In the heart of Atlanta’s hipster party district of Edgewood Avenue lies Handlebar ATL, where you can find DJ WhitIt spinning original-off-the-top mixes every Tuesday night.
Rolling out stopped by Handlebar to check in with WhitIt before her weekly set about her journey as a female DJ.
At what point did you first get interested in music?
I come from a music background. I actually grew up playing piano, and then as I got into middle school, I got interested in percussion. So I started playing the xylophone and snare drum, bass drum, all the concert-band instruments that are percussion related.
I got to high school and started playing on the snare. I actually watched Drumline, and that’s what pushed me to play in a marching band in high school. With that being said, man, the rest is history. I also produced back in the day, shout-out to FruityLoops. I was always around music, and then as I got older, me and my best friend, we’d all go to Guitar Center, and back then you could go in the backroom and go play on the DJ stuff. We used to go to this bar called Milo’s, and you can just remember what the DJ would say: Welcome to Milo’s!
We’d always imitate that. While we were doing it, we actually learned how to DJ, but we probably couldn’t teach anyone how to flip, but we did sound similar to how we heard when we were in the clubs. Then 11 years later, here I am, deejaying.
As a female DJ, has anyone ever tried to approach you and get your number during a set?
Every set.
How do you deal with that?
I kind of cut it off short.
I won’t say that I look mean, but I kind of get straight to the point where they get the hint. I’ve gotten used to it, so I have little tactics now. But in the beginning, I [was] very bubbly so I [would] give everybody the feeling that they [might] have a chance to get my number and I [would be] like, “Oh, you have Instagram?” … I give them my Instagram if they’re really serious about their music, they will find a way to get their music to me because it’s available online. You can send your music in my email, I do check music on my email all the time. If I like it, I’ll play it, if I don’t, I don’t … sometimes I get my boyfriend to come. He’s really big and tall, so that’s easy. That part’s real easy, well now it is, when I was single, it was a little harder.
