Unseen on the Virtual Sessions presented by The DJ Sessions 7/7/25

🎙️ Interview Overview

Host: Darren (The DJ Sessions)
Guest: Unseen (aka Unseen Product, real name undisclosed)
Location: Seattle (host) ↔ Atlanta (guest)
Theme: The evolution of hip-hop, technology’s impact on music, AI in production, and keeping soul in sound.
Running Time: ~1 hour, 10 minutes

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🕵️ 1. The Origin of “Unseen”

• Name Meaning: Inspired initially by braggadocious rap lines (“you can’t see me”), the name evolved to represent Unseen’s self-taught musical journey.

• He later discovered it aligned with a term in classical music — achieving performance without prior knowledge — fitting his autodidactic path.

• Rarely shows his face online, reinforcing the idea that the music should speak first.

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🎹 2. Musical Roots & Equipment

• Started making music in 1995 and went full-time by 1996.

• No formal training — learned entirely by ear and self-study.

• First serious production tool: Akai MPC-3000, rented from studios with saved paycheck money.

• Eventually purchased an MPC-2000, fully embracing analog production during hip-hop’s golden era.

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💽 3. From Queens to the Booth

• Queens, NY native, raised near the epicenter of hip-hop — the birthplace of Run DMC, LL Cool J, and Russell Simmons.

• Emphasizes the deep pride that Queens residents have for their musical legacy and neighborhood artists.

• Was in proximity to many legends and eventually collaborated with artists like Mr. Cheeks (Lost Boyz) and Ja Rule.

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📼 4. The DJ as Gatekeeper

• In the pre-digital era, DJs were the main distributors for unsigned talent.

• Mixtapes and street DJs (like DJ Clue, Doo Wop) helped break artists long before streaming platforms existed.

• The “streets” were the gatekeepers of hip-hop legitimacy — DJs were the senators, bringing sound to the people for approval.

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🕰️ 5. Music Industry Then vs. Now

Then:

• Had to burn CDs, press vinyl, or hope to get on a mixtape.

• Studio access, PR, and radio play required significant money or luck.

• Distribution was gatekept and difficult to scale without a label.

Now:

• Anyone can distribute music instantly through platforms like Spotify, Beatport, and YouTube.

• Digital tools like AI, DAWs, and auto-mixing software allow faster production—but not necessarily better.

• Oversaturation has made it harder to stand out or connect emotionally.

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🤖 6. Is AI Killing Music?

Unseen passionately argues that:

• AI is reshaping music, but also eroding musicianship.

• Tools are making it too easy for non-musicians to make music.

• The soul, creativity, and imperfections that make music human are at risk of being lost.

• Compares current AI music tools to Lego blocks — assembled but lacking depth.

“People who use AI aren’t musicians. They don’t know music theory. They’re not creating — they’re assembling.”

• Uses AI tools himself — for backup vocals and efficiency — but remains vocal about preserving the musician’s spirit.

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💿 7. Artistry vs. Trend-Chasing

• Sometimes artists ask Unseen to make beats that “sound like” popular songs or artists.

• While he can do it, and has done so for major artists, he emphasizes originality as the most important goal.

• Says music shouldn’t be made to follow trends on Beatport or radio.

“Be musical. Be diverse. Be hard. That’s what my sound is.”

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📣 8. Live Shows, DJs & Authenticity

• DJs once were in the corner, just a part of the vibe. Now they’re often the center of attention—sometimes for the wrong reasons.

• He and Darren discuss:

  • DJs who don’t use headphones or mix live.

  • Pre-recorded sets for synced light shows.

  • AI-generated DJ sets being passed off as live.

• Hip-hop, he argues, resists this because:

  • It requires crowd reading, scratching, vocal interaction, and timing.

  • It’s built on live, human spontaneity.

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📱 9. Phones & Club Culture

• Phones in clubs have killed the vibe:

  • Diminish audience energy.

  • DJs can’t connect when fans are filming instead of dancing.

  • Big artists (e.g., Prince, Taylor Swift) used to ban recording at shows — a practice he wishes would return.

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🔧 10. Future Tech Ideas for Music

• Dreams of a tool that helps people truly become musicians, not just button-pushers.

• Hopes tech evolves to teach musical skill, not just replace it.

• Thinks tech should enhance the human creative process — not replace it.

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💡 11. Advice for New Producers

“Be a musician. Not just a beat maker. Even if AI can mimic us, it can’t replace our soul.”

• Learn theory or develop your ear.

• Stay original.

• Aim to inspire, not just compete.

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🎤 12. Most Inspiring Artist He’s Met?

• LL Cool J: Spoke to Unseen on the phone early in his career, offered support and feedback — a full-circle moment for a young artist from Queens.

• Worked with neighborhood legends like Mr. Cheeks and Ja Rule, and is proud of Queens’ legacy in hip-hop.

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📲 Follow Unseen

• Instagram: @mixedbyunseen
  → His hub for music production, mixing services, and new content.

• Offers mixing services for independent artists and emphasizes the importance of professionally finished music.

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🧠 Notable Quotes

“AI makes music like Lego blocks. But real music? That’s soul.”

“A lot of people turn to AI because they don’t have the skill. But what if it was easier to learn the skill?”

“The DJ will always have a place. They’re the bridge between the machine and the people.”

[Darran]
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the DJ Sessions Presents the Virtual Sessions. I’m your host, Darren, and right now I’m sitting here in the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington, and coming in from Atlanta, Georgia, once we get the orientation fixed, right? There we go, we got Unseen coming in.

There we go, always a little technical difficulty.

[Unseen]
Yeah, yeah, of course.

[Darran]
We go live, but it doesn’t matter. That’s why I love doing stuff live, because we just roll with the show as it goes. How you doing this evening, Unseen?

[Unseen]
Oh man, I’m doing okay, man. You know, was a little sideways, but then again, that’s how I be feeling on some days. So, you know, that was natural.

[Darran]
Exactly, no, that’s how it goes sometimes. You know, I was looking at some of your social media accounts before the show and doing a little research on you. And, you know, I noticed that from a lot of things I saw, you weren’t in any of the photos.

So what I got to do in this interview and looking at it and researching, I’m like, am I really gonna have a person on camera with me today, or is it just gonna be like an image of the studio or what’s going on there? What was the story behind your artist’s name, you know, Unseen, where did that come from? Because I know what I thought, but let our DJ session.

[Unseen]
I got you, I got you. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I go by Unseen.

If I have a full name, it will be Unseen Product, but I’ll tell a full story behind that. Really, it stemmed from me becoming a producer. At the time, I’ve heard a couple of my favorite rappers will pretty much use the term Unseen.

It’s just like bragging about their skills and ability, like you can’t see me. So the first inspiration was me having the same attitude, man, you know, when I’m creating my music, it’s gonna be that great that I don’t think nobody can’t see me. But really, I took it beyond that because I felt like that was just too shallow of a name, so to speak, right?

But it just so happened to fit, man, where it actually meant exactly how I learned music, was pretty much, I’ve never really learned music formally. So it’s actually a term, I think, in classical music that means to achieve a musical score without prior knowledge.

[Darran]
Okay, nice. And so a lot of artists have a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of different names, a lot of things that come up and have meaning to them, but sometimes the public doesn’t know. I mean, I’m known as Darren Bruce everywhere, but my alias, my faux DJ name is TheDJ…Session. Everyone always asks me if I’m a DJ or not. I’m like, no, but if I was, what would be my name? And it was a joke way back in the day. I used to call myself DJ ITV when I just made a profile page about it when I was back in the day, but ITV was the name of our broadcast television series.

So it’s interesting to find out what’s behind somebody’s name, what it means to them. You’ve been doing this for a while now. You said 30 years?

Yeah, man. Because I’m gonna say one thing. One thing, first off, I just turned 50 last year.

You don’t look a day over like 27, down to good, down to maybe 25, man. But 30 years? When did you start doing all this?

