Shop.Talk: DJ Craze
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Arielle Castillo
AT UNCLE SAM'S MUSIC IN MIAMI
Photos: Lafi
Standing among the cramped aisles of Uncle Sam's Music, a Miami Beach institution, DJ Craze looks momentarily stymied by the bins of 12-inches. “Wowwww,” he says, staring at the hip-hop section crammed into a back corner. “I remember when this used to be a weekly thing!” But Craze can't remember the last time he bought a record or even brought one to a gig — this four-time world DMC champion doesn't use vinyl at all anymore.
One of the first to make the jump to Stanton FinalScratch around 2001, he switched to Serato Scratch Live a couple of years ago. “I was really cool with the Stanton people, but Serato has really become the new standard, like 1200s were,” Craze says. “I mean, when I do all my DMC stuff, I still use vinyl, but even then I'm like, ‘Fuck it, I'm just going to transfer everything into Serato.’” They're at first surprising words for someone who originally made his name by pushing the limits of turntablism on the classic ones and twos.
But Craze has built the rest of his career by defying expectations, both technological and musical. “I mean, I've always just moved on from everything,” he says. “Like when I was into hip-hop, all of a sudden I got into turntablism. Everybody was like, ‘Fuck that turntablist shit!’ And when I got done with turntablism, I got into drum 'n' bass, and everyone was like, ‘Let me see you scratch!’”
And in recent years, he's left d 'n' b, too, in the dust. And the haters can't stop clinging to the past. “I'm always moving 'cause I get bored of stuff. I can't spin it for more than two, three years. But with drum 'n' bass, it was like I got mad at the scene. And still, everywhere I go, I'll start spinning and people will start yelling, [breaks into high-pitched, mock simper] ‘Drum 'n' bass, nigga! Fuck that shit!’”
Instead, these days Craze, born in Nicaragua but raised in Miami, is mining the dance-music traditions of his hometown: Miami. Of course, that means classic Latin freestyle, a smattering of hip-hop and bass — lots of bass. Not that he's turned his back to the past. A self-professed blog devotee (he name-checks Discobelle, Maddecent and Digiwaxx as a few favorites), he's constantly mixing in the latest variations on booty-shaking jams. “See, I'm playing between, like, bass, old-school freestyle, electro, B-more and club — club music like the Pase Rock, Kid Sister kind of vibe, where it's a mix of hip-hop and dance. What are you going to call it, hip-pance?”
It's in that spirit that he skips over most new electronic records, instead heading straight to the domestic hip-hop and classics sections at Uncle Sam's on a sunny afternoon shortly before a tour to promote his latest mix, Fabriclive.38 (Fabric, 2008). It's one of the most fresh-sounding recent offerings in the series, bumping from hip-hop and vintage booty bass to a smattering of house and freestyle, and onto new joints influenced by all that. It'll no doubt be a new trip for most people who didn't happen to grow up in '80s and '90s Miami, or, perhaps, the more Latin pockets of New York and New Jersey.
“I was in Bangkok, and I did a whole Miami bass set,” Craze recalls. “The whole place was going crazy, and this British kid comes up to me at the end of the night, and was like, ‘What's all that grime you were playing?’ And I was like, ‘Grime? That's Miami bass, homey!’”
But no sweat; as evidenced on his Fabric mix, Craze's beat tapestry is one where N.O.R.E., Earth, Wind & Fire, Debbie Deb and Armand Van Helden can all coexist, and it all makes sense. So when Remix meets up with him at Sam's, Craze digs for old records he doesn't recognize, hoping to mine them for beats and loops he can use to fill in the picture.
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