Session No. 4: Building from scratch, with DJ Fleg
Talking to DJ Fleg’s perspective on dancers, musicality and song selection.
Hello, thanks again for tuning into another issue of Breaking News (letter). Sorry about the delay, I was on vacation in Copenhagen last week. Shoutouts to the folks from Break Forward who were very welcoming with their session space.
I met Griimsen (formerly known as Zoopreme) of The Ruggeds while I was there, which was perfect timing because I just interviewed DJ Fleg a few days before I flew out over this comment:
That comment got me curious about how DJs select their tracks for battles, how they envision dancers reacting to their beats, and their perspective on breakers’ musicality. What better way to find out than directly from the source, one of the best DJs in the scene.
I caught up with DJ Fleg coming off from the Breaking Championship in Belgium and the Asia Games in China. Our conversation is edited and condensed for clarity. Thanks for reading!
After the Breaking Championship in Belgium, you talked about making sure hip-hop gets played on big stages like Olympic qualifiers. What’s the appeal?
Certain dancers are able to take those songs and elevate them to the point that what I said happens. You’re basically showing everybody the path: “This is how you can really highlight and kill this certain hip hop song that isn’t a simple hit on beat 2 and 4, or a big accent for the horn on beat 1.”
A lot of the “made for b-boys” breaks tend to be very formulaic and there’s one way that you can hit them that makes sense, and that’s what everyone “ooohs and ahhhs” over, but it’s not very creative and after a while it becomes way too predictable.
Someone who’s really listening is going to be able to play around, not just with miming the lyrics, but more so the rhythm of hip-hop, the rhythm of rap lyrics. That is really unique and really dope and you can make something very unique by playing off of that.
You mentioned that Griimsen was one of those “certain dancers” that surpasses your expectations on how they’d dance to a beat. Who are some others that come to mind?
Definitely Kid David, YNot too. Some of these guys are just so in tuned with it that it’s nuts.
There was a YNot set to a James Brown song with those guttural shouts, and when YNot danced to it, he hit one that I didn’t even realize was in the song.
He’s literally making you realize more clearly what the song is and what’s in the song because of how he’s dancing to it.
There are other people with movements who are also really good, like El Nino and Roxrite. In their complex movements, they are still able to do something beyond the “boom, hit beat 1” kind of thing and do a movement that is going along with the song with a lyric that is not simplistic. Shigekix too, I have to give him credit for certain things that he’s listening to.
As far as being at that high level of movement and being able to listen and go along in a way that’s not predictable, it’s a short list.
How are you envisioning how a dancer would react when you’re making a beat?
Just like in music, you have endless possibilities, you have endless possibilities for rhythm, for melody, for chord changes, for feel.
Let’s say I have a piano line that I created on top of the snares, and the Beat 1, I also have that piano line I created with some rhythm. I would imagine: “If someone were really listening to this, they should be able to play around with this at some point.”
If someone is really listening to it, even despite having heard it for the first time, they should be able to pick up on that pattern and then play around with that.
That’s another distinction between some of the top dancers. I know for a fact because I’ve played stuff that literally no one has heard and they were able to take apart those elements that I’ve described immediately.
Other people need to see someone like those guys kill it to that beat before they can understand how that beat works and what you can do with it.
How much of knowing your audience is a factor in your song selection?
Recently, I’ve been freestyling everything.
That goes from the smallest to the biggest jams. I don’t have a set idea of what I’m going to play for who and how I’m going to play it. I see who comes up, and in this case it’s knowing your dancers and knowing the styles of your dancers.
Sometimes you give them what you know that they can kill, sometimes you want to surprise them. It’s just depending on what I want to do at the time of the battle, depending on what the energy of the room is like.
Your flip on the Baby Keem beat has been playing everywhere since you debuted it. I’ve listened to your Otis remix countless times now. How do you choose mainstream songs to turn into breakbeats?
There’s a lot of stuff that enters the mainstream, the majority of it is not interesting to me.
But when I hear someone use a cool horn sample or a soul sample, things that’s organic that pique my interest, I’ll think, “Maybe I can do something with that.”