[Unseen]
Yeah, man. Yeah, crazy. I always, it’s always confusing.

Sometimes a lot of people think I’m lying, right? As you said. Yeah, absolutely, man.

1996, man, to be exact, you know? Probably, of course, 95, I started getting my hands wet on, again, with the name, right? I never learned music, so it was just started teaching myself.

I had no prior skills and knowledge on how to do this. So started in 1995, bought myself a keyboard, loaded cheap stuff for Christmas, and played around and took it serious from there. Of course, I had inspiration by way of music that I love and people that I admired musically, but just 1996 was when it all started, man.

[Darran]
All right, 96. Well, I was 96, I was 22 years old, wasn’t doing much with my life, so. Well, I was still in the game a little bit, but not as much as I am now.

Yeah, dang. So you’ve worked with a number of different artists over the years, doing different stuff, and what has it been, seeing the transition go, because I remember, let’s see, 22 years old, I was working at a music store. I wasn’t making music.

I was kind of in the biz, but at that time, we did, from a video standpoint, I’m gonna relate this to the music standpoint, we didn’t have much of an outlet to put stuff on. If we filmed with a video camera, all we could really do was watch it at home, watch it on, if we got lucky, and you knew how to do it, put it on public access, and getting on broadcast television at the time, it wasn’t easy to do. It was, but it wasn’t that easy to do, but from a music standpoint, going back to 96, I mean, we’re talking analog gear, basically.

Analog, man. I mean, there was digital, there were drum machines, drum beats, but the computer element really wasn’t there. I remember getting into Fruity Loops, I had a laptop somewhere around 2000, and I had Fruity Loops 3 on it, and I thought that was a bee’s knees.

I’m like, whoa, Sequencer, this is awesome, I can make some beats, I can play with some stuff. Never got that heavy into it, I just thought it was cool that it was on my laptop. You’ve seen the transition go over 30 years.

Yeah, man. Going from there, what did you first start making your beats with, your music with?

[Unseen]
Well, when it comes to hip hop, that was primarily what I started producing, and still kind of do, right? It was two drum machines that were the prominent tools, and it was the MPC series, or the SP-1200. The SP-1200, I had my hand on it, but I went straight for the MPCs.

When I first started having access to professional equipment, first piece of gear I made my beats on was an MPC-3000. Me and my friend, we both had a job, I started with him, of course, story behind that, but we had a job, and we’ll save our money, our paycheck to go rent a studio, and that studio had an MPC-3000, and that’s how it all got started. When I finally bought my own piece of equipment, it was an MPC-2000.

[Darran]
All right. You know, and somewhere around like 2001, setting away four o’clock, five years from there, I ended up actually playing around, I got myself into some Roland gear, the MC-505 and the SP-808, and those are fun little toys to play with. I wasn’t ready to, I wasn’t getting into music production, but I wasn’t gonna spend like $3,000 on a computer.

At that time, $3,000 on a computer was a lot of money. I mean, it was like, you were gonna get something awesome. Apple hadn’t come out with GarageBand just yet.

Logic, I believe, was out then, but then you needed to get a Mac to run it, you know?

[Unseen]
But I wasn’t even into Macs yet. It was called E-Magic. At that time, Apple didn’t even own it.

It was- I don’t even think so, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I believe it was E-Magic, owned by a totally different company, then they eventually bought it later on.

[Darran]
Yeah, and I mean, I think, yeah, and I believe it was, who did Flash? Who was the first originators of Flash? It wasn’t Adobe.

Adobe ended up buying Flash, but they had the video editing program, that later became Final Cut Pro. Yeah, of course.

[Unseen]
Something like that.

[Darran]
But yeah, anyways, I turned it all into Apple stuff in 2001. I came over in college, I’m like, woo! And then I went to work for the company later.

But all that fun stuff is history. But you know, the evolution of getting it out there, and now, you see, making music now, distribution-wise, too. I mean, there was no, where would you distribute your music if you weren’t burning it on CDs and handing it out on the street corner?

You know, or selling them at the swap meet, or, you know, there was no online websites for everyone to upload an MP3 file to. So, you know, how did you get distributed? I remember talking with my buddy in college in 2021, who’s still kind of one of the lead musicians, artists for our show, just got him on the site, Mad Malcolm.

You know, I came up with this game plan. I’m always good at giving people really good advice on making them millions of dollars, when it comes to my business ventures. I run them well.

I do everything right down to the T, but I’m like, hey, if you could, I should be a better being a business manager than managing a business.

[Unseen]
Right, right, a consultant, right.

[Darran]
And they’d be like, yeah, I’d take like, okay, give me 20 points out the back, yeah. You know, like, you know, that kind of relationship. But though, you know, it’s a, it was interesting because, you know, back then there was no distribution.

How did you get, how did you get, you couldn’t get radio playing unless you were distributed. You couldn’t get basically, it’s a money game. Yeah.

You know, the more money you had, the easier it was to get out there in a sense, because you could rent the studio time, you could grease the palms, the execs get on the second tier radio stations, get some radio play, go on tour, be picked up, you know, all that fun stuff that, you know. But, you know, I came up with this plan for my friend. I said, look, you got to build yourself your own distribution kit.

And then this time you could get at least a basic website up. There was, I think he could submit his stuff to CD Baby, and CD Baby would then submit it to iTunes and out there. That was kind of good for him.

I said, dude, you need to get some distribution under your belly, make your case strong. I said, hey, why don’t you do this? Take, go make a hundred CDs, you know, box them, put them up.

Then go to the local music stores when they were still around. Kids remember those kinds of things. I know there’s Sam Goody, I think is still out there.

I think Best Buy just got rid of their whole CD section or something. One of them did something like that. They don’t sell CDs anymore.

But I said, go to these local music shops, walk through the door and say, hey, I will give you, can I put these on your shelf? Can I do this? And you retail them for this.

This is my whole marketing package, this is who I am. I’m in Seattle. I’d like to put one of, just put one of them on your shelf.

If it sells or not, I’ll give it to you for free. If it sells, great, we’re pushing this out. See if they’ll pick it up and then get these stores.

You know, you could say, hey, I’m distributed in this store. I’m distributed in this store, I’m distributed here. You could build it.

So when you go to a radio station, you can say, hey, you wanna play my song? Says, I’m here, I’m online. I’m a hero over here.

You know, it’s just a kind of a plan to kind of get yourself distributed. Same with like DJs. I said, you know, you’re wanting to get booked a tour.

Why not book your own tour and call up a club and say, hey, I might, now a lot of people are against pay to play, but if you’re like, hey, I’ll give you guys 250 bucks, pay for my air flight, pay for this, so I can get on, so I can book my own tour and come play your club to be in front of your people. Right, right. You know, and then that’s a marketing expense.

It’s gonna cost money to get your name out there, but at least you can say, I’m on tour. I’m going to a bunch of different states. I’m playing in front of different crowds.

Those crowds are gonna hear about you and say, you’re from Seattle or wherever you’re from. You’re from Atlanta and say, whoa, let’s follow you. Let’s see what’s going on with this artist.

It’s all marketing. A lot of artists don’t understand that process. Absolutely.

Or they think I shouldn’t have to pay to play. It’s like, okay, where’s your marketing coming from then? What makes you stand out from the rest of the crowd?

[Unseen]
So you don’t need music, you know. You do it with your girlfriend.

[Darran]
I’m gonna jump in and let you chime in on music now versus then in the digital age, it’s night and day. It’s not even night and day. It’s, you couldn’t do it the old school way anymore.

Right, right. You know, it’s just impossible. But now, you know, and I was in marketing in college a few years back, again, for my second degree.

The guy in class, I was in this marketing class, he goes, at that time, this is 2017, he was saying there are over a million videos a minute being uploaded to YouTube. A million videos a minute. Now, that’s a million videos, and that’s just one-on-one, me and you and I talking.

How many traits do you think are going up online every minute? Probably 10 million, 20. 50, maybe.

