It's impossible these days to be a DJ who's passionate about his or her craft and not know who DJ Craze is. With enough research, his name will either come up as part of the list of the all time greats or your favorite DJ will mention Craze as an inspiration in an interview. In the turntablism world, he has done the impossible of winning the World DMC's three times in a row (1998-2000), the World DMC Team Championship (2000), and almost every other scratch tournament out there. His skills are only matched by his passion to create and challenge himself, especially with his Slow Roast Records label that he started with Kill The Noise. Whether it's on tour with Kanye West or Yelawolf, in the studio, or in the clubs, Craze has been leading by example for years. So you'd better pray if by some twisted fate you ever have to perform after him.
Born in Nicaragua, Craze[1] moved to San Francisco and then Miami with his family to avoid the civil war and the violent governmental transitions. Once they found some relative peace and quiet in Miami, a 15 year old Craze caught onto DnB on the radio and started to admire his older brother and cousin controlling the life of several parties with a mobile DJ set up. On top of that, his friend's vast VHS tape collection of NMS Battle for Supremacy and DMC battles spoke to his inner B-Boy, making him want to master competitive DJing: "When I got my decks I gave up on friends and just practiced all day for fun."
From the start, Craze held himself to high standards and years of adhering to those standards have proved fruitful and eventually, grounds for his confidence. Below are some rules that you can follow at home if you want to be great like Craze one day:
- "When I make my routines the first thing I think of is how can I beat that last Craze routine."
- "I always pick current tunes and sounds to get the crowd to fuck with me and not lose them. It's very important to have the crowd relate to what you're doing."
- "We all hit creative roadblocks when creating. Think the trick is to not overthink... Let creation do what it do and just lose yourself in it. Creative roadblocks only happen to me when I try to do something that's not organic."
From being the target of everyone in the DMC's to moving into original production and Slow Roast[2], Craze has noticed an unfortunate crutch that many new competitors are having trouble overcoming. Where DJs used to challenge themselves as purely tablists, or taking their favorite songs or samples to make them even more entertaining, now DJs approach their sets with a production mindset to create something totally new: "A lot of these new routines have a lot of technicality but go over peoples heads 'cause they don't know what's going on. They don't know if the record is doing the work or the DJ." In a way, Craze has set a precedent of using songs to beat juggle into a new pattern but never beyond recognition and always with the right touch of technical subtlety. And if you want to challenge him on this philosophy today, you'd be foolish to think a W would be easy: "If I had time to prep I would definitely win any competition. I'm the best battle DJ of all time... I live for that shit. In any battle I would come out victorious. Nobody wants it with me in a battle!!! Excuse my Kanye moment."
While his resume may resemble most people's bucket lists, there are a couple things he'd still like to do. One is to be the creative director for a tour with Teeko and Ruckazoid. After spending years behind the turntables, he feels confident that he can orchestrate a show that could travel worldwide. The other is to become a great solo producer: "It's something I'm finally getting the hang of and I feel I could be a problem very soon." But at the same time, his ever present drive that earned him all of those scratch belts has taken the backseat with his production and his label: "If I and we put out good music and maintain our quality over quantity motto, we'll be good. I just wanna put out and make dope shit." In three words, he's more concerned with being "fresh, new, [and] exciting."
But don't think that for a second that the opinionated side of Craze is going to take a break any time soon. When he's not scouting new artists for Slow Roast or working on new beats, he still has a talent to put together a dope routine that will strike a chord with its viewers on a deeper level than most. Recently, he reinterpreted Kanye West's anti-classist "New Slaves" to apply directly to the DJ community--specifically those who treat it more as a lucrative show than an art form with substance: "The general reaction for [the] New Slaves routine has been 95% good. The only people screwing is kids under 21 who got butthurt that I insulted their celeb idols or some of the main room club types that don't understand that a routine is a spectator sport not a dance thing."
Looking forward though, Craze continues to have some hope in the next generation: "When I see kids like Dwells [14 years old] and Sara [16 years old] doing they thing it makes me smile for real. It reminds me of when we were on the come up. We did it for the love and didn't care what was the happening thing at the moment. Tablism will never die." While Craze may be right, with his rate of productivity, kids like Dwells and Sara will still have big problems to deal with (read: Craze will most likely still be schooling younger DJs) and even bigger shoes to fill when they get to Craze's age.
[1] "I was given the name Craze by a homie in High School. I wrote it down on a piece of paper and thought it was fresh... and that was it. Crazearoni came about when I started joining social media. I noticed that Craze & DJ CRAZE were all taken by some idiots so instead of making my handle 'TheRealCraze' or 'Craze1' or 'ItsCraze' I decided to go with Crazearoni. My homegirl MC Chickaboo gave me that name on tour. She used to joke around screaming, 'Crazearoni my number one homie.'"
[2] "Slow Roast came about after me and Kill The Noise went to Klever's MySpace one day and saw something he said in his music description like, 'Slow Roast... no fast food shit,' and we were like, 'BOOM!!! That's the perfect name for a label.'"
Last Call
1. What is your favorite movie of all time?The Matrix
2. As a young DJ, who was the one DJ you looked up to?Magic Mike
3. As a DJ, what's your biggest pet peeve?Producers running the game with absolutely no clue on how to be a good DJ.
4. What is your current DJ set up at home?Traktor Z2 and 2 1200's
5. What's your favorite record of all time?Pharcyde - Bizzare Ride To The Pharcyde
Keep up with Craze on his website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube. For everything Slow Roast related, check out their website, Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook page.
Bryan Hahn is on a strict slow roast diet now and he's happily put on mad weight. He's on Twitter: @notupstate.