DJ Big X has over 20 years of experience when it comes to dee jaying and moving the crowd. As the President/CEO of Coalition DJs, DJ Big X seeks to discover innovative ways to take the culture of dee jaying to new heights.
During a recent performance at a Dutch Masters event in Miami, DJ Big X took a moment to break down the craft of dee jaying and controlling the crowd.
“I kind of learned the importance of a playlist early on in my career,” DJ Big X revealed. “My first party was a teenage party and I had to know what the teenagers wanted to hear. It was one of the key things that you had to do. You know you could play a lot of the songs people didn’t know, but their favorite songs you had to play that at the peak of the night.”
As Big X continued to hone his skills, he began to understand how to use certain songs to dictate the mood of his audience. “The song that will really make the crowd get excited is ‘F– up Some Commas,’ by Future,” he said. “When you play that, especially in the strip club, I think that’s the first thing gentleman want to do is let everyone know they got that check. As soon as that song comes on, they run and get ones. The song that will make everyone want to fall in love and have that romantic feeling in the club is Keith Sweat. Any R&B from the late ’80s and early ’90s. And when it comes to songs that really inspire me right now, the artist that is really inspiring me is Kendrick Lamar. I think he is the closest thing we have to a Public Enemy or KRS-One.”
But even with his success, Big X makes it a point to always learn a new approach to deejaying. “What I do to stay ahead of most of the DJs is that I try to stay in tune with the younger DJs,” he says. “I think the younger DJs have newer techniques and they’re going to try newer things faster than a lot of us that has been doing it for a while. I think a lot of us who have been doing this for a long a time, we kind of stay with what we know and what we can do. And I think the young kids are willing to experiment more.”
Always finding ways to stay ahead of the game, Big X uses his down time to practice his craft through research. “How I refine my craft is by practicing and doing a lot of research. I think when you do a lot of research, you have to research different genres of music. Now you got EDM and different music out there outside of what we play that’s known as urban music. I think we have to stay up and research what’s going on in Germany and the UK. You got to know what’s going on outside of your area.”
