Interview by Belly & DJ Void (allskratch.net)
For over 10 years now Rob Swift has been expanding the art of DJing and turntablism for future generations to come. Wether DJing early on for a major label artist when Akinyele was at his biggest, being a member of one of the most notorious and talented turntablist groups in history the X-Ecutioners, releasing solo albums or collaborating with acclaimed musicians such as Bob James or Herbie Hancock, he's definitely done it all. Earlier this year Rob decided to split with the X-Ecutioners and go solo in order to gain total creative control of his projects. Thus September 6th, he's dropping a full-length solo CD/DVD entitled WARGAMES. We spoke to him about the album, the importance of being a well-rounded DJ, the future DJs and much more. Check it out...
Belly: So why don't we start off with the basic who is Rob Swift info.
Rob Swift: Basically I started DJing when I was 12 years old. Big influences of mine are my father and my brother. My dad used to spin Salsa and Meringue being that we're Columbian that was his thing. Me and my brother would go to parties he was DJing at for friends and we'd watch him do his thing. My brother at the time really started getting into Hip Hop music. We had the equipment in the house, state of the art turntables, speakers, amplifiers the whole 9 yards. On our days off from school when my parents would go to work, my brother would invite all his friends over and they'd make mix-tapes and my brother would be on the turntables cutting it up. All this without my father knowing cause if he found out he would kill my brother or whatever. He'd use my dad's equipment without him knowing and I'd sit there and watch and take it all in and that's my earliest influences to become a DJ. I gradually started to take it more and more seriously, analyzing and studying other DJs like Grand Mixer DST and Mixmaster Ice, Cash Money. Each year, DJs seemed to get better and I just wanted to keep up. I took it serious from a real young age and I think that has to do with why I ended up making it as a DJ now.
Void: It seems like you always go through a lot of different avenues ya know, you go through battling, you can party rock, you can do a lot of different things, what inspired you to go to all these places with it?
Rob Swift: Yeah, I think I'm able to do that because I was influenced by the pioneers ya know? People like Kool Herc and Bambaataa who's emphasis was more on party rockin. Then you have Grandmaster Flash and Grandmixer DST who could party rock and then also showcase their skill, their ability to scratch and backspin and do stuff. So being I had a well rounded space in regards to my influences, I wanted to be like Bambatta, then I also wanted to be like Flash. I always surrounded myself with different styles of Djing where as today for example a younger kid coming up will see Q-Bert and then that's all they're going to expose themselves to is Q-Bert CDs, Q-Bert albums and go to every Q-Bert show but they're only getting one aspect of the art-form so when they're coming up and they're practicing, they're only practicing to be as good as Q-Bert. Q-Bert for example, he doesn't party rock, he doesn't DJ for an emcee, the only time you see him is on stage by himself, showcasing his talent. Another younger kid sees that and thinks that's all there is to DJing but there's so much more. So I think me being fortunate to being exposed to all these different styles of DJs, having an older brother who'd take me to park jams. I developed an appreciation for all these different styles from being a radio DJ, a club DJ, battle DJ, DJing for a rap group I've experienced all those different forms or styles of DJing and I think that's why now I really try to put an emphasis on everything, not just my ability to beat juggle or scratch or whatever.
Belly: What was it like in the 90s touring with Akinyele?
Rob Swift: It was a lot of fun man, I grew a lot and I learned a lot about the business of being an artist signed to a record label. At the time Ak was one of the illest Emcees, actually to me he still is one of the illest emcees but at the time he'd made his debut on Live at the Bar-B-Que with Nas on that Main Source record. Being attached to him as his DJ to me was an honor, it was a time where Emcees and groups really made use of their DJs. You had Run DMC with Jam Master Jay, Scratch with EPMD, it was a time where the DJ was really featured especially in a live setting on stage and such. It wasn't like oh this is Ak's DJ, I had my own identity and he really made it a point to say my name on songs or if we'd be performing on stage he'd give me my 5 minutes of shine to do my thing and walk off stage. It was a great experience and I think that whole thing prepared me for going on and traveling and touring with the X-Ecutioners and doing label music.
Belly: Tell me about the new CD/DVD WARGAMES.
Rob Swift: Wargames is an album that was inspired by 9/11. That day obviously had a major impact on me as it did many other people. I remember a month or so after that all happened, it was really hard for me to even get creative and work on any music. Around that time I was wrapping up work on Sound Event my second solo album. I remember questioning why I was doing it after an event like that you start to realize there are certain things that puts things into perspective and you start to question like "What are you doing in life" and "What's your purpose" and all that stuff so I was going through a lot of that. I think what I actually ended up doing was a form of therapy for me to get out of the rut I was in. I started thinking, why don't I start using those feelings and create music around those emotions. For example when you listen to a lot of Jazz wether it be Coltraine or Miles Davis, a lot of their music is based off events they've experienced, things they've seen. They put those emotions down on paper in the form of musical notes. That's their way of expressing themselves. Some of their best work I'm sure has a lot to do with real-life things that they've experienced so I thought why not try to do the same thing with WARGAMES.
