IAMDJDRAKE on the Virtual Sessions presented by The DJ Sessions 7/15/24

In this dynamic Virtual Session, Darran Bruce connects with Hartford, Connecticut’s own I Am DJ Drake, a veteran DJ, producer, and Twitch partner with over 25 years in the game. Drake shares his journey from falling in love with hip hop as a kid—drawing inspiration from legends like Jam Master Jay, Jazzy Jeff, and Public Enemy—to evolving into an open format DJ able to command any dance floor.

 

The conversation dives into his Afro soul sound, blending Afro house and soulful house influences, and highlights his recent releases Fool For Your Love and Flying High, both featuring South African vocalists. Drake discusses the art of balancing club residencies, Twitch streaming, and studio time, while staying healthy through daily gym sessions and a disciplined routine.

 

With candid insight, he talks about the shift from turntablism to party-rocking versatility, the importance of crowd engagement both live and online, and the value of consistent branding across platforms. He shares stories about meeting icons like Michael Jackson and Chuck D, emphasizes the role of family support, and offers practical advice for DJs aiming to grow their audience—on Twitch and beyond.

 

Packed with wisdom on live streaming strategies, industry changes, and staying adaptable in a fast-paced scene, this episode captures why I Am DJ Drake remains a respected figure in the DJ community. His passion for music, dedication to craft, and drive to uplift others shine through every beat he plays.

 

Host: Darran Bruce
Guest: I Am DJ Drake
Location: Virtual Studios, Seattle WA & Hartford, CT

 

Overview:
Darran Bruce chats with veteran DJ and producer I Am DJ Drake about his decades-long career, Afro soul productions, and balancing live performance with streaming and family life.

Topics Covered:

• Origins in Hip Hop: Influences from Jam Master Jay, Jazzy Jeff, and early East Coast rap.
• Evolution to Open Format: Blending genres from EDM to reggae in one set.
• Afro Soul Productions: Releases Fool For Your Love and Flying High with South African collaborators.
• Fitness & Focus: Daily gym routine and disciplined lifestyle.
• Streaming Strategy: Keys to Twitch success, engagement, and consistent scheduling.
• Memorable Encounters: Meeting Michael Jackson and walking with Chuck D after a show.
• Family Support: Wife and sister as biggest fans.
• Industry Insight: Branding, platform consistency, and cross-promotion to YouTube and socials.
• Live Show Philosophy: DJs as center-stage performers driving the party.
• Career Definition: Success as doing what you love and being recognized for it.

Call to Action:
Follow I Am DJ Drake: Instagram | YouTube | Twitch | Spotify
Stream Fool For Your Love and Flying High on all platforms.

[Darran]
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the DJ Sessions presents the virtual sessions. I’m your host Darran and right now I’m coming to you from the DJ Sessions virtual studios in Seattle, Washington and none other coming halfway across. This is why you don’t do live shows without doing pre-testing beforehand because that was my phone coming in on our Instagram channel for the first time ever.

Yes, we are streaming to Instagram live. Yes, I know the screen is a little messed up. Okay, here we go.

Now it’s doing that to me. Man, technical stuff is already happening, Drake. This is crazy.

What’s going on here? I don’t know where that audio is coming from. Give me a second here.

This is crazy. This is crazy, man. I don’t know what’s happening.

But anyways, you hear the audio coming in from the back. I’m gonna put that on mute. Drake, coming in from Connecticut, Hartford, Connecticut today on the DJ Sessions.

How you doing?

[IAMDRAKE]
I’m doing good. How you doing?

[Darran]
All right, cool, cool, cool. Let me go ahead and take care of some stuff here really quick. I see what’s happening.

It was my media server that was playing that audio. The one that I programmed Instagram through. Technical difficulties happening during a live show.

It happens. We fix them. We’re on the go.

We’re the DJ Sessions. But Drake, coming in from Hartford, Connecticut today. How you doing?

I’m good, man. How you doing? I’m good, man.

What’s the weather like out there today?

[IAMDRAKE]
It’s hot and humid, and thankfully it’s not raining.

[Darran]
You know, it was hot here last week. We had some good times. It was, you know, I would say our piddly little 86 degrees to here, it’s a heatwave.

If the air conditioning doesn’t make my office less than 81 degrees, it’s a heatwave. So I’m sure it’s a little bit worse out there on the East Coast.

[IAMDRAKE]
Yeah, it is. But we’re making it through. Crazy, crazy.

Now, are you from Hartford, Connecticut? You born and raised out there? I am born and raised.

[Darran]
I’m from Bloomfield. It’s right next door to Hartford. Nice, nice.

I know we were talking a little pre-show before, and my father was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. So, you know, a lot of family out there and stuff. So, you know, good stuff going there.

So, you know, how long have you been DJing for? What got you into all this?

[IAMDRAKE]
Wow, so I’ve been DJing for… Jesus. I don’t really want to talk about my age, but I’ve been DJing for over 25 years.

Wow, what made me get into DJing? What made me get into DJing? I fell in love with hip-hop.

That’s what made me get into DJing. So, you know, I’m a true hip-hop head at heart, and as a little kid, I fell in love with hip-hop, and I seen Jam Master Jay and Jazzy Jeff and people like that, and I’m like, that’s what I want to do.

[Darran]
You know, I have my roots. It’s funny. I grew up…

my brothers were really into rock and roll. I was born in the late 60s. I was born in mid-70s, and, you know, I gravitated a little bit more towards disco music, pop music, you know, things of that nature.

My father was kind of… had music in the background, you know, usually like Queen, Supertramp, you know, good, good stuff. Michael Jackson, obviously, growing up, you know, all the fun stuff growing up in the 70s and 80s, and I gravitated a little bit more towards pop music, but in the early 80s, all my friends, they started going to the glam rock stuff, like the Poison and the Guns N’ Roses.

Well, I started gravitating towards hip-hop, towards rap, you know, and, you know, started listening to that a little bit more, and in high school, we had the first ever video production class in Washington State. Very new program. This is 1991, 92, and I came right out of high school, and I went to work on a public-access hip-hop television show called The Cool Out Network, and really, and Giorgio, the exec from there, was from, uh, from, I, please, Giorgio, if you’re watching this, don’t murder me.

He’s either from Harlem or Brooklyn. I know he’s gonna be like, Darran, you always get this wrong for 30 plus years. You never get it right, but he had moved out here and did a show, so I worked on that show for about eight years, and he was always amazed, like, how this kid from, you know, basically white suburbia knew all these East Coast hip-hop acts and stuff, and I remember one of the first rap tapes my mom got me was UTFO, Skeezer Pleaser, I think.

I think that had Roxanne on it, you know, and she found it in the record store, and somehow the guy in the record store was like, if your son likes hip-hop music, he’s gonna like this. Mom didn’t know nothing about nothing. She didn’t know what a skeezer was, you know, but I remember listening to Run-DMC and Beastie Boys, and that was my first rock concert I ever went to was Run-DMC and Fishbone, and then about a year later, they came back with Beastie Boys and Run-DMC, and, you know, I was hooked.

I loved that stuff. So, anyways, yeah, deep roots, deep roots going back then, but yeah, I mean, now, would you consider yourself a traditional DJ, turntablist, or, you know, you’re doing all the scratching and mixing and with your toes and upside down and with your nose, you’re doing that kind of stuff?

[IAMDRAKE]
So, yes, yes and no. I used to, I don’t anymore. So, how would I would describe myself?

Yes, I started out hip-hop, hip-hop DJ, R&B DJ. Yes, I’m turntablist. I do all of that stuff.