So how do you, now, when we jump to that, what we said, music now versus music then, what’s your take on the state of the industry with musicians trying to get out there?

[Unseen]
Well, you know what, it’s interesting, because even when you take it, taking it back to the distribution aspect of it, right? It’s ironic, you know, this is the DJ session, right? So when I started, the hopes were to get a record deal and have the music distributed, right?

That was every artist’s dream, is for a record deal. So that’s a given. Formal distribution by way of a deal.

That wasn’t as easy as you could put your own music out. So one outlet, to be honest, was really the DJs. Was really the DJs.

That’s where DJs and bootleg. Let me explain. The DJs, of course, in today’s term, needed the content, needed the music to play, right?

Of course, DJs had the industry-based music, whether they created mixtapes or blends out of it. However, when it evolved to them adding independent artists on their mixtapes, whether they were freestyling or the exclusive songs, that’s what the artists who didn’t have a record deal have. So the DJs were the distribution outlet.

So that’s what I have access to. Many of the, whether it’s DJ Dool Wop and Queens, all these other casts from where I was from, you know, many names that I can’t forget, or, you know, that I’m forgetting right now, but whether it’s DJ Clue and things of that nature, that was a goal before you think you could get a record deal. The goal was to get to a DJ, because they have reached to the street.

And hip hop really, you could say, if we get political, not really political, but you could say the street was the Congress house of hip hop. If the street don’t approve it, it don’t make it a hip hop. Yeah, exactly.

So therefore the DJs, in a sense, you could say were the senators, because they bring it to the street, so to speak, right? Or if that’s the best analogy, but they bring the music to the street so that the streets can approve and, you know, get exposure to it and so on. So that was the aim.

So when I was coming up, a lot of what we were doing, of course, we were pursuing deals, you know, coming where I’m from, I’m from Queens, originally Queens, New York City. So, you know, a lot of the people from that area, pretty much a lot of hip hop legends, whether it was Run DMC, right? Russell Simmons, right?

Who built the house of hip hop by way of Def Jam, so to speak. So if you’re from that neighborhood, you had a lot of, you were somehow close to that. So you were inspired to reach those guys or at least get next to it by way of people that they might know, or at least whoever did music in the neighborhood.

So it was a lot of that as well, right? But we pursued the deals, but the DJs were the main distribution outlet. That was the goal.

And then when the DJs can make it hot, as you know, then the labels there after was hot. So then we can reach that next level distribution.

[Darran]
Yeah, and I think that the difficult thing was too, is you go back, I mean, once the DJ world started to go digital and the purchase of music went digital, because an underground artist, a DJ couldn’t DJ a cassette tape. The ability to burn a CD, if they were using CDs, or the ability to make a vinyl record that a DJ, you might, okay, even if you got 10 copies burnt and you handed those 10 copies out, they’re still in somebody’s crate. They got five, six crates with them.

They’re dragging just one set for one hour, maybe, if they’re bringing all their crates in or if they’re playing for two hours and they might drop your album if you aren’t up there handling it. Or you might have to grease a little palms and say, hey man, can you drop my jam for 50 bucks? Can you drop my jam for a hundred bucks?

You know, I bet you some DJs were making a nice little side hustle, dropping some tracks to albums they probably weren’t supposed to be playing in some hot clubs. Like, hey man, I’m making, I may be getting paid 200 bucks or 150 bucks to play this gig, but I dropped three tracks for my homeboys over here. They got me a hundred bucks a pop to play at the club tonight.

Then everyone’s going crazy. Then the radio stations hopefully start picking up on it, playing it. Now we got podcasting.

We got live streaming. We got the distribution networks that flick of a button, boom. The other thing about music nowadays is when a company, when somebody puts something on vinyl back in the day, and this is, I guess, kind of common knowledge in a sense, well, I guess to the industry people, you would maybe only press 5,000 copies.

If you’re trying to distribute that nationwide then if there’s five stores and there are a hundred stores and each store is going to get, or I guess if there’s a thousand stores, each store is going to get five copies of it. Yeah. But how many underground artists could press 5,000 whacks, you know?

No, they might be able to press 500 and where are those going to go live? You know, and how many are going to go out as promo or white label, you know, and all that fun stuff. So, you know, again, money.

Like a good PR person, you know, that can take it to the radio station and say, hey, there might be a DJ playing this, but this radio station might put it in rotation, you know, five or six times, could get you 5,000, 10,000 listeners. And then everyone goes to the club and say, play that new jam. And then the DJ says, ah, I don’t got that.

Where do I, hey man, everyone’s requesting your jam. Yeah. But I don’t have a record.

Can you give me a record of it? Yeah. You know, so that was always interesting, but now you put something up on Beatport, a hundred thousand people could have that song in five seconds.

Yeah.

[Unseen]
You know? Oh yeah.

[Darran]
And you know, it’s coming under, I’ve seen this and I’m not critiquing this. I’m only echoing what’s being said out there in the industry now, is that the advent of the electronic music DJ, I wouldn’t say so much as in hip hop. I believe hip hop, and I come from a little bit of a hip hop background working on a broadcast tower, I’m sorry, a public access television show for about eight years growing up.

That was my first kind of gig I worked in getting this business. Still keep my ear to the ground on stuff like that, but I’m more electronic music. But you go to these events now and it’s an electronic music event and the DJ is playing the show, but they’re not wearing any headphones.

They’re not mixing. Oh. And basically what’s happening, and I understand why, we’ve known this for years, these big concerts, these big shows, they’re all synced with lights and everything.

You can’t have a live performance going and expect those lights and everything to trigger at the right points with the music and everything. But it’s basically getting backlash because it’s disenfranchising the audience. You’re seeing a DJ, I’m going to see this DJ, but the DJ, he ain’t even hitting the play button nine times out of 10 anymore.

He’s up there, the music gets kicked in by an audio engineer. They know the set because they submitted the track list. They’ve listened to it, they know what’s coming in, and they know the songs.

It’s not too hard to go, boom, boom, boom, down to the beat, even if they don’t know the track that’s coming up. And all they can do is sit there for a second. It might be being fed through the decks that they’re on, but they probably have a good ear.

They probably have a set list. They know what’s going on. They probably played it out as part of their set or somewhere.

They know what’s coming on. But is that disenfranchising the overall scene as a whole? Could you do that with a hip hop vibe element?

Nah. I don’t think you could because you’ve got scratching usually involved in there. You’ve got live performing.

You’ve got DJing skills as opposed to just the mixing aspect. And now you’ve got six-year-olds. I don’t know what, I could probably type in right now and say, what’s the youngest DJ on the internet?

And probably a YouTube video pop up with 500 million downloads and they’re famous making money off of it somehow. And a five-year-old, six-year-old can DJ. They can do their track selection.

They can do their track selection. They can put it all together. And it reminds me of that show, that show, My Kid Painted This or something like that.

And it was like, was this painted by a kid or was this painted by a famous artist? And the audience would come in and say, no. And then they go, a kid painted that.

And it’d be like real people. Believe they had real art people that came in and said, nah, I think an artist painted that. And they’re like, nope, it’s painted by a seven-year-old kid or a 10-year-old kid or, you know, or nope, it was painted by a major artist and stuff like that.

So, you know, we’ll get into some of this because, you know, I got more questions to go over here. But, you know, it’s coming down to, is there a lost talent in that? Because you’re not even really reading the crowd when you’re playing these big stadium events like that.

But again, when it comes to hip hop, I think there is still a natural selection process. You’re feeling the crowd. And again, you can’t really get a lot of hip hop songs.

They don’t, they aren’t like standardized on 124 beats per minute. You know, it’s, this one’s here and this one’s here. You’ve got to blend those two together somehow, you know, whereas like electronic music, you can usually stay within a, you know, good, like let’s say I’m 122 to 126 or something like that, you know, and stay in the same chord and kind of tell your song along the way.

Whereas hip hop, it doesn’t always work out like that. So anyways, yeah, just seeing the changes over time, obviously both of our timelines. By the way, if you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?

