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Detroit’s DJ Assault gets
by RAF KATIGBAK Back in 1988, while most pop-music listeners were awed by the “innovative technique” of Bobby McFerrin’s vocal performance on “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” down in Detroit, a small underground music movement called techno was makin’ its mark as the real next shit. Derrick May, one of techno’s godfathers, described the sound, with its futuristic electronic sounds and pulsing beats, as “a complete mistake-like George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator.” This sound, as we know, would go on to change the face of dance music forever. But it didn’t have to be that way. Imagine, if
you will, what would have happened if, stuck in that hypothetical elevator,
there was another, third party influencing the mix? What if that third
party was 2 Live Crew? And what if 2 Live Crew were on some high-octane
crank? Well, the answer to that would be DJ Assault.
“It’s basically many other dance influences,” says Assault from his home in Motown, “bass, techno, drum & bass, house as well as R&B and hip hop, all in one-just faster.” Unlike his music, his voice over the phone is so slow and soft spoken, that it’s hard to believe that I’m talking to the man credited with producing some of the genre’s most neckbreakin’, high-speed, hyperactive club anthems. Anthems that have been one of the driving forces in the Detroit underground club scene for the last five years, causing the sound to gain momentum in raves, small clubs and block parties across the continent as well as rockin’ cities like Berlin, Barcelona, Paris and London. A pioneer and innovator of the accelerated funk sound, DJ Assault can easily put a finger on its appeal. “You can do anything to it-rap to it, sing to it, whatever. It could be live guitars. It could be jazz, just sped up. Whatever gets people’s asses moving.” According to Assault, however, not everybody can hit the delicate, booty-bouncin’ balance. “A lot of the stuff other people be tryin’ to do sounds real repetitious to me. It’s kinda old. Too electronic, like, mechanically created. You can tell it’s machines, that’s why it don’t have the funk. ’Cause you programming it, not playin’ it. I play it how a bass player would play it if he was in a band. I try and make it real musically oriented. “None of the other DJs that play or produce this music are real musicians, and that’s the difference between us. I write everything you hear me say, 100 per cent of it. I produce every track you hear me on, 100 per cent of it. And as for the DJin’, that speaks for itself.” Indeed, at his last show in Montreal, Assault dazzled everyone in the sweaty, packed club with his skills on the ones and twos, performing DMC-style turntable tricks as he cut and scratched his way through a set of his signature accelerated funk records, hip hop a cappellas and booty-bouncin’ classics. One listen to his full-length album Jefferson Ave. or his hot-off-the-press mix CD Somethin’ to Shake Your Ass to, and his skills as a producer are obvious. Tight beats, catchy synth-lines and sick sub-bass frequencies form the perfect recipe to drive any dancefloor into a sweaty frenzy. The production on his albums is so good, in fact, you wonder why he isn’t getting massive airplay and DJ support. Then, you hear the lyrics.
With club slogans like “Ride It Bitch,” “Nut in Your Eye” and “Nipples ’n’ Clits,” Assault’s rhymes are anything but subtle. The hooks usually contain a call-and-response repetition of lyrics like, “Ass/Titties/Ass ’n’ Titties/Ass-ass/Titties-titties/Ass ’n’ Titties,” as exemplified by his most famous track “Ass ’n’ Titties.” As over-the-top as these lyrics may be, it might be unfair to call him one-dimensional. After all, tracks like “G-String” see Assault delve deep, painting a candid and revealing self-portrait of a man and his particular aesthetic tastes (“I like them girls with the G-strings on/ You don’t see no panty lines”). I could go into post-modern this and post-feminist that, but Assault is eager to break it down in his own words. “I don’t disrespect respectful ladies, a lady will know she’s a lady and won’t be offended by what I have to say. She ain’t gonna take that shit from no man.” Before I have a chance to agree, he adds, “A lady is a lady and a bitch is a bitch.” Extrapolating on that statement, Assault is more than happy to provide an example: “It’s like my mom always said, it’s a double standard. If a guy goes and screws 20 girls he’s the man, if a girls goes out and screws 20 guys she’s a ho.” Before I have a chance to point out the inherent flaw in his argument, Assault finalizes, “I don’t know why society has to get all up in people’s business, ’cause in the end you don’t have to answer to nobody but yourself.’ Touché, Assault, touché. Shying away from the subject of player haters and media critics, he’s also quick to point out the difference between his real life identity as Craig Adams and his nom de plume. “DJ Assault and Craig Adams are similar in that they both like material things like money and cars, but Assault is more of a flamboyant personality. I created the character ’cause it would allow me to do and say things that I couldn’t as Craig Adams. It’s not that I necessarily mean the things that I say, but that’s what makes me laugh.” Either way, it’s obvious that this music is not meant to make you think, it’s meant to make you dance.
Racy, sexist, or just downright offensive, call his music whatever you want, but whatever you do, don’t call it ghetto-tech (the catchphrase the music media quickly adopted for his signature sound). “The term ghetto-tech was started by some people who wasn’t even from the ghetto, tryin’ to do this ghetto stuff. How you goin’ to take my kid and name him what you wanna name him? It’s my kid. With ‘accelerated funk,’ you can form some conclusions about what that music may sound like. It’s more of a national sound that can be respected.” His time studying marketing at the university of Atlanta eight years ago may have taught him the importance of branding and the business side of the industry, but Assault’s infatuation with dance music itself can be traced even further back, to the very same roots of many of his fellow Motown techno producers. “Like all those other guys back in the day, I would listen to [techno producer/DJ] Jeff Mills on WJLB-he was known as the Wizard back then-and I was like, how’d he mix those records so well together, and how’s he doin’ those scratch tricks!?” At the tender age of 12, Assault began rockin’ local Detroit parties and events with his turntable skills. A showman even then, he was also never one to shy away from the mic. But back then, it wasn’t about gettin’ hos or bitches, hell, it wasn’t even about kissing girls in the schoolyard. “It was more of a lyrical skill thing back then, like battle rappin, rather than any real concepts behind it.” On his latest mix CD Somethin’ to Shake Your Ass to, his vocal style on the third track hearkens back to those innocent, my-rhymes-are-better-than-yours days, briefly shelving the pimp-and-hos aesthetic. Was this a move to show his vocab was more than just dirty words? Is this a move to a kinder, gentler DJ Assault? Hell, no. “I didn’t really have nothing to prove. But I will show you that I don’t have to write about just hos.” Which begs the question, how much sex can one rap about? “Well, truthfully, I’d never run out of sex raps. But I wouldn’t limit myself like that. I mean, that shit’s cool and I’ll never get away from that, but I can’t do a whole album just about that. I’m a writer, period.” Aside from his work as DJ, producer and “MC extra-ordinaire,” Assault writes poems and occasionally movie scripts. “That’s what my Jefferson Ave. album was about. It was actually a cartoon. All those characters you see on the cover, those are real characters I created.” Although the stories and drawings are all but finished, it doesn’t look like Squeeze Thomas and Betta Suckyadick will be giving Homer and Marge a run for their money anytime soon. “The business just isn’t right. I’m not ready to give up ownership of it so, for now, I won’t do it. “If I’ve learned anything in the game, it’s that you have to be just as much of a businessman as much as an artist or it won’t even matter. I’m not tryin’ to stop doin’ anything I’m doin’, take it to the next level, pretty much handling the business by myself. You know, it’s just about the right people around you. It’s a learning process. I guess if I knew right off the bat, we wouldn’t be havin’ this conversation in this particular date like this-’cause I’d be rich.” : With Steady B, D.R.1 and Johnny Jungle at Tokyo on Wednesday, July 31, 10pm, $8 |