I kind of transitioned away from that in the 2000s and just became more of an open format DJ. I could still do all the tricks and the scratches and the cuts and all that, but, you know, it’s not, you know, in my earlier stages, that was my thing, but, you know, I kind of transitioned away from that and really just honed in on just rocking parties and clubs and stuff like that, so, and became more of an open format DJ.

[Darran]
Okay, and describe, you know, open format is something I started to hear probably, oh, what, five years ago maybe? It probably was around before that, but I didn’t really hear it out here on the West Coast too much, or at least in Seattle. Can you describe to our viewers what open format exactly is?

[IAMDRAKE]
So, so open format is when you play every genre of music. I could play, I could play, I could play house, I could play hip-hop, I could play R&B, Afro house, reggae, all, all in the context of one event, so normally what you would have is, you know, if I’m doing a club that’s strictly a hip-hop club, it would be strictly hip-hop and some reggae, maybe a little bit of R&B, but when you get to the open format clubs, it’s a mixture of everything. It’s house music, it’s EDM, it’s, it’s hip-hop, you know, so I could be doing a 25-minute set of EDM and break it down to some hip-hop and, you know, a 15-minute set of hip-hop and come back with some reggae, back to EDM, so that’s, that’s more so the open format.

[Darran]
You know, I use, I look at that and I call that, my personal take on this, I call it Vegas style. Correct. When you go to the Vegas strip, you got to kind of cater to everyone and you’re in that club and you got to drop that hip-hop hit, you got to drop that electronic hit, you got to drop that, you know, something to just, you know, because it’s that 24-hour, we’re in for the night, out for the night, we want to hear a track, not have to play no requests, you know, but that’s how I relate to it.

[IAMDRAKE]
So, and I love open format, open format clubs better, because after a while, I got kind of tired and stagnant, like, man, I’m playing the same old hip-hop, the same old R&B, you know, it’s just better when you can mix it up and it makes, actually, it makes the night go by faster.

[Darran]
Yeah, I can hear that. I know, one of the things we do is we do silent disco events and I like it because I’m a foodie, if you’re familiar with silent disco and, you know, being able not to be locked in one genre of music the whole time, I like, I think of it like an all-you-can-eat buffet. If I have a hip-hop, a trance, a house, a techno, a drum and bass, you know, all on, I can choose which station I want to listen to and I’m feeling that groove, you know, and then other people can feel their own groove to what they want to be chilling out a lot, whether it’s our rooftop parties or our silent disco events.

So I really love that, that, you know, open format does cover kind of everyone out there. It’s awesome. Now, you produce as well.

Yes. If you could describe your music in three words, what would you call it?

[IAMDRAKE]
Afro soul, got it in two. Afro soul. Afro soul.

Soul. Yep. There’s not a third one in it?

[Darran]
Afro soul music, there you go, that’s the three. Awesome. And you have some new releases coming out that are in that genre, the Afro house, soulful house singles.

Tell us about those releases.

[IAMDRAKE]
So I have a couple out now. One is called Fool For Your Love that dropped on May 31st. That’s featuring Jamiah Ezra from South Africa.

So that dropped on May 31st. And then my other one, Flying High featuring Precious James, who is also from South Africa, that dropped on July 5th. So I have two out right now.

Afro house, soulful house, that’s where you get the Afro soul music. And then I have the remix to Fool For Your Love coming out on July 26th. OK.

By Oscar Posh, who’s big in the Afro house scene. And then we have a Emma Piano remix coming with that as well. Nice, nice.

So you’re busy, you’re a busy guy.

[Darran]
You know, making music, people, it’s funny, people think this all the time about me with a show like this or producers making music. Maybe, maybe not so much now, but back in the day, they never had cameras like we don’t have our own reality show watching what we do in the background. Like you produce a track, it goes out there.

I produce shows. They don’t see the other 40, 50 hours a week I do behind these one hour interviews of putting stuff into research and everything, you know, the magic that really happens, you know, and in producing music, you spend a lot of time. I’m sure you’re using like a DAW, like computer based stuff or you use hardware, computer based or software based.

[IAMDRAKE]
So I use Ableton and my producer partner uses Logic. Logic, yeah, I love Logic, all the great programs.

[Darran]
I’m an Apple guy, so Logic is my favorite.

[IAMDRAKE]
And when we go to the studio, it all goes to Pro Tools, so it don’t matter.

[Darran]
Yeah, so, you know, but sitting behind the computer, sculpting beats, making beats, making all this, takes a lot of time. And you’re sitting there at the computer that’s making these beats, doing that. What do you do to stay fit?

Because I know I can get that oatmeal bowl going and I can have lunch and I’m sitting in front of the computer for eight hours a day, eating, eating, eating. But, you know, you’re making beats, beats, beats.

[IAMDRAKE]
What do you do to stay fit, stay healthy? So I’m at the gym every day. I just came from the gym before before we got on to this.

So I’m at the gym every day. I got on a little diet, trying to get fit, trying to get right. Lost about 20 pounds, too.

So, you know, it’s been working, but I’m at the gym every day. So and, you know, my days are weird. So I don’t go to bed till like four or five in the morning.

I’m usually up by 11. I’m in the gym by one, usually home by 2.30. And those are on the days that I’m not streaming on Twitch. The days I stream on Twitch, then I get up, I do Twitch, do some other things.

And then I go to the gym in the evening and then I start all over again. Go on my studio at home around 12 o’clock. Stop that around four or five and go to bed.

[Darran]
So that is that’s about my schedule as well. You know, I get it. No, I mean, I lost.

It’s funny. I took kind of a hiatus last year and came back and hit everything back up. And people were noticing that I had significant weight loss.

I lost about 27 pounds last year. I was about 187 pounds this time, a little bit before that. And some reasons do.

I went to the doctor a few weeks ago and I weighed in at 161. I’ve been down to as low as 157. And I was like, dang, I just lost 30 pounds.

What’s going on there? Is there any health signs coming up? But no, it’s all good.

You know, managed to get everything back on track. And I’m back in 170. But people could tell I mean, even people I interviewed like a year ago or before they’re like, you look really thin through here.

You know, no more like double chin type of stuff. I’m like, I guess I work out. No, my diet just like my diet changed up a little bit.

But yeah, definitely staying healthy. That’s good. You’re getting to the gym, working out and doing all that stuff because you got to stay fit, got to stay fit in this.

Got to. I’m making my run. So I got I got to be ready.

So. So you mentioned you do all this. You jump on your Twitch channel when you get on stage.

Do you become a different person when you’re in front of the camera or when you’re on stage performing, or do you become a different person when you’re off stage? Or is there a is there I am Drake persona that people expect? Or is it I am Drake and Drake, Hughie is the same person.

[IAMDRAKE]
So so they’re kind of the same person when I’m on Twitch and I’m on live. You know, I ramp it up a little bit. I talk more.

I’m more, you know, I interact with the crowd. You know, as you know, with Twitch is where people from all over the world. So, you know, I interact with them, you know, have fun.

I’m more personable than when I’m not on on camera or if I’m not on stage or doing a club or party. I’m just laid back, man. You know, I got very few words.

You know, I just I don’t want to say I like to be left alone, but I’m just laid back and, you know, to myself, go to the gym, do my music and, you know, get my rest in.

[Darran]
You know, that that’s the one thing that I saw. I mean, I’ve been doing live streaming since 2009. I’ve been doing film and television production since the since 92, as I mentioned earlier, and seeing the rise of going from broadcast television or from public access to broadcast television, to podcasting, to live streaming.

We were doing live streaming for 10 years. You know, I started doing that in late 2009, roughly of doing the show, the DJ sessions. And, you know, it was you’d see a lot of people get online and they didn’t build in a lot of interaction online.