I’m 48. Okay, okay, man, like I said, you look like a, everyone always thinks I’m in my early 30s, late 20s. Right, right, right, we looking good these days, man.

[Unseen]
We looking good.

[Darran]
So, you know, if you could describe your music in three words, what would you call it?

[Unseen]
Oh man, one word would definitely be, like my most traditional sound that I would describe my music in is definitely hard. Okay. Musical.

And third one I would definitely say, diverse, absolutely diverse.

[Darran]
Hard, musical, diverse. Yeah. There you go.

Hard, musical, diverse. And when you make a track, do you make the music with the intention of making it a popular track, popular record, or you just make it based on, you know, to satisfy yourself and the success of it is kind of a nice side effect? What’s your aim?

[Unseen]
You know what, that’s a answer, like if it was a multiple choice, it would be that last one all of the above. Because in one aspect, like today, the music production is based on type beats and basically is creating a type of beats based on existing music that is successful or known with the most popular artists, right? Now, that didn’t start in today’s sound because even back then, let’s say, for example, back in my era when 50 Cent first came out, right?

Whatever hottest record that he had, there were always people trying to emulate, not copy the beat, but a feel of it, so to speak. So that always existed. So it’s to say, I’m not gonna say who, right?

But I’ve been in places where it were major artists where they asked me to create a beat like this popular artist, you know? And I’ve done it and I gave it to them, right? So, you know, I don’t wanna blow them up, like I said, out of respect, but it’s happened.

And now that’s just major, you know, on a major level, but as far as the independent artists, the aspiring artists or rapper, that was very common because the idea was to give the record label the impression that they on par with that. So a lot of them would request that. However, me as a producer, if I go back to the one description of my style as being musical, a lot of what I’ve done was the approach to be musical.

I’ve been inspired by a lot of different style of music, you know, growing up, whether it was genre such as world music, right? Whether it was from Caribbean based music, right? Reggae this and that, you know, funk and so on, right?

So I drew from all of those to inspire how I would create, right? Had a lot of base in my music, although hip hop was heavily sample based, which I’ve done as well. But at the same time, a lot of it was really trying to discover my sound.

Cause if we go back to the beginning, my name was that musical knowledge that I didn’t have. So it was a matter of teaching myself how to create it. So a lot of what I was doing was taking from what I know and what I love, but also just trying to be as creative as possible.

So I had a lot of it that was basically of my own sounds just to inject that. So when people would hear my music, they can identify my signature, so to speak, right? It’s like Dre had a signature, Timbaland had a signature, Pharrell had a signature, right?

I didn’t have one as pronounced as them, but in one aspect, a hard drum, for example, was one of my signatures.

[Darran]
You know, it’s funny you mentioned that, that sound and then people wanting to request the sound like somebody else. Often or not, I hear from producers in the electronic music industry that artists will go out there and say, they’ll look at Beatport and what’s trending on Beatport and say, I’m gonna go make sounds like that. And then I’m gonna submit this or I’m gonna make a sound like this that goes to this label because that’s what their sounds are making.

And a lot of the people that come in and come on the show say, don’t do that because one, they wanna know what you are really like. You know, two, if you’re doing, trying to go to that, by the time you get a song done, it could be, if you can bounce out a song in a week, yay. But if you’re really putting time into a song, it could take a few weeks, take a month.

By the time you get it out there, get it up there on the charts, it’s already moved on to the next genre. So now you’re basically chasing after carrots or, you know, that aren’t even there anymore. And they usually say, just produce what you love and submit it into those realms of what you really like doing.

Because when you’re gonna be happy with that product, rather than just trying to jump through everyone’s hoop and not really identifying with who you are as a musician or you may make your own stuff, but it sits in the back end, but you’re always trying to cater what’s out here. And, you know, if you know, I won’t say what I know, but most people should know that these decisions that are made up top, they know what they’re doing. And like, okay, I’m gonna lift a curtain here, but you remember the website eBaum’s World?

Yeah. Way back in the day, way back in the day. The original YouTube.

Original YouTube, right? Everyone thought those videos were funny and videos were getting popular. They didn’t understand that there was a team of people that sat behind a desk all day long, sorting through those videos.

And they’d each get a bin of videos. They’d look and watch the video. Watch the video, watch the video.

And a video came up that was funny, they’d flag it and get kicked up to the next level. Then that level would watch it and watch it. And if they thought it was funny, they’d kick it.

And then they’d go, oh, let’s put it to the front page of eBaum’s. Just like America’s Funniest Home Videos. Everyone thinks there was 20 videos they showed on the show that were funny.

How many videotapes do you think came in that were submitted to them that people had to sit and watch? If it was a 30 minute video, where was the funny part? No, no, they just put it in and it plays on.

This wasn’t a digital type of thing where you could fast forward through. You had to watch the whole thing. Oh, that’s where the funny part happened.

But somebody watching at home going, this whole thing was funny. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Watch it.

Then he slipped and fell. And then he, like, I mean, who were they paying to watch these videos? They would’ve, I would’ve lost my fricking mind.

And I did that, I had to do that once before for one of my first TV shows. Okay. I had to watch short film submissions.

And I kind of got a little panicked. This is in, like, 2001. A little panicked, because I’m like, who am I to judge what is a good film and what isn’t a good film?

And everyone that made this film had at least a decency to not just talk about it, but grab a camera, film it, edit it, get it ready, package it with the hopes of putting it into a film competition. Wow. And then maybe, praise, somebody’s gonna see my film.

And some of the stuff that got submitted, you’re like, how did this ever get submitted? Some of the stuff, you’re like, how come this didn’t get picked? You know?

Like, damn. You know? So, you know, YouTube kind of blew that whole thing away of distribution, again, from a film or a music film perspective, or even MTV.

Yeah. You didn’t, you could make your own music video and put it on YouTube and get 100,000 views. Whereas you try to submit that to MTV and everyone’s, I mean, I remember picking up tapes for our hip hop television show back in the day.

They were sending us to us because we had a public access television show that would show hip hop R&B videos. So we were on those distro lists to get those, just like, they’re submitting to MTV, they’re submitting them all around the nation. And we get some hits that weren’t even played on MTV.

And then later on would blow up and they just couldn’t get in because they didn’t have the money to pay Viacom to get them in there. So, you know, that kind of YouTube and internet distribution has changed the game. Which kind of leads me to something new here I’d like to talk with you about.

Because you mentioned you wanted to talk a little bit about music, the evolution of music production. I know we talked about it a little bit earlier, but you mentioned the question, you brought up this question, is music dying? And I think you know where I’m gonna go with this.

Is music dying? And I would add just a little bit into that question, is music dying? And is that a correlation or cause and effect due to AI coming out?

[Unseen]
You already know that’s definitely associated with it, man. But you know what? Music will never die in terms of the existence of melodies, pitch and harmonies, that’ll always be there because that’s the DNA of music.

So that’s always gonna be in existence and people always gonna hear it. So as far as, is it dying? I think as we know it in terms of the way we understood music prior to this age, this very, very new age that we in, the concept of music was done by musicians.

Who were musicians? Before we even get to the drum machines, like I started on that I mentioned, MPC 2000. I’m pretty sure when that came in, the musicians thought it was dying, right?

There’s some aspect to that. The only difference is for what that those musicians could have looked at was that it was still a human being that was the creator, right? It’s just a new tool now, right?

It’s more, oh, here I am again, sideways again. I’ll fix that for you.

[Darran]
But- Hey Siri, change my camera.

[Unseen]
Right, exactly. But, oh geez. And it’s literally doing it.

Whoops. All right, I’m back. Siri, Billy, Siri, Billy, really Siri?

[Darran]
But- Now you’re triggering it. That’s funny. I’ve never had that happen in this show.

That’s funny. But yeah, you’re right, you’re right. There was a human element that was at least programming it.

Right, right. Absolutely, right? It had to be behind it.

Right.

