What’s your musical inspiration?
My experiences in life, the things I learn and my true love and passion for music—mainly hip hop.

Describe yourself in three words.
Hip hop culture.

What are your musical guilty pleasures?
80s pop and rock, as well alternative music and R&B love songs. I only consider these to be guilty pleasures because my audience probably assumes I listen to nothing but hip hop, but I love all types of music. It can be a shock for people to hear the different things I play when I DJ. They don’t understand that my music is really derived from many different genres.

Your best gig?
My mother’s party in 1982 when I was only 12 years old.

Best gig you’ve ever been to?
A show at the Apollo Theater [in New York] where I saw Stetsasonic and Big Daddy Kane.

You won a Grammy with De La Soul, are there any other awards you would love to have on your shelf?
Winning was so surreal, even though it was from a collaboration on the Gorillaz record. I would love to win more but that’s not my focus, granted being at awards shows is really exciting because I get to see so many celebrities.

What can we expect from your upcoming gig?
I’m going to play for the dancers and give them my rendition of what the B-boys and B-girls danced to when I was coming up, as well as some new stuff that I like.

Are you working on any new projects?
Yes, we [De La Soul] are working on a new album entitled You’re Welcome and I’m working on a solo project entitled DJ Conductor LP on which I will be receiving production input and direction from Ali Shaheed. Also, Ali and I plan on putting in some studio work while we are in Asia because there are a couple of artists we feel deserve a shot at the mainstream music fabric. We are hoping to be the new tag team producers in hip hop.

How would you like to be remembered?
I would like to be known as the guy who brought tremendous joy to the world through two turntables, a mixer and a microphone.