You know, you saw this definitely happen during Pandy, too. And everyone in the world, whether you are a number one DJ in the world to I’ve never DJ before, I’m going to buy some gear and put on a Twitch show because I love doing this. You know, it was definitely that interaction that is key to, I think, successful live streams, not necessarily bot interaction, but definitely interaction with your crowd.

I mean, you’ve got people out there that have moderators now that can jump in the chat rooms and help chat and moderate that. But, you know, it’s just one of those things that I was always very I was always just the host of the show. The DJs, I just wanted them to come and play the music.

I’d be on the host doing the pre interview, let the DJ play, do the post interview, give the shout outs in the chat room, you know, or being able to sit over there and moderate the chat room. Once I started doing stuff like this, it’s like I ain’t got time to moderate the chat room, you know, you know, or I don’t pick up the mic that much anymore as I used to. We changed our format up a little bit over the years.

And even through Pandy, I took a whole new route because we were a DJ live streaming DJ show. That’s what we did. And when everybody in the world jumped online in 2020, I call that the look at me year because every social media post that you looked at there, every third post was look at me on live.

Look at me on live. Look at me on live. Look at me on live.

And it’s like, oh, yeah, OK, whatever. You know, bless my heart that people got live streaming as a viable medium. It took years of trying to beat into people’s heads that this is going to be the next biggest thing, just like QR codes.

People thought I was crazy in 2010 for talking about QR codes and how it’s going to be the wave of the future. You’re going to see them everywhere. They’re going to be on everything.

And I was like, what the hell? Nobody’s going to I’m not going to put my phone to scan. I’ll just type in the web address.

I’m like, they give me so much more. You know, you don’t know. And now they’re everywhere.

Yeah, it’s like I told you, you know, it’s time for people to catch on to stuff. Yeah. So, you know, you know, just doing that with livestream.

I think it’s a great medium. Same with podcasting. Being able to distribute out there and interact with your shows, even going back as far as I mentioned, doing broadcast shows.

When I had my first show on Fox here locally in 2002, I wanted a website. And in the website, I wanted the chat room. I had a chat room built into the website.

So when the air show aired at one thirty in the morning, we as the producers watching the show could be in that chat room and chat with our viewers in the chat room on our website during the show being aired. I mean, that’s how far ahead I was with this stuff. And this is a local independently produced show that you’re mixing this technology with this.

And there was no video online. There was no YouTube. This is 2002 YouTube.

I don’t think those kids had made YouTube yet. E-bombs world was out, I think still. But you had videos that were like this big and there wasn’t any live streaming of videos and let alone compressing a file with the techniques to compress where the Apple hadn’t even made compression techniques down to H.264. I think maybe they had. Don’t quote me on that, Steve. Bless my soul. Please don’t come and haunt me if I got that wrong.

But, you know, just being able to like watching the technology, as they say, smaller, faster, cheaper, better. You know, and now, you know, everyone has a mobile device in their phone or, you know, or, you know, a mobile studio in their phone. Or I’m using Restream, a cloud software right now with a webcam.

And you and I in the studio. Yeah, I got a decent mic. Lighting looks good.

Key points. You know, make sure you got good mice, good lighting and good audio calling. You can you can pretty much rock it out there.

So congratulations on doing that and getting on Twitch and making that happen. And yeah, interaction is key. What are the top three regular podcasts or live stream or radio shows that you listen to?

[IAMDRAKE]
Top three. Oh, man. Well, Sway in the morning one.

I got it in the morning. Oh, what’s my top three that I listen to? Sway in the morning.

Lord have mercy. Now, I don’t listen to much radio, so and much podcast. I would say The Breakfast Club.

I’m always checking for The Breakfast Club in New York. And then and I listen to myself as well. So so I would say that’s my top three.

[Darran]
Nice, nice thing. You know, I’ve been asked the same producer I work with years ago in the hip hop show. He asked he goes back and he’ll watch his old shows all the time.

And he asked me, he goes, do you ever go back and watch your old shows? And I’m like, no, I don’t, because I was there and I produced them. I know that they’re bad.

I mean, sometimes I might go back and go click like right now behind me. I got the Dr. Fresh episode in our mobile studio playing on a Roku player behind us, you know, and maybe I might go in and watch the old show. But I’m producing so much content.

You know, I’m ramping up to producing almost 100 hours of content a month. You know, so if I spent 100 hours, I’m already producing that 100 hours. Then I got everything else.

I’m not going to go back and watch 100 hours of the shows. Plus, I’m editing the show. So I’m already watching them in the editor as I’m editing them and putting together, making sure everything looks all good.

[IAMDRAKE]
I can watch everything. So when I’m at the gym, that’s when I’m watching and listening and watching. And so it’s a habit that I taught my son.

I got taught him how to play basketball. And after all his games, his AAU games, and we would go back and watch film so he could see what he what, you know, what he could do better. And that’s how I do it when I’m back listening, when I’m in the gym or if I’m in the car, you know, I’m watching a video or whatever.

And I want to see where I messed up and where I could do this better. Or, you know, so it’s all about getting better to me. That’s that’s how I was taught.

You know, you know, with the better.

[Darran]
Yeah. With the exception of, you know, I learned a long time. I used to get really hard on myself.

There was a time when I have I have the theory that the show must go on. Right. And I was doing it.

I was I wanted my show to it was broadcast series. It was somewhere after 2005. I think I was going to go host the show.

I was doing it. I was doing an intro for my show on the rooftop of my building in the middle of the night in January here in Seattle. So the microphone’s freezing cold in my hand.

Wind is blowing. And we got airplanes flying overhead every 15 minutes because we’re in the flight pattern. I had to wait for the airplanes to go by so they weren’t picked up in the microphone.

Then I was trying to get the city backdrop behind me with the lighting on me. Well, me and focus is focused, but the city ain’t in focus. We can see what the hell is going on behind me there.

And I did 67 takes on this 30 second intro. And then I stopped counting. And, you know, I was like, forget this.

You know, OK, cool. And then, you know, I kind of realized the first few takes you do are probably the best ones. Right.

But when I got in the live streaming, you know, just like what happened to us in the beginning of the show, I kind of put down that standard per se of like it has to be perfect or I’m not going to do it. Like I know some people would shut the stream down and restart a whole new recording all over again because it wasn’t right. I said, no, I’m letting I go.

This show’s live bloopers happen. We’re going to run with it. Remember, next time, Darran, turn off all the damn mute buttons.

And I usually am really good about that. I don’t know how the one mute button got turned on on my server. But, you know, accidents happen.

Things happen. Just roll with it. And when you start rolling with it like that, when an accident does happen, it becomes comfortable like, oh, yeah, dang.

Rather than hope when you’re going to be out now, the whole day gets ruined and you’re uncomfortable. But you’re doing a live stream. So it’s like, you know, it’s like I’m in a studio and I’m in like the MTV studios or TMZ studios.

And I got line director, producer, director, all this. And I’m just a talent in front of the camera. I’m reading from a teleprompter and all the tech stuff is going on.

I am the tech stuff. I am the audio engineer. I am the lighting designer, video guy, you know, social media person, live stream, all that, those hats.

So if something goes wrong, you just just roll with it. You know, but I hear about watching your old footage and seeing where you could like, yeah, you know, usually for me, it’s camera angles of the base is too strong on our truck and our cameras going like this. I’m like, oh, OK, got to go tighten that up.

[IAMDRAKE]
And when I’m watching back, I’m only really listening back for the for for the music and the mixes and stuff. And so I’m like you in a sense of I like it when I’m live and things don’t go right. Like when I first started, oh, I will be mad and be throwing stuff in my studio like but now, you know, over the last three or four years, like I don’t mind it, like I’ll make fun of it.