[Unseen]
So, and so what I think is this, I think the aspect of music where humans are the creators of music, that part is pretty much dying. Not to say humans will stop doing it. I think there’ll always be like, there’ll always be concerts.

There’ll always be a DJ on stage DJing. And humans love that part. They love to connect with people that’s bringing or creating or delivering the music or performing it.

So you’ll always be able to see an artist performing and doing music on stage or a DJ playing it. But the aspect from the creation and how musicians dictate music, that’s the part that is now dying.

[Darran]
Yeah, you know, I spoke with somebody a few years, spoke with people a few years back over at Winter Music, sorry, Winter Music, at ADE in Amsterdam. And you know, the one thing they said, AI is gonna have a tough time doing at that time was replacing the soul of the music, the creation, the soul of music, you know. But here we go, set the wake four o’clock two years later and Timberland just signed the first AI artist.

And it’s like, damn. The one thing I never liked about AI, and this is my take. I’m gonna chime in here.

It has nothing really to do necessarily with music, but technology as a whole in that realm of technology was video games. I’m a huge video game head. Have been since the 80s, you know, had the Atari, the Nintendo, all that fun stuff.

Loved computer games. I always hated playing against what was called the AI or the computer gamer. I felt there was no soul to the game.

There was no mistakes being made. It was more of a calculated, hey, if you’re playing at this difficulty level, if you’re playing zero beginner difficulty level, it’ll kind of move, the AI will move slower for this. You play it harder, it just moves faster and you’ve got to kind of make yourself go faster to keep up with the AI.

But it’s just like, that kind of took all the fun out of the game that I’m playing the computer. Because if I played against a human, all of a sudden that human starts panicking. They’re like, I didn’t expect that sneak attack.

Ah! And then you’re over here going, another sneak attack. And they’re like, ah, and they just crumble.

And you’re like, I beat you. You know, but when you’re playing with AI it’s like, I beat, and some of these games, people don’t know that when they’re signing on, you’ll see where the parallel goes. Then they’re signing on to play some of these games online.

There are websites, they don’t let you have chat rooms. They don’t let you chat with the players because they could let you be playing fake AI bots, letting you have that experience to spend more money on the game, playing a bot, playing a bot, playing a bot. Same with a music site.

You know, you started getting music. There was a band I saw recently that got released and somebody said there were four artists in the band. They released music and somehow they had gotten millions of listeners and like 125,000.

I mean, it was some outrageous number. The band, there’s no images of the band. There’s no mention of the band.

There’s no tour dates of the band. The names of the band members, you look them up on, they did not exist. And it’s like, is Spotify, it was on Spotify.

Is Spotify promoting AI artists as a test to see what’s that? Or did somebody ghost produce this album? Did they have ghost producers come in and is it a real album?

Or was it an AI produced album that said, would people buy this? Would people listen? They can do whatever they want with their platforms.

It’s like people think Facebook is a freedom of speech place. It’s like, no, it’s you sign on the terms and conditions. They can do whatever they want with your data and mess with you on their platform.

Or it’s like thinking people thinking Fox News is a real news station. It’s not, it’s a cable news station. Branded as such, and they are a reality television show that has programming in it, that has some broadcast.

People don’t understand that when the rail gets lifted, they’re like, what, what do you mean? So how much stuff out there are we listening to? I mean, I won’t lie, I use chat GPT.

I’m taking courses in understanding so I can have a basic understanding of this. Cause they say, you’re over 40 years old and you’re using chat GPT, like Google, you’re using it wrong. It’s like going there and ask questions and look up, use Google to look up information.

Use chat GPT to help you complete some tasks. And then the rumor is, SEO people out there, I know I’m digressing, but it relates to this whole AI world. They’re losing their minds because they’re like, basically it’s putting me out of a job.

But how do you know a lot of these SEO people weren’t using chat GPT years ago anyways? And saying, here, what did I plopped out for you? Here’s 2,500 bucks, but I just took all the data you gave me on the sheets.

Trust me, I know I used to build websites. All the data you gave me on these sheets and then plopped it into chat GPT and chat GPT goes, boop. Oh, and tell me the colors you’d like to eat.

And it goes, boop, and pumps it out for you. And, oh, I charged you 2,500 bucks, but really I did 10 minutes worth of work. And because I know how to use Dreamweaver or now using WordPress.

Now, I dated myself there. I don’t know if Dreamweaver is still in existence. Do people, I mean, it used to be more complex websites, but hey, WordPress is pretty much out there for everyone now.

You know, and it’s like, boom, we can churn out a website almost. I did a website for my friend a few weeks ago. Did all six, seven, eight pages of his website in 45 seconds.

I mean, we knew what it was. I went, boop, make these pages. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

Wait, through chat? Through chat GPT, yeah. I just took existing stuff and said, make this go.

Nixautosalon.com, check it out. N-I-K-S, Auto Salon. Yeah, it’s my buddy.

I’ve known him for years. I built his first website in 2013. He needed an upgrade.

I said, check out what I can do for you. Now, the thing is, and this is what the thing is, is that everyone’s worried that, and even, I always say, isn’t that Neil deGrasse? Yeah, yeah.

He said that the AI will be, and he was just very specific on this when it came to social media, will be the killer for social media because people will not know what’s real and what’s not. You know, if I type my post into Facebook and Facebook all of a sudden adjusts it and makes it AI augmented, it’s like, well, that’s not really me saying that. But like I said, so let’s go with that.

You know, you can’t fake being a chef. I mean, you can say, hey, I’m gonna make you a hamburger like McDonald’s. You run out back, go to McDonald’s next door, grab the McDonald’s hamburger and say, see, I made you a hamburger like McDonald’s.

No, you went and ran and grabbed it from McDonald’s and brought it over here. You know, you can’t, there’s certain things you can’t fake. And I think that’s where, you know, just like when it came to live streaming, you have copyright violations, all this fun stuff.

People aren’t even aware about all that. We don’t want to go down that rabbit hole right now because I could talk for another eight weeks without repeating the same thing twice. But you know, it’s when it comes to music creation, I think these artists that are really gonna come out of the woodworks, the ones that are gonna start these live streaming channels, these podcasts, and you’re gonna see them performing in the studio live, making the music.

And you’re gonna be like, that person’s really creating it right there. They’re not faking, they’re strumming on their acoustic guitar, drumming, keyboarding, do-do-do-do-do, you know, and not faking that. So I was just gonna say, you know, your take on AI, and, you know, that soul will be captured that way, and artists will be recognized even more for that.

And they’re like, ah, it’s a hack. I mean, basically, I’m not throwing Milli Vanilli under the bus, I loved them when they came out, but we all know what happened to them on stage, you know, and how many of these artists are gonna get called that, or are artists gonna be coming forth, come forth, and say, no, I’m a singer, but I have AI produce my tracks. Right, right.

But I still perform, you can hear me sing, and my voice is still there. Yeah. AI produce my tracks, because I don’t have enough money to hire all these people to do it.

Plus, you can go back and forth so much. I’m not endorsing this, I’m just saying somebody could. I’m not trying to put you out of a job.

No, absolutely. But, you know, if somebody’s like, it’s so much easier rather than me trying to find a horn player, find a trumpet, or find a sax, or find a cello, or find this, find this, find this, and they can help me out. I mean, GarageBand started doing this back in the day, where you can go in and say, create me a jingle.

And, you know, you’d want it like this, and then GarageBand would kind of make it where you could take out certain elements of it, and kind of, not AI, but it is making the jingle for you. You’re not a musician, per se. And I mean, I’ve used Logic, I’ve used Soundtrack, I’ve used GarageBand, and I remember having the sample discs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, way back in the days. A lot of people didn’t read the T’s and C’s on the sample discs, by the way.

That’s why you’re stuck getting flagged.

[Unseen]
Right, right, right.

[Darran]
Personal use only, not for commercial use. Exactly, exactly. But I bought the disc, yeah, read the fine print.