I started recording everything, speeches by Bush or regular news broadcasts. Things that I'd watch started to inspire ideas. For example on WARGAMES there's a song called A GHETTO POEM that's about poverty. What inspired that song was watching the news or watching segments that dealt with upper or lower class people and that inspiring me to make a song about it.
I have a song called ANOTHER FRIENDLY GAME OF BASEBALL featuring Large Professor. That song's about police brutality and the inspiration came from a couple years back in the Bronx here in New York City a man by the name of Amadou Dialo was shot at 41 times by 4 police officers. That really, really, really took the inner-city back cause people were just afraid of cops for a while. To this day when I see a police officer, I don't necessarily feel safe. I felt, yo, let me make a song about that. So all the different songs on the album were inspired by real events or things I've seen on the news. I thought it would be a good way for me to deal with my own feelings about what's going on. Although 9/11 inspired the album, I gradually started to incorporate other world issues into the album.
Belly: You're definitely speaking your world views with the turntables on this one. Like you said, 9/11, the war, the re-election is on there a bit, police brutality are all tackled on there. 15 years ago did you ever dream someone would say that about a DJs album?
Rob Swift: No, no. And that's one of the things for me, makes this album special. It's not Chuck D or KRS-ONE saying it, it's a DJ. The idea that a DJ can use his turntable to communicate thoughts that are this deep for me is showing just how unique the art is and just how far you can take it. You don't necessarily need a microphone and write rhymes to say something powerful through music. You can do it by scratching, and I think I'm showing that and to me that's one of the things that's really dope about this album and I hope people will understand that this isn't your normal DJ oriented album, it's not me showing off my skills or how good I am, it's me using my skills to say something.
Belly: Yeah it's got a nice concept. I was watching the DVD that accompanies the CD which was the Japanese version. That version brought a whole new light to the project with the subtitles because it made me think about Japanese people watching it and what they were thinking.
Rob Swift: Yeah, the DVD, when I was working on the album, I started thinking to myself that a lot of what I was doing was gonna go right over people's heads in the sense... You can listen to a song like Terrorism on WARGAMES and not realize just how visual the song is and how I got my idea for the song by watching the news. There might be a particular sound that was inspired by a particular image and I wanted people to know that. Halfway through working on the album, I decided I was going to cut a movie around the music. That way people could identify the exact images and incidents that inspired songs and parts of songs. For example in the song Terrorism, there's a bridge where there are these loud noises, these weird hits and it's at the top of every bar. The bridge is about 8 bars lets say. Those hits, those noises you hear were inspired by explosions. You wouldn't know that though unless I told you. If you heard the song, you'd just think there are these noises and he put them here, I wanted people to know that there were things that inspired the noises and a reason I put the noises there at that particular part. I felt the movie was going to help me express that and help show like WOW, I see why it's called WARGAMES and I see the influences the TV had on this guy. I wanted people to get more of an in-depth view of what made me record the album the way I did. There's extras on there as well. There's a live performance of me on there, there's a Gap commercial I appeared in a while back, an old video with me and Akynelle on one of his singles. There's a movie and then there's some more behind the scenes stuff on there for the fans who've been following my career for this 10 some odd years or whatever.
Belly: Yeah, the DVD is definitely not a throw away DVD, it really brings a whole new visual aspect to the project.
Rob Swift: I really didn't want to just come out with a turntable album showcasing my skills with a rapper having a couple verses here and there. My whole thing was what can I do different this time around. I was like if this was my last album I wanted to make it special and really try to say something beyond "I'm the dopest scratcher or the dopest beat juggler" I wanted it to say something beyond that and that's really why the album came together the way it did.
Void: I saw you have Rikki Rucker, and Toadstyle and Quest and Mello-D. How did those collaborations come about and did they have the same vision for the songs they were on.
Rob Swift: The cool thing about Quest and Mello D, and Rikki Rucker and Toadstyle is that, even all the other artists on there from Large Professor to Bob James and Akynelle, all the people that I worked with really did a good job of helping me, bring my vision out for each particular song. Opposed to trying to get me to do something different, they would try to help me get my thoughts out the way I wanted to. That's why I worked with those guys cause I knew that they'd be able to do that for me. Mello-D I've been friends with him for years. I remember reading in a magazine, this was early 90's before I even met him. I won the 92 East Coast DMC battle and I remember reading that watching that tape really inspired him. Automatically there was a connection there and I always knew that would be someone I'd want to work with at some point cause he understands what I'm trying to do with my music. He's always one of the guys I reach out to when I work on a project and I want a DJ to feature on it. He was on my last album SOUND EVENT too.
