During the rise of Composition, Paraphan Records, and Sunday School, my best friend and club manager came to me with a concept for a party. The rough Idea was a night inspired by the likes of Run DMC and Aerosmith’s collaboration, but to combine indie rock with hip hop. As a nod to Herbie Hancock perhaps, the party would be called Rocket. 

The front room was anchored by DJ Omar of Sixxteen and Fake, with a rotating cast of regulars playing indie. The back room was DJ OtterPop, (the amazing Dr. Jennifer Otter Bickerdike) and myself playing hip hop and pop. 

As a producer and DJ constantly trying to capture the original essence of juggling and sampling, that back room was my lab, particularly when I pulled the 9 and 10 pm sets, where the crowd was just getting started and could deal with a poorly executed blend, or a crunchy early mix of something new. And I was pushing the limits and trying some weird concepts in rock-oriented breaks. 

 I’m not sure what the first banger was out of my mixes at Rocket, but when I first dropped Alabama Gramma, there was no doubt it was a winner. It was a mix of Nelly’s Country Grammar and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama in an eye-rollingly ironic nod to both songs being described as love songs to the south. Over the next year, I proceeded to record my life mixes with a portable mini disc recorder, and worked on them at home, in a studio mostly composed of two Technics 1200s, an AKAI S-2000 sampler, and a cheap Tascam audio interface.