Anyway, it’s AI in the business, you know. Is it gonna be a game changer? Yeah, I mean, the other thing is, you look at art graphics, album artwork.

I mean, I have Chet GBC right now cranking out a whole media kit for one of my companies. But here’s the thing, is that people say, okay, you’re gonna get this data, but is it false data or not? Yeah.

And is Google, now with Google coming in with AI, is it gonna, like, if I’m telling the truth, take my Silent Disco website, for example. I had Chet GBC create all the copy, just as an experiment to see what it’d come up with. 99.9999999% of everything that it came up with was dead on the money true. I wasn’t making any false claims. I wasn’t saying my headsets can, if you wore a pair, you can hear it halfway around the world or something like that. It was all true information.

And they’re talking about having the bots crawl these sites. Could something be like that for music? How would it tell?

How would it analyze? And say, this track was created by AI. This backup vocal was created by, yeah, well, you don’t have the money to hire a backup vocalist.

You say, hey, I need some backup vocals here. Here’s my song. Analyze the song.

I do that now. What? I said, I do that now.

With backup vocals of an AI?

[Unseen]
Yeah, you know. There you go. I don’t have to use them.

Not that I don’t, you know, I prefer to use them, but if I don’t have them readily available, I create the vocal and let AI transform it.

[Darran]
Yeah, and there’s one of the, and using it also, again, there’s the use of AI as a tool. There’s the perversion of AI as a front, or what would be kind of called a hack, you know? Even if somebody went out there and used it to the hat, but if they claimed it, hey, I’m just using it as a tool and I’m letting the world know I use this.

I’m not out there saying, I did this. Yeah, AI’s my buddy. Chat GPT’s right here next to me at all times.

I love it. Absolutely. You know, it’s got, but I mean, it’s, yeah, I think that would be, and how do you call somebody out?

Unless you say, okay, that piano, play that piano. Well, I had that ghost produced for me. Who’s your ghost producer?

I’m not telling you, I can’t give away their identity. You know, their anonymity, and so how do you like, I wonder, I would love one day if I had an AI host and like, we’re talking like going back, you probably remember this, because you’d be in a kid growing up, Max Headroom. You know, if I was like, there, there, there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, am I really here doing the interview with you right now? And, you know, in writing, my friends own magazines, and they say they got writers that have been writing for years, and now they’re submitting them articles, and they run it through AI scan, and like 85, 95% of this article is written in Chat GPT.

These are supposed to be verified writers that have been around for years, having Chats GPT write their articles. One thing, write your notes. One thing, help me with some research.

Give me 20 relevant talking points with this specific person. You know, if I don’t have the time, because I’m doing so much, I have deadlines, you know. As an assistant, right.

Don’t, as an assistant, but you have the kids graduating from college now. You have the kid in the stands, he’s holding up his laptop. He’s like, you see, here’s all my papers that were written in Chat GPT, and I graduated.

Right, exactly, exactly. So I, you know, I think there’s gonna be a lot of graduates there, you know, so. That means, I mean, I could go down that whole rabbit hole.

[Unseen]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

[Darran]
But no, but I mean, it’s a valid point, so, you know. Yeah, technology does move very fast in music production then. We’ll stick to that, because, you know, you’re a music producer.

I won’t talk about other realms, because we can go in tangents all this way. You know, if you could think of something that’s not on the market today, but in your vision would be really amazing, you know, to be out there for musicians, what would that be?

[Unseen]
Wow. Maybe this could be on the market, because they’re thinking about everything. But one thing for sure, I think it would have to be more of something that really, that makes it easier for people to become musicians.

[Darran]
You don’t think it’s easy enough right now? No, I mean, well, no, no, no. You mean like analog gear, or even digital gear?

[Unseen]
Yeah, real musician, without them having to rely on a technology. So of course, I don’t know, I can’t give the concept of the coding, but really to make them become actual musicians, because look, people that use AI right now are not musicians. They just, it’s no difference.

And I’m not knocking them, whether they make great music or not. I’m just saying they’re not musicians in the traditional sense, because they don’t know music theory. In order to be a musician, you have to, even if you don’t know it in writing, by ear at least, right?

Because that’s too, those are the two formal musicians that always existed, right? Those who are formal, and those who are by ear. Now it’s those who are just Lego pieces.

You know, AI, it’s like putting Lego pieces together. Matter of fact, it’s not even that anymore. That was the loops.

The loops were Lego pieces. Now it’s really the Jetsons. You know, it’s just automation of everything.

So I think something that could really help people, because look, and here’s why I’m saying that. The reason why a lot of people feel the need to rely on AI is because they don’t have the skills. So if the skills were easier to attain, I think more people will want to become skillful.

[Darran]
But as population has grown and music gets saturated, we’ve seen the, you and I have seen the rise of literally coming, I mean, you’re 48, so you’re a couple years younger. So you’re 76. We saw it was all acoustic, in a sense, to getting into the synth era of the 80s.

And then, you know, computers coming into play in that era. And we still had the rock and roll grunge, and we had the hip hop sampling with the drum machines. Those two kind of boomed through the 90s as well.

And then hits 2000s with the, and the electronic music was always there, but just went, boom, it was big in Europe way before it hit the States. And then went, boom, and hit the States. And now it’s like the top trending style of music out there.

And it’s in every facet of life, no matter where you go. And I mean, it could even trickle down into a grunge man, you know, or a hip hop artist now. That technology is influencing a lot, where a grunge man may have been guitar, bassist, drummer, and singer.

They might, hey, let’s throw this over with the guy. We got the computer guy now, who’s part of the band, you know, the audio engineer, you know, that helps out. Or can one of them just go online and say, hey man, I wanna, I was thinking about this, I think it was going to this, pass it off to the drummer and say, the drummer, play this.

And we like that, and the drummer’s like, yeah man, that’s hot, that’s sick, you know? But are those analog musicians gonna go up in arms and try to take torches to the servers, I guess is what you’d say, you know? You know, that’s an interesting thought, you know, is where does it go from here?

But we’ve seen that change happen so much, and obviously populate the barrier to entry. That’s what you were kind of talking about, is even with DJing, you know, back in the day, you had to know how to use vinyl. You had to know how to use techniques.

You know, there wasn’t any leeway for that, and it wasn’t, even to build your own library, you had to buy the album. You couldn’t just go burn an album, or who’s gonna let you maybe loan you their vinyl? Right.

No, you scratch my record.

[Unseen]
Rarely.

[Darran]
No, am I gonna get my record back? No, you go build your own crates, and that’s why you got these guys with, you know, rooms and rooms and garages full of crates of records they bought over the years, and a lot of that stuff isn’t even digitized. You can’t find it, you know, unless somebody went back and remastered it.

But that being said, it was a very, there was that, what’s the, elitism to it. But now that the barrier’s gone, it’s floodgates, and you gotta, you know, some kid in first grade that goes, I’m gonna jump on Chats GPT, and I’m gonna make a rap album. I wanna rap about goldfish and soup, and then make it sound like I’m a gangster.

All right, Chats GPT says, cool. Give me a beat. All right, cool.

Tell them I’m from Wisconsin. Yeah, and I like cheese. All right, boom.

There you go, and then all of a sudden, they put it up, and everyone’s laughing, going, huh, and it’s, you know. I was playing Oregon Trail at six years old. I don’t remember the Oregon Trail, and we weren’t making beats on computers, you know.

All right. We didn’t have access to the internet and shit, you know, so it’s like, yeah, I just dated myself again. That’s all good.

But I never died of dysentery. All right. But, you know, again, going into that, transferring that into the role of the DJ today, you know, moving into that realm.

What is a DJ today? What is it, you know, for big-name shows, even for littler shows. That’s why I do, like, smaller intimate clubs, because you’re usually getting the DJ really DJing.

They’re picking tracks. I mean, I’ve been in the room with the DJs interviewing before they go live, and they’re still making their track list, picking it up until almost 15 minutes before, 30 minutes before they go on stage. They’re picking their tracks they want in their bin to play when they go up.