I mean, like you said, we’re live. So things are going to happen. Plus, I’m I’m I’m trying to interact with the crowd.

Sometimes it’s hard to read the names because everybody got their own unique names. You know, I’m trying to mix. So I’m not one of the DJs that would just play a song like I have to be very active when I’m DJing or I tend to get bored quick.

So I have to be mixing and scratching and doing all those things to kind of keep my interest. So it’s like it’s trying to do all of that. I don’t plan out my sets.

I just put songs in the crate and figure out and just go and figure out what I’m going to mix and play from there. And so it’s all of that going on at the same time. You’re going to mess up things going to happen.

So that’s the beauty of it. Like I say on Twitch, that’s the beauty of being live. It’s not going to be perfect, you know?

[Darran]
Exactly, exactly. I hear you on that. And, you know, I have a lot of DJs when they first started out.

I started this live streaming thing. They were cool in the club because they had club reaction, people reaction. They could vibe off that.

When they’re in the studio, they’d be like, and they’re nervous on camera. I’d have them on. Hey, how are you doing tonight?

And they’d be like, fine. Right. So where are you playing tonight?

This club. But it took like four or five weeks and they’d feed off my energy. They’d be like, hey, where are you playing tonight?

Oh, man, I’m playing a dope ass jam at this club. It’s going down till 2 a.m. And they finally got into doing the mix. When you watch their first episodes, it’s so hilarious because they’re like, I don’t know what to say.

I’ve never been on camera before. What do I do? Hey, you know, we’re going to take a pause really quick right here.

I hope they’re all watching. Josh, five salute at I am Drake. Sweet arm.

Sweet, sweet. Our money, V.P. I’m Jake. Hey, hey, Jake, a J twenty eight, two times one day with sweet hugs.

Josh, five salute. Jake, hey, fam. Lots and lots of here.

We’re going to we’re going to do this. We’re going to do this really cool thing. I love this because I can bring the chat room overlay into the show here.

Let’s see what pops up. There we go. There we go.

Jerry, some people give you shout outs watching the show right now. You’re proud of your brother, DJ Q Boogie. Yeah, you believe that’s my partner right there.

All right. Q Boogie’s in there. Let’s see.

Just give a shout out to everyone. DJ came back. Oh, no, you let go.

I just say DJ Mac. DJ Mac. All right, DJ Mac.

Greetings, everyone. Everyone in the chat. I should have had this going.

Yeah, man, they’re blowing it up. Mr. Frosty, Ms. Frosty, Ms. Frosty, DJ Cruz. Sweet Harmony.

Oh, it’s Sweet Harmony. I got a sweet KJH is back. There we go.

Just want to give a shout out to everyone. Thank you for tuning in to the show today. Thank you very much.

Check out our past episodes. A lot of fun stuff as well. DJ Andre the Doc as well.

What up? I am DJ Drake. Hey, you got some followers in there.

Thank you all for tuning in today. We’re going to get back to the show, though.

[IAMDRAKE]
So if I were to go ahead, if I didn’t know that we could put this on Twitch, I would advertise it because I was on earlier. Oh, but when you hit me with it, you can go live on Twitch. You know, I didn’t know if I could.

I didn’t know I could do that.

[Darran]
So, you know, I should. You know what? I should change.

I’m going to make a note right now to make an ad channel note. Yeah, I can see learning stuff all the time, even though I’ve been doing this for a while. Learning on the fly and the why.

All right. There we go. Boom.

Done. Cool. So back to the show.

Who is your favorite artist outside your own specific genre? And tell us why you you like that artist outside of your genre. Now, I know you got open format, so that kind of makes the umbrella like this.

But I got a lot of favorite artists.

[IAMDRAKE]
I got a lot of favorite artists. Well, so I’ll start with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. Those are my two favorite Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy.

Those are my other two favorite. Right now, I’m a huge fan of Kaytranada, huge fan of Black Coffee, huge fan of Calvin Harris. So those are my favorites right now.

[Darran]
If you had to meet one of them in person and could, dead or alive, who would it be?

[IAMDRAKE]
Well, I met Michael Jackson when I was a kid. I met Public Enemy as he performed on the same stage of Public Enemy. Who, who, who would I say?

I’ve met so many of them. I would say Stevie Wonder. If anybody I could meet, it would be Stevie Wonder right now.

Out of everybody I haven’t met yet.

[Darran]
Yeah, Stevie’s a man I love. I always gotta dance when his stuff comes on. Gotta dance, gotta move, gotta move.

You know, at clubs and other events, should people look at DJs like they’re, I’ll use the term rock star, or would it be more fun if DJs were just slightly more anonymous and just part of the bigger event? I take this because back when I was a kid and I went to my first clubs, some of the clubs were playing Top 40. The DJ had a DJ booth next to the dance floor.

But I remember going to this club that I first started going to when I listened to electronic music. And the DJ booth was up above and you had to like, you would look out over the dance floor, but it wasn’t center stage. There was a stage.

We would dance on the stage and the club could put bands on the stage. But the DJ was up in this booth that kind of overlooked the floor. And if you didn’t know where to look, you didn’t know where the DJ was at.

And usually there was glass in front of them, so nobody could throw stuff at the DJ because it was like the sound booth and stuff up there where the DJ was next to the sound gear. And, you know, they were kind of anonymous at that point. Now they’ve become center stage.

You know, what do you think should take more of a backseat? I mean, now you got EDC, you got Tomorrowland, and these DJs are the center of the stage. And I’m not even going to get to the whole not wearing headphones thing right now.

I was just like, I don’t get that. OK, cool.

[IAMDRAKE]
But yeah, what’s your take on that? They should be center stage. So again, like I said, I come from an era of hip hop.

I fell in love with music through hip hop. And so hip hop started with the DJ. You know, the DJ was the center stage.

You know, rapping was the other part of it. But the DJ was the same. Grandmaster Flash was the center stage, you know?

So, you know, obviously it took a backseat over the years, but. Through EDM and house music, it brought back the DJ as the center stage. So when you think about your top EDM performers, the DJs, they are center stage, the Calvin Harris, the Black Coffees, the Afrojacks, the Steve Aoki’s, they are the show.

And in most cases, they’re bigger than the artists, right? The artists that singing and rapping or doing whatever. So DJs to me should be center stage.

I want to be center stage. I don’t want to be in the glass in the back and no one knows that I’m there. I want to be like Kid Capri center stage where everybody can see that that that you are the show you’re making the show.

You’re getting the people up, dancing, partying, doing whatever it is that they’re doing. So it started off that way. It should continue on that way as the DJ, the center stage.

[Darran]
Hmm. Absolutely. Now, I hear you.

It’s it’s interesting how, you know, like I said, growing up back in the past, I grew up with, you know, we had rock music. We had the stage performance. And the DJ was kind of that off side person that wasn’t there unless you were going to the discotheque and maybe they were, you know, on a microphone and they were the disc jack, almost like radio and answer, but it was record to record.

And the crossfader really wasn’t there until it was made as a cross these tracks over and keep the floor moving in between times. You know, but yeah, it has become more of a center stage kind of thing. Here’s a question for you.

You mentioned that you’ve met a lot of people. I mean, we’re talking Michael Jackson, Public Enemy and all these artists. Who would be the most inspiring person that you’ve ever met backstage?

And tell us why that person inspired you so much.

[IAMDRAKE]
The most inspiring. So I’m going to say Chuck D from Public Enemy. You know, that’s one of my all time favorite rappers.