Rikki Rucker and Toadstyle are the young generation of DJs helping the art progress. Those guys are amazing. I look at them and there's shit they're doing on the turntables that I can't do. And now, you know, I'm learning from them. Watching them rip it up on the turns. I felt like, I got Quest, I got Melo-D who are more like my peers, guys who kinda came up with me. I thought it would be cool to also do a song with the younger generation of DJs who are now paving a new way for us. I think in doing so, that's what keeps me around. The fact I can learn from the young DJs. I still look to the younger generation of cats coming up to keep going. No matter what you've accomplished, there's always someone after you that does things just a little different. The way to maintain longevity is to stay a fan of it and I'm a big fan of those guys. That song, it really made me step it up a few notches cause I knew everything I did, was going to be compared to anything they did on the track so that made me want to step it up even more. Like I was saying before, there's other artists on there like Bob James who someone like your mom might appreciate or someone who's older or anyone who's into melody or Jazz could be like wow, this DJ collaborated with this Jazz artist.
Void: Right, away from the fact where a Hip Hop crowd could be like Bob James is the sample everyone's looking for and others might recognize the actual music he made.
Rob Swift: Right, exactly. So it's just me trying to figure out a variety of ways to help people understand that what we do as DJs, there's so much more to it than battling or being the best scratcher, there's so many more levels to it. The idea that I'm making an album that touches on all these different issues and then the way I constructed it all. Getting with different DJs and musicians, again, it's just hitting people with all these different ways of making turntable music.
Belly: Do you have any advice for DJs trying to come up in the mix-tape or album circuit?
Rob Swift: I always say just be well rounded, try to learn all there is to learn about the art of DJing. That means going out and building your record collection. Listening to a lot of different music, not just Hip Hop and obviously practicing. For the youngest DJ coming up who want to be the illest DJ or the best scratcher and all that. It's cool to want to be the best at what you do but just understand, it's just as important to be able to rock a party, it's just as important to have a well rounded knowledge of music. All that stuff is gonna help you maintain longevity and it's gonna help you be successful in a lot of different areas and not just one. That's the main advice I'd give to any DJ.
Belly: Have you seen any new technology lately that really just bugged you out?
Rob Swift: Man, the DVD turntable shit that Pioneer made, it's pretty crazy. For example you could have a music video playing and scratch it the way you would on a turntable but also the image will be moving with the scratches. That to me is pretty crazy and it's something I'd like to try and get into using for my album as far as touring it. Being it has a DVD with it, I think it'd be cool to try and figure out a way to incorporate it into my shows. Then you have Serato Scratch Live, by Rane. That allows you to store all your music into your laptop and via an interface you can play all your songs from your laptop. You can leave the crates of records at home, no more lugging crates and crates of records breaking your back, no paying for extra weight at the airport. I like how they're coming up with all these different things for DJs.
Belly: Did you use Serrato on the WARGAMES to scratch all the speeches and sounds?
Rob Swift: No, actually they didn't have this software when I was making the album. I actually was using a lot of CDs. Burning copies of videos and then scratching it with a CD turntable. That's the dope thing about technology is that there's so many different things for DJs. You don't have to worry about pressing vinyl and stuff. Let's say you have a song that you and your friends did and you want to play it at a club. With Serrato, you can just transfer it into Itunes and play it right from there.
Belly: You also had a scratch notation demo on the DVD, is that something that's still being developed?
Rob Swift: I think more or less, that's the way it is. John Carluccio who's the director for the first DJ documentary called Battle Sounds developed that one form of scratch notation. I also heard Radar and A-Trak have developed their own form of notating scratches. For me, it's not something I'd use on stage or anything but I think it's showing people just how far you can take DJing so for that I think it's cool.
Belly: Any plans to drop anything from WARGAMES on vinyl? I see they have 2 12"s planned in Japan.
Rob Swift: Yeah, there are. Kutmaster Kurt did a remix for me for Another Friendly Game of Baseball that hopefully we can do as an exclusive single but for now it's just me really getting ready to tour the album at the end of this month starting August 31st in Burlington,Vermont then I'm gonna bounce around the states and help get the buzz out there regarding the new album. I'm just hoping that people will know it's out and support. It's not coming out on a major label or anything so every show, every interview, every in-store is gonna help the record.
Belly: Anything else?
Rob Swift: I want people to visit my website www.djrobswift.com there's some cool video clips of DJs who have inspired me cutting. Old footage of DJ Alladin at the New Music Seminar and Steve D, the inventor of beat juggling. There's a lot of cool clips for people and a really cool message board where a lot of DJs from all over post messages and interacting. This thing for me is something I always wanted to do and finally I got it launched a couple months ago.
Void: It looks good too with the pitch control on the menu. Nice..
Belly: You're always on the board too.
Rob Swift: Oh yeah, always I got to interact with the people cause I feel without them, where would I be. Yeah, part of it is me being talented and achieving stuff but then if no one went out to buy this record WARGAMES then where do I go from there. I feel it's only right to interact with the guys who have been supporting me throughout my career. It's all community cause at the end of the day, we're all DJs trying to keep the art elevating so it's kinda cool.
Thanks to Rob Swift and DJ Void... |
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