You know, and that’s, I think that’s commendable. You know, they’re really trying to feel the crowd. You know, a lot of testing goes on on these crowds too.

They’ll have tracks that they’ve made or produced, and they want to see how the audience responds to them. It’s like, take them back. They want to see what it sounds like on a bigger sound system, rather than just in the studio in multiple different environments.

You know, what may sound good at a 100- and 150-person room may not sound good in a 2,000-person room. You know, it may not just be enough to fill it, things like that. So the DJ rule of the day.

Tell us, what’s your take on that and your thoughts on the DJ role today?

[Unseen]
Well, you know, they say, to know where you’re going or where you at, you gotta know where you come from, right? So I’ll go where, you know, as far as from the aspect of hip-hop. From the aspect of hip-hop, the DJs were the original producers, because the beats of hip-hop started from the DJs taking the beat and playing with that to allow the rappers to rap to it.

So they were the original producers, technically speaking. So in the same sense, as we have seen, and there are plenty of them, where the DJs are now the artists. Not every DJ is an artist, but we can see that many DJs have become the artists, right?

From whether it’s DJ Khaled, from, you know, David, you know, Greta. Yeah, yeah, I say Greta, get it, right? Even Dr. Dre was originally a DJ. DJ Quik, those guys, amazing producers, were originally DJs. So today, in terms of how this thing is evolving, I do see that the DJs will continue to have a prominent role, because especially with the human and soul connection part, right? The DJs, even when the music gets created by AI, the DJs will still be able to have a connection with the people in the lounge, on tour, in the club.

Because humans will go to the bar, even if AI exists, or at the club, or at a concert, and the DJs will always have that connection. So if the artist becomes irrelevant, because there’s so many AI that’s doing it, if it’s Timbaland’s new signee on stage, guess what? There’ll still be a DJ on that stage to connect to the crowd.

So I think that’s gonna be the role of the DJ. There’ll be the bridge. They’ll have more of a role in connecting the music to people.

I don’t think solely, but I think that’s gonna be a big part of it.

[Darran]
Yeah, and you and I can go again, way back to the day where, my next question come up here is, at clubs and other dance events, should people look at the DJ like they’re the rock stars? Or would it be more fun if DJs were slightly more anonymous and just part of the bigger event? We go to shows, the DJ was usually off in a corner somewhere spinning music.

We were out on the floor getting our groove on. It wasn’t until a certain point where the DJ became that, here, we’re watching and we’re all sitting there. And now you have the people in the crowd, they’re doing this.

All right, it’s like, everybody’s just recording. And the DJ can’t feel the energy from the crowd. There was, I bring this up time to time in interviews, that there was a group that went on stage and they had this really awesome song.

They said, people just used to jive, really the crowd would just have this magic experience with. But because everyone wanted to capture that song in that moment, they got no energy and they actually made it at their shows. They said, look, you come into our shows, you’re dropping your phone in this bag, has a magnetic seal.

If you go into the bar area where you can’t see the show, you can unlock the bag and pull out your phone. If not, you come back in, that magnet is your bag sealed. And Apple was talking about back in the day about putting infrared sensors on their phones.

And then a stadium could say, you point your phone in this direction and you go to hit record. It picks up on that signal, says, nope, can’t record this. Or you try to, you know, you could go like this maybe, but the infrared is going to pass all over the place.

You say, no, you can’t record this performance. You know, I don’t know how much, how that, if that ever implemented or what, but it was, it was, there was some talks and articles people can look it up on that one thing called the interwebs or has catchy BT about it. And, you know, and now they have Google glasses, man.

Yeah. Google glasses. Look at that.

You know, but I mean, just those ways to really get back to the, you know, there was some parties that have thrown there some nightclubs. Like I was in Berlin last year. They’ll get you in the club and they’ll put a sticker over your phone.

Yeah. It doesn’t leave a residue. It’s a nice sticker.

A lot of these other clubs are, are doing this. Well, major nightclubs are doing this now. It’s like, no, you’re going to put a sticker on your phone.

If we catch you filming in here, you’re, you’re done. You’re out of here. You’re, yeah.

I mean, you can still text. You can still talk with me. I think that’s something that also changed the environment too, is people will go to a club, not expecting what to know.

You get there, you’d stay there. Now you can get there and be like, uh, don’t come here. We’re going somewhere else.

And that’s one person’s opinion that can be going to somebody else. And then somebody else goes, I heard it’s not really hot there tonight. That could take 20, 30, 50 people out the fucking door.

Oops. Sorry. I didn’t mean to swear.

I hope your fans can deal with it. You know, I hope they can, you know, that could, that could severely hurt a bit or the Yelp theory. You know, you got people waiting in line for the club.

They’re just processing to make sure the bartenders and staff don’t get overloaded. Just like 300 people right in the club right away. You know, they’re letting it go like this.

But people online, this line’s taking too long. I’m giving them a one star rating. Right.

It’s like, wait a second. Or I waited too long in line for drink. Wait a second.

You know, are you running the real logistics of this? Are you just going there bitch to bitch? And these places, or the biggest one is the one on the dance floor.

People using their phones and the DJ goes like this. But the angle that they got looks like he’s like picking his nose up on stage. It’s like, wait a second.

I can’t pick my, I can’t, I can’t wipe my forehead. I can’t go. And just that moment.

And it goes viral from there. You know, it goes viral. Like, oh, he was faded last night.

It’s like, what are you talking about? I just, it caught me with. So, you know, should nightclubs and events, you know, treat the artists like the artists they are.

I get that. But, you know, take away the phones. I think Taylor Swift had them lock off their phones at a concert or something like that.

I know when I went to see Prince as a kid, I’m a kid in my twenties. We didn’t have cell phones with cameras on them. Anything that was worth a crap, you know, but you weren’t allowed to take a camera, take a photos, you know, recording devices.

They saw you, they pluck you right out of the audience. And they got spotters just looking for that. Anyone’s going to be holding up being stupid enough.

Right, right.

[Unseen]
That being said, it’s, I mean, you know, even for the person themselves, like you pay to go see, see that is right with your eyes, see and hear the performance, not go to record it.

[Darran]
Yeah. Stupid. Which again, it’s like somebody said, I saw this again.

You see it every year on Facebook or socials. Hey, everyone. Just remember this year for the 4th of July, nobody’s going to watch your video of the fireworks that you took or the fireworks show.

No fireworks in the backyard and little Johnny blows off his finger. That might get some funny downloads or be on the news. But hey, that’s tragedy.

That sucks. I’m not rooting for that kind of stuff. Why don’t you put the phone down and be like, because nobody’s going to watch it.

Look at what I record. And why, why? Or even if you’re there, you’re getting shitty audio, you’re getting shitty lighting.

Nobody’s going to sit there and watch. I even had to explain this to DJs over the years doing a DJ show that nobody sits there and just goes like this and watches the DJ show online the whole time. Don’t watch it.

You believe I’d be over here watching the chat room. Right. Say, oh, hi, I’m responding.

I know it’s going to, but nobody does. Now, unless it’s some artist who’s doing a really awesome show. I saw some really cool stuff come out during Andy.

Stuff that I was thinking about doing, but was like the public wasn’t ready for that, plus big budget stuff. Some really cool stuff going on. But and then you watch it and go, wow, that’s really cool.

That’s really awesome. But even if they’re going out to these fancy locations up on top of a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere. OK, after you get the seven different shot angles in there.

Now it’s just rinse, wash, repeat on the same seven angles that you’ve cut into the same video. Yeah, I’m going to let me go do the dishes. Oh, that’s a nice try.

All right, cool. How many times have I been sitting there and watched DJ go? To an already programmed, pre-played, pre-mixed set.

That’s crazy, man. Not knocking anyone, but you already knew what you were playing on that set list because you had to get it cleared to get the rights cleared to get the performance rights cleared, the ASCAPs right cleared, the BMI, CSAC, the sync, the master. You don’t want to get your ass sued for a million dollars playing track you did not have clearance for.

