DJs

Celebrity DJs/DJ Spinderella Rant

Two days ago, DJ Spinderella had a twitter rant after learning Lil Wayne had decided to become a DJ. She had words for a lot of celebrities like Alicia Keys aka DJ Mrs AK-47 and Kanye West aka DJ Yeezy World Peace. Check out the timeline which I was able to get from Carlton Jordan:

I understand Spin’s frustration, I also give celebrity DJs the side eye. How does one wake up and say “Today I’m going to be a DJ because I have the money to buy equipment and I have a lot of music.” Huh? To me that’s disrespectful to the craft of being a disc jockey. It’s true that they aren’t taking any money out of my pocket because I haven’t djayed a bar/lounge in years, but for those big name DJs this creates a huge problem. Clubs would increase their patronage with a big name DJ but are you paying to party or look at Kanye all night. I can only imagine how much it would cost to listen to Lil Wayne spin, but if he’s garbage, what did you really get?

I recently went to the Brooklyn Bowl to hear Talib Kweli spin. Questlove was originally supposed to spin and after the last time I heard him, I knew I needed more. He cancelled and Kweli took his place. He had absolutely no technique. The music choices were all over the place and his transition made grimace. Still, because I love music so much, I tried to enjoy myself.

In my opinion, unless celebrities are willing to take the craft seriously, they should leave the djaying to the professionals. In some cases like Idris Elba or Mike and Pauly from Jersey Shore, they really practice and study. From what I hear about Kanye West’s first gig, he played a nice eclectic mix of music but I hope he understands that it takes more to DJ than a Serato box, a laptop and a playlist.