Quote

I was in Fort Lauderdale from about age 7 to 14. And that's where I learned the most about music. My favorite DJ was this guy named DJ Laz and the Miami bass guys. I was super into, like, Arthur Baker, that kind of stuff.

I've been a DJ since I was about 13, and I started out as a hip-hop DJ. So I was always playing records that would just get people going. I was just doing parties and high school dances and whatever, and then, progressively, I started making my own music, writing little songs here and there, but it was never anything crazy.

I'm not a DJ - I don't know how to scratch or mix records, but I know how to party, and I know music. I grew up in Philly; it's a very musical city. My house was full of music.

When we lived in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, my sister and I did a local play. My whole family got involved. My mom did the makeup. My sister and I were being homeschooled, and my parents wanted us to be socialized. We had a lot of fun with the other kids hanging out backstage.

I was raised on the Southside of Chicago, and my whole family was musically-inclined.

Nobody who knows me would believe this, but I was always the life of the party. Oh, how I loved to sing and dance, and we had good times. Good clean fun it was, too.

I grew up in Chicago, so hip-hop has always been a part of my life.

I was never really a DJ... I just kinda figured it all out at once as I started to tour. I was making music and producing and I just had to start to DJ as I got more into touring.

I was just glad to meet somebody outside of my group of small town friends who was into music. Somebody else who had aspirations to do something more than sing at a record hop.

As a kid, my parents had the typical stuff going on in the home, like Bee Gees, The Carpenters. Then I got exposed to what my brothers were listening to: a lot of classic rock, Led Zeppelin. It was around the mid-'80s when the whole Electro-Techno-Pop-House music thing started happening in Chicago.