[Unseen]
Right, right.

[Darran]
Again, another eight weeks of explaining the whole world over again on copyright. And they think they’re all getting away with it, too, because the red flags aren’t coming down.

[Unseen]
Are they coming?

[Darran]
People just, oh, I’m getting away with it now. And I’m like, you understand you’re the one that’s putting it out that it’s giving them the data that shows they actually need to do this because.

[Unseen]
Yeah, I created a podcast, but I told you that way earlier with copyright material. Two or three years later, they came in and they started taking everything down.

[Darran]
Yep. You know, I got stories on that. People wonder why I don’t put my DJ side of the stuff on Twitch anymore.

I only host it on my own servers.

[Unseen]
Yes.

[Darran]
Interviews all day long. There’s no copyrighted material. I don’t put music in the back of my shows.

You know, I got a license and all that stuff. But when I got it on my own servers, I got that all taken care of because it’s only able to be distributed in certain areas. I can’t, I don’t get a world.

You know all about this. We want boards, people with stuff they should already know about. Exactly.

You know, we’re gonna wrap it up here a little bit, but who’s the most inspiring person you’ve ever met backstage? And tell us why this person inspired you.

[Unseen]
Oh, man. Man, it’s a lot of people. You know what, one of the people, the type of people that definitely inspired me, usually it’s the artists that I work with, right?

Of course, I have producers that always inspire me to create music. So I would say the producers that inspired me, I probably never, I don’t think I met them per se. They might’ve heard my music and things like that.

But I think, you know, for me, man, a lot of the people that inspired me musically were the artists that I grew up listening to, right? And, you know, coincidentally, they from my neighborhood, right? So, and like I said, my neighborhood, it house a lot of hip hop legends, including some of the founders of it, not the, you know, very, well, you know, if you include Russell Simmons, he’s one of the founders in a sense, right?

The first big hip hop record label, right? So him being from Queens, that’s always been an inspiration for me, right? I don’t think I ever met Russell.

I probably did, I don’t remember. You know, sometime you’d be in the studios, you’d meet so much people and you were, you know, quick introduction. But for the most part, I know you said one, but I pretty much, I think I’ve met a lot of artists from my neighborhood in terms of the modern era, at least the era that I grew up on.

I remember LL Cool J was somebody I looked up to, although I didn’t meet, I don’t remember the first time we met was in person, but I remember somebody put him on the phone to talk with me and, you know, regardless of production, right? So that was like, whoa, man, I grew up, you know, he didn’t know who I was, but the fact that that person established that connection and we talking and it was like, that was pretty dope for me to get to meet that individual, man. He’s such a legend.

He’s the GOAT, right? He invented the term GOAT, you know? So that was one person I could say, but it’s hard for me to really say the one person because I think some of the people that inspired me the most, I didn’t get to meet them, but I will definitely say a lot of artists, but even guys like, you know, I had a chance to work Mr. Cheeks, man. He’s one of the guys that from my neighborhood that made great music that I love. So not only that I met him, but we worked together, you know, even Ja Rule, right? Met him in the studio back in the days where I was also moving towards to do some music for them.

So where I’m from, we’re very proud of our neighborhood when it comes to Queens. So we are very biased towards people that’s from the neighborhood that’s in the music industry. So it’s kind of like a New York Knicks, right?

Win or lose, a New Yorker love the New York Knicks. And Queens have that same pride about their peoples in terms of the artists that’s in the industry, right? So I think I just have that in me where most of the artists from my neighborhood, I really pretty much appreciate them, looked up to what they did and always been inspired by them.

So I will definitely say I’ve met a lot of the artists from Queens from my era, you know, and it was just a pleasure for that to occur.

[Darran]
Some of them I got to work with even, you know. You mentioned something there that actually is really, I always love it when this happens. I mentioned it when it happens on the show.

You didn’t get questions sent to you before this. You don’t know what I’m asking here, but you almost just asked the question or answered a question or went into right into my next question I was going to ask is, you know, you mentioned your experience with LL Cool J and getting on the phone with him and hearing him give some production tips, insights. My next question is, if you could give one production tip or insight to new producers out there, what would that be?

You know what?

[Unseen]
I now have a new perspective about what type of insight that I would give because back then it would be like, just be original. I think that’s always going to be the key thing, be original, especially with AI now, right? You have to be original.

But these days, I think, besides just being original, I would definitely say be a musician. Be the best musician that you can be. Seriously, be, because despite the AI talk that we talked about, I truly believe that AI will never be able to beat humans.

So, I think if you could be the best musician that you can be, I think the music will revert back to the people where it will have so for the soul to remain there. And, you know, we have music called soul music. There’s a reason for that.

It’s because of the passion of the individuals that were created. So, if you’re an artist now, and it’s not just about making music as it’s about creating and singing it or rapping it or so on and so on. So, I think human nature will never be wiped out by machines.

So, I think, as long as you take it back to the core or keep the DNA in it, so to speak, be a musician but be innovative as much as you can be. Um, I think that’s what I’m going to say be a be a great musician.

[Darran]
Yeah. Yeah, that’s understandable It’s like you said, I didn’t keep in the DNA DNA in the mix It’s gonna be the way to do it. I would hate to have my job replaced by an AI And a I chat bot.

I mean, I mean, hey, you know, I’d love to test it out I mean if it can be working for me and in setting up interviews and doing stuff in the back end and getting the great content and the research, but again, there’s nothing like Having a conversation with you one-on-one Hearing what you’re gonna say and be able to respond to it not knowing what you’re gonna say and you don’t know what I’m gonna Ask what I’m gonna talk about, you know, and and yeah, I could AI duplicate that I guess it could but it wouldn’t be able to go. Oh, yeah UTFO was one of the first albums my mom ever bought me after I got in to run DMC and you know We’re the Rays in hell album, you know, they’re gonna have that history in there per se to have that Experience with you and you know, maybe even jump into it Oh, yeah I remember crush groove and they all were in there and the movie was a story how Russell just popped y’all Just they wouldn’t be able to react that fast. I don’t think with with real-time They do will work in real time, but it won’t the soul keeping the soul there I think is what I’m taking away from that way unseen It’s been a pleasure you have any pleasure having you on the DJ sessions this evening.

I’m gonna let you get going here Is there anything else you want to let our DJ sessions fans know about before we let you go?

[Unseen]
Yeah, absolutely. Well, first and foremost, thanks for having me man. Great conversation.

I appreciate all the talk But it’s you know, it I feel at home right to have this kind of conversation here So again, shout out to the DJ session man Darren. I appreciate you a whole lot and other than that, man I you know, I definitely say cuz you see what my attitude is still about the music. Um Case in case it’s not clear.

I love to do it. Here’s Beyond producing it man. You can check me out at mixed by unseen on Instagram You will definitely catch me active there from there.

You’ll also see my other social media associated with it, but really that’s my own page where I Mix a lot of projects a lot of songs for people some, you know, sometimes selective So, of course if people want to holler at me because they got music to mix, right? Um, I do think artists need to focus on their art So so a lot of time they do need to leave it to the professionals to bring the best out of them such as myself Doing this for nearly 30 years, right?

[Darran]
So see me at mixed by unseen on Instagram There you go mixed by unseen one more time up on the mixed by unseen check him out All right. That’s another episode of the DJ sessions presents the virtual sessions. I’m your host Darren.

That’s unseen coming in from Atlanta, Georgia I’m coming to you from the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington You know what? Don’t forget to go to our website the DJ sessions calm find all our social media links there set up for our newsletter We got over 600 news stories a month to get populated live interviews exclusive mixes We just launched a new music section in the site We’re gonna be featuring up-and-coming established producers and more site wide music player And if you’re into VR go check us out in VR chat You can find out all that information and more you can make some donations to us by getting some cool merch at the DJ sessions Calm once again, I’m Darren that’s unseen for the DJ sessions presents the virtual sessions and remember on the DJ sessions The music never stops