I did a verse on [Insane Clown Posse's "When I'm Clownin'"] because I'm down with them. They're independent legends and they really know their business. I respect their business for real. If you think about it, in the last few months I've done verses with ICP, TechN9ne, and E-40. That's because they're all independent legends. I feel like in the next era I want to be like them, I want to be an independent legend and to be one you gotta work with them and learn from them.
Fool's Gold is a label run by two DJs. The label was founded to put out our friends' music that we were already playing in our sets, and we work in a lot of different styles because that's what A-Trak and I are genuinely into personally. In the six years we've been Fool's Gold, a lot of trends in dance and rap have come and gone. But I think musically we've always done our own thing, and actually driven those things ahead of the curve; Juicy J headlining Day Off a year or two before everyone was "trippy," our booking A$AP's first shows ever, or even in the Kid Sister days. Those were electro dance records well before they got all LMFAO'd out on the radio. There's always going to be a sense of fun and actual "DJ approved" substance that's the through-line for all our shit.
We live in New York, it's important to us to foster a creative community here and a genuine fanbase. As we grow Day Off it might not always stay a completely free event, but it will always be something that we put on for our fans here first. We put so much time and effort into everything from production to programming, and the lineups really are crazy, it's like we're putting on mini festivals right in our backyard.
Le1f and Macklemore is something that I've been watching but I need to know more about before I can call anyone out. Le1f is my friend and he had a reason to be upset but I'm not as informed about it with the specifics with the songs and all that. I know my friend wouldn't be upset for no reason. He's real as fuck and so it becomes deciding whether Macklemore is a fake. But I am keeping it easy, breezy, and carefree today. That's why I'm wearing my Rodman jersey. More than anything I'm here to kick it and see A$AP Ferg.
I'm a huge fan of fashion and function and believe that, when in doubt, wear Westwood. So I'm doing a combination of the two. I'm wearing Westwood boots, Westwood pants, and carrying a Westwood purse. I'm really excited to see Ferg and I'm always excited to see A-Trak as A-Trak or Duck Sauce. We've been friends for a while and I actually made the vest he's wearing tonight. He told me he made these new Fool's Gold t-shirts that are kind of death-metal and he wanted something to make his vest that way; to reflect that Fool's Gold is punk and unique. I've been working on projects with my company Amorir with people like Lady Gaga and Supreme. I made Lady Gaga's VMA boots, for example. But anyways so I told A-Trak I'd make him this vest and he bought a bunch of patches for bands he really liked and then a Canadian flag. I used dental floss to stitch it together because that's a token old-school punk move; floss is so cheap and so easy to steal so punk kids used to use it as thread for everything.
We're thrilled that we were able to make this jump. It's so much bigger than previous years. We knew we had outgrown our previous venue but this is a jump to festival-status kind of. We're excited because we're putting on a free show with some of our favorite musicians and showing people the way that the Fool's Gold vision works musically in terms of genres and mixing up audiences and all that. These cultures and styles and influences gel together in a way that works now. We had a stage at Electric Zoo and did our dance side big and today we can do our rap side big. We had no idea what was going on at Electric Zoo yesterday either - I think it's time that some DJs band together and speak and inform these new audiences. The funny thing is that, in the span of shows over the last few days, the hip-hop event is the one that's peaceful and orderly. Who would have thunk? Not saying this to bash Electric Zoo; I've played there myself and consider them allies; but I'm just saying that as an sociological and demographic observation, it's interesting. It's dope that a hip-hop event is as positive and orderly as this. I'm thrilled to even be putting it on.
My new four-song EP comes out on Fool's Gold this fall; on vinyl and digital! There's definitely saxophone playing, there's new-jack swing influences, there's '90s house influences. I'm so excited about it. The one thing that I really respect about Fool's Gold is that there's nobody else doing the rap and dance music fusion in the way that they are. It's actually in the tradition of the mid-late '90s; I think that's something really important to carry on. I see people trying to fragment everything into hip-hop and dance sub-genres and it's not necessarily working the way they're trying to make it work. I think in particular with Duck Sauce playing here to this many people, it's an example of how it actually does work. These people who all just saw Danny Brown and Ferg are now dancing to Duck Sauce. That's the goal with this whole fusion movement and these guys are doing it right.
This party is always so dope. It's a great opportunity to see underground music that's made it big for free. That's not a normal thing. Myself, I support all the local underground DJs - my friends Shayne and Venus from Brooklyn for sure - and these guys do too. Most of my favorite underground shit right now is coming out of Jersey; the whole Jersey Club movement is really my shit. For those people who aren't up on it yet, I'm really into Mike Gip, DJ Sliink, Nadus. Their stuff is my favorite right now.
If you wanna know about the new Duck Sauce video, "It's You," all you need to know is that we channeled it from some other universe; some out of this world planet. All you need to know about my candy raver bracelets is that someone cool made them for me and I love them.