You know, so the performance was in Springfield. I mean, I’m sorry. And Rhode Island, Providence, Rhode Island.

And, you know, backstage and everything. Public Enemy, we got a chance to perform Stethosonic. Everybody, they all performed.

And after the Coliseum was maybe like about 15, 20 minutes from the hotel. So we actually walked with Chuck D, Daddy O from Stethosonic, a few others from the Coliseum all the way to the hotel, all the way back to the hotel with Chuck D just talking. I mean, it was amazing.

So I would say that right there. I fell in love with Chuck even more because you’re not going to find many artists, you know, that’s going to do that, especially Public Enemy was at the height of who they were. I’m talking this is.

Oh, I was still in college, so this was 1991, somewhere around there. And they were at the height of who they were. And the fact that Chuck D was just that regular person, you know, didn’t need no security, didn’t need none of that.

He was just one of the people. We walked back. It was a bunch of us walked back to the hotel talking and, you know, having a good time.

And so I would say, you know, Chuck D. And that’s probably why, you know, he’s probably my he probably is next to Kaz, one of my favorite, you know, MC.

[Darran]
You know, would you consider him to be your biggest influence when it comes to your career as an artist, or would you have somebody else? You’d say, OK, inspirational Chuck D cares when that that line. Who’s been the biggest influence when it’s come to your career as an artist?

I mean, you mentioned Stevie earlier. You mentioned hanging with Chuck D.

[IAMDRAKE]
Is there something out of there or any who’s been your biggest influence when it comes to my biggest influence? You know, seeing as I’m a DJ, I would have to say I got three. You know, there were others before them that that made me that started me on my journey as far as DJing.

Like like I said, Grandmaster Flash, Jam Master Jay, Grandmaster D, Mix Master Ice, they started me on my journey of DJing. But my three biggest influences who I consider. I, I, I, I, I pattern my style after to add my own flavor to it would be Jazzy Jeff, DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Cash Money and DJ Kid Capri.

Those would be my three biggest influences as far as DJing, which naturally led me into making music myself. But listening to them really, really took me to another level. Where I’m at today and how I play today.

So those those three would be my biggest influences. Who’s your favorite female DJ? Who’s my favorite female DJ?

I would say my partner, DJ Q Boogie. That’s my favorite female DJ. Nice save there.

[Darran]
Which which immediate family member of yours is your biggest fan? Do they do you have a family member? I caught that show, Drake.

That was dope.

[IAMDRAKE]
OK, so I got a couple. So so so obviously my wife, you know, we’ve been together since we were little kids. So I would say my wife is my biggest fan.

And then I say my oldest sister, who has probably never missed anything that I’ve ever done. So I would say between those two would be my biggest fans.

[Darran]
Nice. You know, how do you how do you balance? So it sounds like you’re married.

Sounds like a pretty active social life. And, you know, you got these other obligations. How do you balance your DJ career with your other obligations in life?

Is it is it? Hey, I’m a DJ. This is my career.

This is what I do. Sorry, honey, I can’t go to to the cookout with you. Or is it I’m bringing my gear to the cookout with me?

I’m a DJ. The cookout is like, you know, I’m just, you know, how does that work out for you?

[IAMDRAKE]
So so like I said, so my wife, we’ve been together since since we was kids. So she has been there when I started DJing. So she goes to all the events.

She was going to all the events that I was DJing that. So she’s already a part of that. So I didn’t have to balance anything, you know.

When I started when we started having kids, I did I did kind of take a backseat, especially with my son, you know, he wanted to play basketball. Really took a backseat to music, really put that on a backburner and really focus in on him playing basketball was too much to try to DJ. And he was all year all around a year sports person.

It went from baseball to football to basketball. And then it was just straight basketball, football. Then it was just straight basketball and traveling.

AAU, it was really no time to really focus in on DJs. I probably took off a good a good five, six years. You know, I from like 2000 and I say 2009.

I was DJing for Power 104, which was owned by Clear Channel, which is not now I heard I was on that station. And when they flipped in 2008. They flipped from hip hop and R&B to a rock station.

Maybe a year after that is when, you know, they do that a lot. So maybe a year after that is when I kind of took a backseat and really focused in on my son and, you know, traveling the United States with AAU and basketball all throughout the year. And about 2015 is when I started getting back into it.

And really, really, 2015, 2016 really went back hard. And, you know, kind of kind of found my way back and fell back in love with it again. And through the social media and everything else, you know, because it allowed me to put myself in a position to be heard by everybody now.

You know, after I could click a button and drop a video on Facebook. And everybody can now see what I could do and hear what I could do. So it put that it sparked that love back in it for me.

So, yeah, you know, I took a little break about 2015, 2016. He got my son got older. I ain’t got to beat it for everything now.

And, you know, so I’ve been rolling since then.

[Darran]
You know, it’s you know, like I said, I mentioned something really key there. You know, starting out in public access, we were limited to the each county where we live. So you have like King County, Snohomish County, Pierce County had its own public access station channel.

So my homeboy, Georgia, lived in. You’ll see what I’m getting at this. He lived in King County and he would put shows on a cool network in King County.

I lived in Snohomish County. So this is my first experiment of syndicating a TV deal. I’d run down to his place, pick up the tapes because I lived in Snohomish County.

I could broadcast in Snohomish County, but I couldn’t broadcast in King County. But we’d syndicate the shows, put them on a Snohomish County. Then he had another friend who lived in Pierce County.

He’d take the tapes and take it down to Pierce County. So we had pretty much the I-5 corridor, our region locked up with this public access television show. Nobody else could do that because they didn’t figure out how to do that.

You know, and then public access, really. So, you know, once online street online distribution came available, you know, we in 2005, we had a broadcast show ready to go with eight separate television shows, nine separate television shows to air on 13 broadcast stations on the West Coast. Nice.

YouTube was in its infinitesimal phase. Right. Like almost when I see TikTok, what people do on TikTok were like, look at me, look at me for 15 seconds.

I’m talking to the camera. We looked at YouTube as YouTube, not broadcast to not Hulu. You know, this is we thought something like broadcast to might come out for real shows that could have Nielsen ratings or Arbitron or something that can be verifiable.

But I was working for Apple at the time and I got into podcasting and I got into podcasting because the video iPod had come out before the video iPod. There was no way to carry around a video in your pocket and watch it on the go, let alone sync it with your computer to get shows downloaded and then watch it on the go with you. You could watch it on your laptop.

You know, I guess if you want to download and get video on your lap, but not as a pocket device. So once that came out, we switched almost. I mean, I still did broadcast for another four years from 2005 to 2007.

I’m sorry, 2009. But the cost to air on television, I had to buy those airtime slots. Dude, I can upload one file on my $14 a month.

Go, Daddy. At that time, I think we were paying $10 a month, which we were supposed to get unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage. Right.

They don’t like it when you start doing terabytes of data. But, you know, we went we started podcasting our shows and putting our pilot episodes up there and we got featured in the iTunes video podcast section right when it launched. So there are 50 podcasts listed in that video podcast section.

We debuted at number 48 when the video iPod came out and the podcast section was revamped. And we went from 1000 downloads, 5000 downloads, 10,000, 50,000, 100,000, 150,000, 300,000 downloads a week. We’re downloading these pilot.

There are pilot episodes. We weren’t even putting new content up. There were just the nine pilot episodes that were up in there.

And I’m like, how do we make money doing this? And nobody in the podcast community knew how to monetize it because you couldn’t prove who was watching. You couldn’t prove how long they watch for.

You couldn’t really track even though they downloaded the file. How much of it they downloaded or not, when they watched it. You couldn’t get any information.

