who are some of the DJs that you look up to?
[00:03:54.270] – Speaker 2
Yeah, idols and look up to my mother. Then tell me about idols. But we only need that for now. The
DJs I truly respect. And look it to his inspiration in the beginning. People like to jazz, Jeff to do Op,
because mixtape seems real heavy when I was coming up. I’m not going to put you in that. Who else?
Who else? So between the mixtape and the part of DJ Red Alert was a little bit before me, but even
still, you could say a Red Alert. But I had a lot of homies, too, who were DJing before me, who would
inspire me to the way that they were spending as well. So it made me want to push myself, you know
what I mean? So I’m a homie livewire, just watching how he always took the science to it. And of
course, he DJs with Dougie Fresh now, been with Doug for at least over ten years now. So it’s just a
variety of people and situations where I could be like, I really appreciate what they’re doing.
[00:04:58.170] – Speaker 1
Now. You said that it’s.
[00:05:00.090] – Speaker 1
In high school, you kind of was inspired to be a DJ, but when did you actually start DJing?
[00:05:06.330] – Speaker 2
Senior year, senior year, I was buying the vinyl first. Started messing around fully on the turntables
because I did a little bit in New York, but that was very random. So I could say the first official, official
time was senior year in high school.
[00:05:20.820] – Speaker 1
Really? Okay, all right, that’s what’s up.
[00:05:23.720] – Speaker 2
You start spending your money on up, that’s when you start to say, you take my series.
[00:05:31.290] – Speaker 1
So senior year in high school is when you really started investing in being a DJ. What were some of
the challenges and what are some of the challenges that you faced as a DJ?
[00:05:44.750] – Speaker 2
Like most DJs, when you started out some place to place getting access to the music, because that
was definitely all final back then. So, like I said, it was in Orlando, so we had a limited amount of
record shows you could go to, and it was still an abundance of DJs. Not like it is now, but it was still
several DJs who beat the record store. You had to do your crate digging, had to be something serious
just to even build your collection up and even decide what genre you wanted to start off with. So back
then, if you weren’t on the radio, if you weren’t with the label, and back then I actually meant
something, then you weren’t getting access to all of those rhinos and things like that. So I remember
the first time when I got real, had a real relationship with people with the label, and they were like, oh,
man, please take this vinyl, please. I remember my homie safety work for Sony, and I told him, this is
after high school. And I told him, like, yeah, I need more vinyl. This man had about nine or ten boxes of
vinyl shipped to me at the store I was working at Warehouse Music over in Stole Mountain, if anybody
remembers that.
[00:06:52.760] – Speaker 2
But yeah, so my collection had an immediate influx of records just from Sony.
[00:06:59.020] – Speaker 1
Aloe, that’s interesting that you would say that, and I never really thought about it because now we’re
so inundated with so much music and we have access to all of these various record pools, of course,
for fee, but we have access to all of this music, and I think we take this for granted. Like you’re saying
now, you had to have vinyl and you had to be very selective of what it was you were going to play
because you were only as good as your pockets.
[00:07:28.670] – Speaker 2
That was definitely a big plot. That was a big part of it. I remember making decisions like, okay, I want
doubles this twelve inch single, but I also want the whole album in my pockets and go that deep. So it
was a lot of times like, okay, am I going to get the whole album and be able to play other joints or am I
going to put on a little mini routine right now and get these Devils and go to work? So, yeah, definitely
had to make some tough decisions.
[00:07:53.530] – Speaker 1
How has the party how has the party scene change since you began to now?
[00:07:59.950] – Speaker 2
It’s had different mutations and transformations, especially being here in Atlanta, especially in the
different scenes that I was in. Because when we first started partying was people figuring it out. It
was a lot of college parties, it was house parties, things like that. So once you get those parties going,
it’s pretty much just high energy and the fact that people are wanting to do something to party and
everything else like that. So once we started getting outside and doing things once I started getting
outside and doing things in different clubs, we’re talking about early 2000s for sure. It was definitely
about creating a vibe. Like the sets were different. You definitely had your early warm sets. You
played your slower Orange or maybe older school hip hop arm, or if it was a Caribbean party, older
school reggae, things like that. To get into the mid part of the party where you’re picking up scene,
you’re picking up energy, those type of records to where you really have the prime time hours of, I’d
say between one and 02:00 A.m., depending how late you go. That may got extended at one to 03:00
A.m.. But back then, the hottest record out almost always 98% of the time got played at 01:00 A.m..
[00:09:04.480] – Speaker 2
If you had a 01:00 A.m. Record, then you really had something special. And it was crazy because is
me and my friends will refer to it as that. Then I heard Drama, DJ Drama shout out to him. Referred to
it once in an interview at the same way. And I was tripping. I was like, Wait, yeah, I call it that too. So it
was just interesting to see how other DJs relate to it the same way. So fast forward to picking it up
now. There’s a time in Atlanta where everything became about the lounge. It was a whole lot of
standing around. It was less women friendly records. It was a whole lot of heavy, hardcore street rap
records that took over and that’s basically what you heard. So the dancing and the vibe and the club
changed up a lot because of that. So during that time, it became a lot less fun for me to do those type
of records because it was the same same message, same type of energy behind it. And it just wasn’t
you didn’t get to see people party and really enjoy themselves like you used to. They weren’t there was
no more dancing as much.
