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Whoo Kid is now officially a featured DJ on Dubset.com. Dubset is DJ defined radio on the internet featuring mixes by the world’s top DJs. It is not a democracy! DJs have to be selected or invited to join. Here is Whoo Kid‘s interview on their blog. His first posted mix is up, it’s from the Skyline movie premiere party!
To check out Whoo Kid‘s bio on Dubset click here!
To listen to Whoo Kid’s Skyline premiere mix from Greenhouse in NYC click here!
There are many ways I could sum up my interview with Whoo Kid, but he says it all here:
The way I market myself, I don’t wanna be known as a DJ. I do corporate parties now and do a lot of posh clubs, and you gotta be the star first. Like, ‘Oh, Whoo kid is here. I just saw him interview Denise Richards about oral sex and pocket pussy.’ So there are mad reasons to know me.
All hilarious shenanigans aside, the mixtape king has been in the studio with Wyclef, working on a mixtape with all proceeds going to Haiti. You can expect to hear several artists from Jim Jones to Fabolous and production by Whoo Kid, Red Spyder and Cookin’ Soul. Be on the lookout for that.
You were one of the first DJs to make the mixtape a vehicle for hosting artists. How do you feel about the mixtape game now?
“The mixtape game changed the way people market themselves. Me and 50 doing those mixtapes- I mean, everyone copied us, from T.I. to Jeezy and it’s all good. It helped them blow up, by using our marketing map on how to get out there on the streets. But with the internet coming in, all that stuff changed the game, where it’s not really necessary for me to be out there hustling with ten-thousand CDs”¦ I would rather just put it up for free download. Like with Lloyd Banks‘s V5, we had over six hundred thousand free downloads. It’s more effective and worldwide then me moving ten-thousand CDs. At the end of the day I’m more popular, and everybody’s booking me. I’m booked non-stop. I did like thirty-six shows in all these crazy countries like Kazakhstan, Dubai, all of France, all of Italy”¦ So it makes me commercially recognized when I come to the club”¦ I’m not just a regular DJ coming in. I’m the star there.”
How did you first get connected with 50 and G-Unit?
It’s through my cousin, Sha Money XL, ‘coz he used to manage 50 back in the day. So when the first DJ got stabbed during all the fucking beef and everything, 50 really didn’t trust anyone. A family member was the best person to bring in.
[I was] already a big DJ doing his shit out there anyway. I wasn’t huge, but I had a name. I was stealing people’s records and people were looking for me and shit like that. So that’s why they call me Whoo Kid, they didn’t know who the kid was that was stealing their albums, I had unfinished versions. Anyway, [once I was the DJ], there was no quitting, no getting out. It was like a mafia.
That’s some Soprano’s shit.
Yo, Banks wanted to kill me the first time I met him. He wanted to rob me. They didn’t give a fuck about me. They were on the don’t-trust-dot-com thing. I think it’s kinda like that with any click. It took years to be cool with everybody.
I bet you have stories for days.
The difference between me and everybody else is that I have all these stories, but I document these stories. I film them. I did a DVD mixtape back in the day called Rewind. When I created it, I would just film everybody in the hotel room. I would move the bed to the side to get it ready, so when I told T.I. to come to the room, he was bugging out, like ‘Why the hell is this room all fucked up?’ and he pulled out on us. It was crazy. His boy was like, ‘Nah it’s Whoo Kid, he’s 50 Cent‘s nigga, he’s cool.’ You can see in the old footage when he had his burner, his dirty .38. He always had trust issues, which is why he always had a gun. But meeting everyone, even from Kanye to this guy, the stories are endless. Messing with Pun, beef with this guy”¦ I went through so much shit, sometimes I think it’s crazy that I made it through.
Were you ever in a situation where you really thought it was over for you?
Touring with 50 on the first tour, we were in like, hundreds of bad situations. There were shoot-outs like it was the norm. We had bulletproof vests. We’re not doing it anymore, but it came to the point where going through that process in the states, when we performed in every state, every hood town, every club. It’s really nothing when you go to Africa. I’ll never forget when we performed in some African country, there were soldiers protecting us while we were performing and all of a sudden, [the audience] hit one the soldiers with a rock”¦ The soldiers just aimed up at the top tier and started shooting and everybody just starts running to the left and fall off the tier, and you just see a whole bunch of Africans falling down to the ground. 50 just looked at me and was like, lets go, and we just started with “What up Gangsta.” And it was like nobody gave a fuck. Any other artist would be out of there, but this guy loves that shit. He loves chaos.
There’s always a fear factor with him. [At] award shows everybodys running for their lives. The day we chased Fat Joe, everybody thought, ‘Everybody’s gonna die at the MTV awards.’ Fat Joe was running like, I didn’t know fat people could run that fast. He pushed his wife like a hundred miles ahead of him, and he was like boating.
You’d be surprised, man. My life is just too complicated.
Right, and DJing is only half of it. You’ve got your Sirius XM radio show, Hollywood Saturdays and your website, radioplanet.tv.
I do ten things at once. I DJ, I tour, I do marketing, I help rappers, I have a radio show, I own a website. It’s hard to interview me on what I do, ‘coz I do too much. I learn from like losers out there, coz they’re happy with doing one thing, and if you’re not successful at that one thing, then you’re outta’ here. If it’s too late to get out of that, then it’s too late to be successful at something else. I learned form Jay-Z, and all these dudes that are successful, and politically it’s all about who you know and you gotta make yourself look good. I’m the only DJ that could be on BET, MTV, VH1, and Fuse, and just wild out on whatever they throw at me.
So when you spin at clubs, you spin ‘Open Format’ music. Do you think that alienates your hardcore hip-hop fan-base?
When I DJ over-seas, I DJ mostly house, techno and maybe twenty percent hip-hop. At the end of the day I love doing those parties more than the hardcore hip-hop party. I love doing the hardcore hip-hop parties too- you gotta make the drug dealer happy. But they don’t want to get outta the box. They don’t wanna hear the shit that kills over-seas. They’re ignorant. So what I learned is that I don’t DJ for myself, I DJ for each crowd. I always come thirty minutes early to read the crowd. I’m not stupid, I’m getting paid to make these people happy. I have a New York style of DJing, where I don’t play songs very long, I just want to keep people moving. If you know the song, you don’t want to hear the whole thing, you want to just keep moving.
There’s one thing I hate about this DJ thing”¦
What’s that?
I’m not saying I’m the illest DJ, but I have experience and proof of me killing clubs and videos of me rocking parties and shit. I just despise famous people’s daughters and sons being DJs and I really despise people who used to be rappers or singers being DJs. If you’re good, you’re not gonna get any animosity from me. But it’s really fucking up the game. It’s embarrassing. All these famous singing DJs”¦ I don’t wanna hear bout these movie star DJs. The corporate world is so fucking ignorant. They hire them coz they see the name, and they get away with murder ‘coz they’re corporate parties and the crowd is just standing around anyway. If you can make sixty people dance and have a good time, sometimes those shits can be better than the three-thousand occupancy club.
Anything else the world should know about Whoo Kid?
I don’t consider myself a DJ. A DJ is a person that’s not a DJ, but known as a DJ.
Interview done by Beth Kushner at Dubset