So you’re sitting there going, how do we monetize it? And we went from position 48 to position 22. And it was like, damn.

And I’m like, OK, we blew it. And we passed the whole YouTube thing by years. A couple of years later, we came back and started putting shows up to YouTube.

He’s like, OK, OK, we better start putting stuff there. But, you know, a couple of years down the road, I was already in the live streaming pretty much. And podcasting was our biggest platform that we’re out on.

So, you know, being able to distribute on a fourteen dollar ninety five set a month account as opposed to thousands of dollars of putting this on broadcast television to a limited market. We had the whole world, right? Everyone was on all the eyes were on the U.S. store for those first six weeks. I don’t even think they had launched an international podcast channel like the different. I don’t know if the other countries had their own podcast like England or UK or Europe or India had their own podcast section. So that kind of was our success.

There was really awesome to blow up. But yeah, the distribution and obviously moving forward, you get into you stream live stream and Justin TV was what Twitch was before it became Twitch. And then, you know, Google comes and buys YouTube.

Amazon comes in and backs Twitch. You know, you got these two. And even Microsoft tried to get in the game for a minute.

And then they went, oh, we’re out of it. So, you know, it’s been interesting. But yeah, the ability to distribute content.

And I was really excited to see people jump online and really accept live streaming as a pure medium. Granted, it took Pandy to make that happen. But it was definitely people look at it as a verifiable means you have artists that don’t even go to labels anymore.

You know, they take Mark Rebele, Mark Rebele. I always pronounce it wrong. It became a sensation online, doing live shows.

People can go online and you don’t need the label to produce your music. You do your live show, produce your music, show yourself in the studio, making the music, put it out there, have people subscribe. And then they get the first cut of your album before it’s released.

Patreon and things like that. There are so many tools out there that I think helps that independent artists break through. I think there was somebody I saw a story.

It was like, I don’t think they were targeting Britney. Oh, gosh, they were targeting one of the bigger, bigger artists. And you looked at one of her songs and he goes, there were 17 people that helped write and produce the song for this one artist.

He goes, I had me and I’ve made this many downloads of my song. I’ve made this much money with no record label, no nothing on it, all independently sold and doing it all myself. And they got 17 people on there and millions and millions of dollars pushing this.

So the ability for an artist to get out there and launch now, you know, if you do some simple things right. I always tell people, get a website, even if it’s a landing page, get a website so you have your own domain, you know, get away if you can. Don’t use the hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo address for business purposes.

Save that as your personal email address to get your name and your domain name. You know, connect all your socials, get that, get that taken care of, you know, and make sure you have all of them are all the same. Like I think you got I am Drake, DJ, I am DJ Drake for all of them.

Typically, except for one person. I think they tried to mess with me back in the day with the DJ sessions. They actually went and made a DJ sessions page on Facebook.

The DJ sessions page. I think somebody faked it just to spite me or block it. I’ve tried to get it for years, but everything else is always at the DJ sessions dot com.

You know, I tell everyone, go to our website. All our socials are there. Just click on the link.

You’ll find it. But those important things to have and know your technology, know what you want to do. It kind of has some clear goals, you know, to make sure you know where you want to do, what you want to do.

And then be consistent. If you’re going to go online, make sure you’re going live on Wednesdays. Go live every Wednesday.

If you’re going live on Fridays, go over Friday or maybe not Fridays, because that’s when everyone else thinks it’s the best time to go live to a big audience on Tuesday night at eight o’clock when nobody else is streaming. And boom, now you’re hitting in the top ten, top five, you know, or top 20 at least, you know, in a genre that you’re in. If you’re live streaming and then, you know, just watch other shows, watch other talk shows on what they do.

[IAMDRAKE]
Absolutely. I mean, that’s, that’s, it took me a second to figure that out going live on Twitch and stuff like being consistent, just picking that right time and day. Um, you know, I see a lot of people go live almost every single day and different times and stuff.

And I, you know, when they asked me for my advice, I say, you just gotta be consistent and pick, pick a day that they know they could catch you every Wednesday or Friday or whatever. They know at this time, they know that they could catch you. And so that’s what I ended up landing on and doing on my Sundays and Wednesdays.

They know they could catch me on Sunday, 1130 AM to 2 PM. And on Wednesdays, four to six, anything else is just a raid train or something that I’m jumping on. But so yeah, it’s about, it’s about being consistent and being strategic with it as well.

[Darran]
You know, you know, it’s crazy is that, um, uh, the, the platform I use, not that I’m getting any kickbacks from them in any way, shape or form, but restream what I like about restream is obviously I can go live, when I go live, my guests can add their channels into the show and go live on their channels. Like all like Mr. Frotten, Ms. Miss Frosty and sweet harmony, VP are all tuning in and watching right now. Um, but one of the cool things with restream, you can take a past video if it’s ready to go or upload a video into restream, and then you can schedule it to go live.

Well as well. So let’s say you do go live on Wednesdays at six o’clock, you could schedule that show to go live every other day of the week at six o’clock as like a Sydney, like a replay. And then boom, that next Wednesday, your next show comes in.

Then you just go and program it like a programming schedule for the rest of the week. And it’s just playing at six. So everyone knows, Hey, there’s something live at six o’clock every time.

But the new shows come out on Wednesdays.

[IAMDRAKE]
I might need to start using restream instead of stream labs. Cause you see the computer to do a lot with this restream.

[Darran]
Oh, it’s beautiful. There’s some tools in there that are just amazed stream. I have stream labs in the back.

Stream labs kind of does some integration here. Like I’ll have some, you know, there’s so much chat in my, in my Twitch feed. Like after every five messages it’ll populate a bot message.

After 10 it’ll do this. If this happens, it’ll do that. Stream labs is pretty cool for that.

Um, for that kind of stuff. Lots of different tools out there. The thing you got to watch out for though, and this is why sometimes suggest people don’t do this.

You got to remember this is why I have four different Twitch channels. So I have my main channel and then I have a DJ sessions one, two and three. And, um, you got to watch out though.

Cause when you go live, let’s say you go live at your main time and all your main viewers are there. Let’s say you have a hundred people watching. So you go live every Wednesday.

There’s a hundred people watching. Your average viewership is going to be a hundred people watching. But if you go live six times a week and you have a hundred people here and one person here, your average viewers is now going to be 50.

If you have one viewer here, it’ll be you went live three times with a hundred viewers and three shows for three hours. Now it’s going to be your average is 33 viewers. And if you’re trying to hit that featured partner affiliate level on Twitch, that can really F with your numbers, which you don’t want to have happen.

If you don’t care about the numbers, you just want to syndicate out there or what you could do. You could take and make one Twitch channel. That is your primary channel that you stream live to and keep your numbers up on.

Make a secondary Twitch channel, embed that in your site and call it the rerun channel and just play your reruns on that channel. It’s not going to affect your main primary channels. Numbers.

[IAMDRAKE]
At this point, it don’t matter for, I mean, I’m already a partner, so it don’t really matter.

[Darran]
No, we were one of the first, I didn’t know really what it meant truly to be a Twitch featured partner. We were featured partner in 2018. One of the first featured partnered live streaming DJ live streaming shows with them.

And I sat on that for a couple of years. They actually put us to the front page of Twitch in 2018. I was not ready for that.

We had like 2,500 people watching. Our chat room was just going through the roof. Luckily my transmission from where I was at the internet completely sucked, but we had no problems with that.

And I was just like, what the F is going on? And found out later those spots, they were selling them for like 50 to a hundred grand to people. I don’t know how many hours you want for front page of Twitch.