There are times I try to do something with it and it doesn’t work. Sometimes there’s amazing responses, other times, eh, not so incredible.
On top of that, I get the boost of this song already introduced to the world at large. It becomes something where I don’t have to start from Square 1. I get a mainstream bump where it makes it easier to be palatable for the dancers.
This article in 2019 talked about how there weren't any classic breaks like Just Begun or Apache at the Youth Olympics. Is there a song rights issue for the Olympics?
My impression is that because NBC has that licensing, that you actually will be able to play whatever you want.
If you think about it, you have music that’s playing in the background for BMX, for skateboarding, for figure skaters.
You’ll probably need to submit a list beforehand, saying we need this, this and this, but I think you’ll be able to play most beats.
So if they don’t play any classics at the Olympics, that sounds like the DJ’s choice.
Sometimes people say the music is because they had to use licensed music, I’m like, no, that was just the DJ choosing those tracks.
I don’t know why, but you have to remember that’s a legitimate possibility.
DJs could just choose bad tracks – there’s a lot of DJs that don’t play classics, ever.
Whether it’s from them playing the smallest jams to a bigger jam, almost none of it is being restricted by some copyright issues. That goes on the DJ and their taste.
What do you wish more breakers knew about DJs?
It’s wild to me when people are like, “Oh you break too?”
I am a b-boy, have been, still am.
When I’m selecting beats, when I’m in that process of choosing what is going to be good for a battle, it comes from 24 years of being a b-boy. As a b-boy, I might not be the very best, but I’ve been around enough, I’ve been around a world class crew that I’m in, to be able to know what’s what.
The other thing I wish people knew: I see everyone’s rounds.
When I have an opinion, even when it’s about the dance, both from being a b-boy, and also seeing hundreds and hundreds of hours of the worst to the literally very best every year, I have a decent perspective.
Just know, I am watching all of it from that perspective, it’s not just a layperson watching. I can see what you’re doing well and what you’re not doing well – I see it all, at literally every level.
What do you want your influence on the breaking scene to be?
Something I’m trying to focus more on in the future is not just producing in the sense with a drum machine, but composing songs for a full band, having them play it.
I’ve already done that, and that music’s been in BC One.
The amount of work that it takes to compose a whole song, arrange the horns section, write the lyrics, is a thousand times harder than it is to sample a beat, sample a loop you like and put it over something else.
You should be able to play this stuff for more people than just dancers. Our music is so specific, where it’s only dancers who can understand it and would play it. It’s sort of antithetical to the idea of music for me.
It should be something that a lot of people can enjoy in different ways. Getting away from that, and into more holistic approaches to making music is something I’m trying to do more of.
I also want to continue doing King of What. The whole idea is to have the coolest, most cultural, dopest experience you can have.
Not forgetting the core, which is us and our audience, but also figuring out a way to make that a bit more palatable without having to dumb down our culture.
What I’ve done at my jams is bring in traditional hip-hop guys like Large Professor and Statik Selektah, and also have a band playing.
Most hip-hop heads never see breaking because it’s not in front of them in a context that makes sense. When breaking is put in front of people, they react incredibly well.
Get recc'd:
The Red Bull BC One World Finals happened over the weekend in Paris, and there were way too many good sets and battles that went down. Here’s some that stood out to me:
This is my first time seeing Yasmin getting down, and her style is so funky and smooth. I’ve watched this set so many times.
B-Boy Lego Sam wasn’t able to travel to the Asian Games – an Olympics qualifier – because of a lack of support from the Malaysian government. Luckily he got a chance to represent at BC One:
Check out Issin v. Phil Wizard at the semi-finals for BC One. Issin’s first round just goes off the charts.
WBUR wrote a profile about El Nino, with this interesting anecdote about someone offering to “rent” his move for 100 Euros:
“The golden rule of hip-hop is no biting,” said Diaz — biting is slang for stealing. He said he refuses to compromise on that rule, even after someone offered him 100 euros to “rent” one of his moves during a trip to Bordeaux, France.
Would really like to know what that move was, and who asked for it. How much would you rent your moves out for? Lemme know on Instagram at @breakingnewsletter