And this is like prime time on a Wednesday. Like I think we went live at six o’clock, six o’clock to eight o’clock. And I was like, Whoa, I wasn’t ready for that.

Man. I was like, Whoa, I’m waiting to get on the front page on Twitch. I haven’t made it to the front page yet.

Yeah, it was, it was crazy. It was crazy, crazy, crazy. And then, uh, you know, we worked on some stuff and then we were getting ready to do a bunch of big stuff, late 19, early 20, talking with Twitch, getting ready to go back up there.

And then boom, Pandy hit and that’s when here comes everybody now wasn’t like crap. It wasn’t like crap hit the fan, you know, but it was just so much inquiry to so much stuff. Cause everyone in the world wanted to get on Twitch and be up front.

And they had to kind of just psyched out. But I was having regular like almost daily conversation. I can fire them off an email and be like, they’d get right back to me.

After that was like crickets because there was just so much going on in the back end with everything. The increase just was like exponentially crazy with everything going on over there. So, you know, we can make it back there.

It’s not necessarily a goal of ours right this second. Um, you know, but it was an interesting ride. Um, you know, how would you define success as a DJ?

Would that be a, or a DJ slash producer? I should say, would that be like a B port top 10 hit sold out tour? What are your thoughts on that?

Making it to the front page of Twitch?

[IAMDRAKE]
No, no, no. I don’t. I mean, Twitch is one thing, but I don’t.

So, wow. How could I say this? As far as like with Twitch, Twitch is good.

Twitch doesn’t probably mean as much to, you know, if I said the big, big artists around the world, I’m on Twitch. They don’t care. You know what I’m saying?

That’s not, that ain’t going to get me the next whatever, you know? Um, how would I define success? Uh, I mean, just, just by being able to do what I love, you know, to be able to survive doing what I love.

Um, whether it was DJ making music here, of course I would love to be the headline at a big festival and be at Vegas and have a residency and have a number one hit, you know, but if I don’t, you know, I still would say I had a successful run. I still was successful with being able to put out music that people enjoyed and people brought and people listen to be able to DJ around the country and around wherever, you know, wherever I’m booked at and to be live with people, you know, can enjoy my music and enjoy the time that they have with me. So, you know, it’s, it’s not necessarily, I have to, you know, like I said, be the major act at a festival.

It’s just being able to do what I love to do to me is a success. And being recognized as being good at it.

[Darran]
I hear you, you know, back in the day, I used to have to explain to people. It’s funny you brought that up. You’d say, Oh, I’m on Twitch.

People don’t like, okay, cool. I would have to explain to people. I’d be like, Oh yeah, we’re a Twitch featured partner.

This is pre, pre 2020. And I’d say we’re a Twitch featured partner. They’re like, what’s Twitch?

And I go, okay, you know what YouTube is, right? And they’re like, yeah, I go well Google owns YouTube. Amazon pretty much runs Twitch.

That’s how big, and they go, Oh, now everybody in the brothers, mothers, cousins, uncles, if you were five years old in 2020 and you know, nine years old now, you’re like, I watched Twitch. I watched my favorite video games on Twitch. Or people would say to me, you’re on Twitch.

Isn’t that for video games? I went, Oh, platform. You can stream anything you want on it.

Music’s a genre. Yeah. Of course, world of Warcraft has 250,000 people watching it at any given time, or sometimes 250,000 people watching one channel probably, whereas the music forum might have 30, 40,000 people watching the entire channel, you know?

But you know, it’s, it’s it’s still an awesome platform. I really love what they’ve done over there and giving artists that freedom of expression and staying on top of it. You know, when you go to a company, well, I won’t name the other companies in this next statement, but you go to another company, you put in a request, you put in something you feel you’re just lost in the mix.

This happens with a lot of social media companies. So you put something in, it’s like you get no response. You get nothing, nothing crazy, nothing back, but Twitch, you can usually get a genuine response, especially when you’re a partner.

It has its privileges. You know, I’m going to take a question from the, oh, go ahead.

[IAMDRAKE]
No, it has the privileges, but you know, in the big scheme of things, you know, what I would say to people is Twitch is one thing. It depends on what your goal is and what you’re trying to accomplish. You know, if, if, if you’re doing Twitch and that’s all you want to do, then that that’s fine.

But let’s say somebody, somebody like me, like Twitch, I use Twitch as a tool to make sure that I stay out there to the public. But when I go to talk about my music and getting on platforms like Sway in the Morning and doing stuff like that, you know, they don’t really care about Twitch. You know what I’m saying?

They like Twitch what, you know? And when I’m, you know, my music, they want to see YouTube numbers. You know what I’m saying?

They don’t want to see Twitch numbers. They want to see what you’re doing on YouTube and how many viewers you got on YouTube and things of that nature. So, you know, that’s why like I try to tell my people on Twitch, I’ll send out things like, okay, I just dropped a new video on YouTube.

Go to it, like it, subscribe, post, whatever, because that’s, what’s going to help me get there. They want to see how many comments you got, how many views you got, how many likes you got. Same thing with Instagram, you know, they want to see the comments in cause that’s what keeps the story going on Instagram.

So, so all my people out there on Twitch, I thank you all for commenting and liking, but if you’re just liking, please comment as well because that helps the algorithm and that helps keeps, you know, whatever I just put out there going. Yeah, absolutely.

[Darran]
You know, and that’s, that’s something I tell artists all the time is that, you know, a lot of these artists are being booked cause people go look at their, their, their followings, their socials, have they ain’t got none. Why am I going to book you? Right.

Why am I going to bring you on? You can be phenomenal, but you got another person who has 20,000 people and they’re engaged with them and they know they’re going to get a hundred likes or comments or something going on. They can share a link.

That’s going to prove. And you know, YouTube, that big one is they finally years, a few years back, they started recognizing YouTube downloads as a viable tracking source for plays like radio plays and things like that. And so I think that’s a huge thing for people.

So I want to give a shout out right now to Gannon Styles and Instagram thank you for tuning in. It’s our first time doing it. Yes, I do know the video is not centered up like it’s supposed to be another like widescreen versions of fun stuff.

Want to give a shout out also to, hold on, hold on, hold on. We got it. We got Dequa 73 asked the question says, I imagine the path to partner has gotten more complicated.

Any advice there? You want to chime in on that? You want me to chime in on that?

[IAMDRAKE]
I mean, you can as well. I’ll say this. Um, the path to partnership, you know, like, like, like I tell people when I’m talking to them and asking for my advice, you got to be consistent.

Um, I know a lot of people jump on a lot of raid trains. Um, obviously the standards that you got to meet, you got to have 75 people for a month. And then once you unlock the partnership, then you’re probably got to average over a hundred just to get partnered for at least a month.

Um, I would say stay consistent. Um, watch the raid trains that you do. Cause you know, you could be at 70 and you do a raid train and you only have 30 people.

Well, guess what? You just, you pretty much start right back from zero again to try to get that mark up to 75 for the month. So I, yeah, that’s my, my stake assistant.

I would say advertise to people. I know people get tired of me advertising. I’m hitting them on Instagram.

I’m hitting them on Twitch. Like, but that’s how I came up, you know, as, as kind of like promoting myself. Um, you know, I hit them on Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, everywhere.

Whenever I’m about to go live this quarter, whatever, you know, I hit them up. Hey, I’m about to go live. So I would say, do that.

Make sure your mods is hitting up whoever they rock with and letting people know that you’re about to go live. Um, I would say that’s the most important thing. You know, you got to spread the word that you’re going live.

So people, you know, how to catch you.

[Darran]
You know, I don’t know if this is still true to the day, but I found this out a long time ago and a lot of people thought they were, thought they were going to bulk their channels up by doing raids and getting raided. Found out that raid numbers do not count towards your count. Right.

Hitting viewers. You have to actually have hard viewers. So you’ll see a lot of people they’ll ask after they get raided and say, Hey, can you do me a favor?

Can you refresh your screen? So it counts as a viewer on my show and then they can bump that up and you’re welcome. Dequa 73.

No problem there.

[IAMDRAKE]
But you gotta be on raids. That makes sense though. So yeah.

You know, yeah. Man, I hate to say that. Raiding and all of a sudden it goes boop and they all switch the channel and it’s like, right, right.

That’s not good. That’s not good.

[Darran]
Back in the day they didn’t, I mean, it’s 75 viewers consistently. You got to stream a certain amount of times a month and a certain number of hours. That was like the trifecta.

But originally if you can find it still on Twitch’s site, there was a whole list of accomplishments that you’d make and it was like stream for 10 hours, stream for 20 hours. And once you finish all these hurdles, I mean, there was a lot of hurdles that you had to get to. Then they would consider you for a partner show and it made people want to get to those hurdles.

When we made featured partner, they looked at our content and our brand and went, you’ve already been doing this for 10 years. Get over here. And I was like, Scorpio, get over here.

You know, it’s like, Whoa, you know, this is crazy. And you know, didn’t know what to really expect. Cause I was like, well, damn, what do we do now?

And our website was kind of the, our first website I call what, if you look back at like way back machine, you look at the djsessions.com in 2013 you’d be like, you call this a website. And then you look at our website. I got in like 2018 it was okay.

The Honda, Hyundai. Now we come to 2022, 2021, 2022. And then we got the Ferrari, you know, we’re ready.

International branding. Let’s go mobile app, virtual at the nightclubs, all our stuff downloadable 2,500 episodes, searchable you know, events, contests, all that stuff, merchandise store, everything there nice and clean and mobile works on mobile. That’s a big thing, you know you know, but it’s just a progress.

I think we were talking about earlier, you just, you slowly build, you slowly you’ll add this and add that as it goes up.

[IAMDRAKE]
And I want to say this too, as far as like to make partner for Twitch, if you are involved in a lot of rage, you still need to have your own people that you bring to the, to, to, to the party. So if you could bring 60 people of your own, because people have to know how, how Twitch works, even if you get rated, let’s say with 130 people, let’s say you get ready to 130 people, at least within the first 15 minutes, 30 or 40 of those people going to drop off. And in the next 15 minutes after that, another 15, 20 people going to drop off.

If you have your own people, at least 60, that’s going to offset the people that, that, that dropped off as opposed to people that didn’t drop off. So now you’re consistently back at one 20 and it makes sense. But if you only have, if you only bring a 10, 15 people to the party and you got rated with 130, that’s why you’re going to see a lot of people.

If they ever wonder why those numbers drop quickly, because you didn’t bring anybody to the party to offset the people that’s dropping off.

[Darran]
So yeah, people that don’t really, you know, trying to get another, another amazing tool to help with that is I use a tool, a social media tool, and I’m not getting any kickbacks for him for this, but it’s called Hello Wolfie. It’s an auto poster tool for, for social media. So I can tag, I can link my Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, uh, well, okay.

X meta, uh, tick talk, LinkedIn, a few different other platforms into that. And I can schedule posts to go. So if I know like your show is, it’s going live at six, you can have a scheduled post saying at five 45, I’m going live in 15 minutes.

If your show is say two hours long at six 30, you can say I’m live right now. At, at, at, you know, seven o’clock you can say I’m live right now, you know, different messages, but you can have an auto post for you every week and that way it’s just taking care of those auto posts for at least your own pages saying I’m live coming to show. I’m live.

Send me a request. I’m alive. Check out and get some merchandise or give me a, I’ll give him, I’ve given shout outs right now, you know, and try to build that social engagement through your social media platforms to do that.

Um, lots of different tools out there and lots of things are going, you know, Drake or I am DJ Drake. When you’re not entertaining others, what do you do to entertain yourself?

[IAMDRAKE]
Ooh, what do I do to entertain myself? Um, for me it’s just spending time with the family, you know, being at home, going to the gym, uh, you know, just spending time to film that. That’s how I entertain myself.

Going through the movies. Um, you know, I, I, because this is like a 24 seven, whenever I get some downtime, I need that to be downtime, you know? So I’m, I’m home.

I don’t, I ain’t out running the streets. You know, you might catch me at a movie. Or are you going to catch me at home?

You know? So that’s, that’s, that’s how I entertain myself. I’m relaxing with the family.

[Darran]
Uh, I hear that. I know exactly what you mean. When I get downtime, I binge, I go to the elliptical upstairs in my gym and binge and I’m like, I’m home watching movies.

I’m chilling, making dinner, making food. I’m a huge, huge foodie. So like every second or third picture on my social is usually something with food that I’m making for dinner.

We’re going to wrap up now. Now we are expecting to get an exclusive mix from you as well. Is that correct?

Yes. Correct. Correct.

[IAMDRAKE]
Awesome. Looking forward to that.

[Darran]
Yes. Awesome. Is there anything else you want to let our DJ sessions fans know about before we let you go?

[IAMDRAKE]
Um, once again, I got music out now, so go to Spotify at I am DJ Drake. Uh, go to Apple music, any of those platforms, stream the music. I got fool for your love out right now, featuring Jamiah Ezra from South Africa.

I got flying high out right now featuring precious James from South Africa. I got the remix to fool for your love coming in two weeks. So, you know, hit me on, on Instagram.

I am DJ Drake. Tick tock. I am DJ Drake.

YouTube, as we just talked about, I am DJ Drake, uh, Twitch and I am DJ Drake. Um, again, stream the music, go watch my videos on YouTube, stream the music. Cause that helps everything.

Stream it everywhere.

[Darran]
Instagram, Tik TOK, YouTube, Twitch. I am DJ Drake. Apple music, all of that music.

There you go.

[IAMDRAKE]
And buy it on Apple music. You want to help me out? Buy it on Apple music for 99 cents or a dollar 29, whatever they charge it.

And for my DJs, if you’re on track source or you’re on beat port, go to beat port track source, buy it on there as well for a dollar 99. All of that helps. It helps it grow and it helps us get to where we, you know, trying to get to.

[Darran]
Awesome. Well, again, we’ll follow up with you as we promised. Every six months we try to get somebody back on, get the people that we have on the show back on the show.

Cause there’s always new stuff. You got something going on, more tracks, more music, more experiences, more knowledge to drop on the DJ sessions. A pleasure to have you here.

I am DJ Drake today on the DJ sessions, virtual sessions. Appreciate you brother and a shout out to everyone in the chat room on I am Drake’s chat room coming in. Thank you very much for tuning in as well.

I’m your host, Darran coming to you from the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington. That’s on right over there is I am Drake coming in from Hartford, Connecticut for the DJ sessions presents the virtual sessions. Don’t forget to go to our website, the DJ sessions.com.

We got 2,500 past episodes. They’re live streaming exclusive mixes, over 600 news stories a month, 24 news stories a day coming in merchandise. All of our socials are there at the DJ sessions.com.

We’ll have up over a hundred hours of content coming to you every month starting here soon. We’re ramping back up, getting back in the saddle again. It’s going to be some fun stuff.

Check out our mobile sessions, check out our rooftop sessions, check out our silent disco sessions and more at the DJ sessions.com. Again, this is Darran and that’s I am Drake. I always get these things mixed up.

Coming to you from the virtual studios for the DJ sessions presents the virtual sessions. And remember on the DJ sessions, the music never stops.