7 Tips To Make You A Better DJ

1. Know your audience
I’ve seen this WAY too often. A DJ is on the decks, playing music the crowd is obviously (to me) not feeling, but because that DJ is not reading the crowd, they keep playing what they think the crowd should want to hear. Not every Black crowd wants to hear hardcore Hip-Hop. Not every White crowd wants to hear Dance music.

Look up from the tables sometime. Look around the club. Even if people are not dancing, you can see if you are going in the right direction. Are heads nodding? Good. Feet tapping? Excellent. Are they singing along? Great. Hands in the air when you throw on the next song? You got them.

The opposite is true. Heads whip around like in a car crash? Not good. Eyes lasered on you like Syler slicing off heads (you have to be a Heroes fan for that one). Uh oh. People standing on the dance floor with their arms folded like “I don’t care if you are playing the hottest song in the city, I’m not dancing. Fuck you!” Time to start packing up your shit… you’re done for the night.

2. Play what your crowd wants to hear
This is something even big name DJs sometimes forget. Don’t play over people’s heads. Play to the crowd, not to the individual. You may be tired of T-Pain, but your audience is not. You may be sick of Beyonce, but your audience is not. You may be completely done with Lil Wayne, but your audience is not.

Oh, and this is a huge deal: don’t let the promoter, manager, owner, bartenders, waitresses or bouncers tell you what to play! Especially if you have a full dance floor. Just nod your head and keep doing what you do. “Yo, dawg, I got this honey who wants to fuck me in the coat room if you play a slow song right now.” Am I getting some pussy? No. Then you’re not getting any pussy!

3. Know what you want to play before you play it
This does NOT mean have your set of music already planned out for the night. It means thinking ahead to figure out how to get from song A to song F using songs B, C, D & E. If you are a DJ that goes straight from Snap Yo Fingers to Get Me Bodied because “it feels right,” you are a bad DJ. And if you can’t tell me why that is wrong, you too are a bad DJ. Point blank.

Thinking ahead also means having multiple options for every next song. I play I Just Wanna Love You almost every time I spin, but depending on the crowd’s mood, I could stay old school Hip-Hop and play Hypnotized. I could go Top-40 and play Get Right. I could get the ladies on the floor and play Single Ladies. I could go old school Dancehall and play Murder She Wrote or new school Dancehall and play No Games.

I love my DJ brother Jammin’ Gee-Clef, and he taught me a hell of a lot about finding the perfect spot to break into the next record, but the whole crowd knew what he was going to play next, and then could tell you what he was going to say next. That doesn’t make you a bad DJ, but your act can get old very quickly, and the next DJ who plays slightly different than you will take your job.

4. Know when and how to get to the next song
You know what grinds my gears (thanks Family Guy). DJs who cut songs off in the middle of the chorus, or worse, in the middle of the verse. Another pet peeve: DJs that get in and out of songs so fast but with no rhyme or reason, like they get paid by the amount of songs they play in the night.

I heard a DJ at Z-Square the first weekend I was back that was really good, but he kept cutting off songs before the part everyone wants to sing comes on. Sometimes he would just play the instrumental beginning, and then he was off on to another song. Example: he played the horn riff of They Reminisce Over You at the very beginning of the song, then went to the next song without letting a single word from CL Smooth play.

If you want to play quickly, play one verse and be out. One verse and one chorus and be out. If you’re really good and do the pre-work, just play the most popular part of the song (like skipping to Biggie’s verse in Mo Money Mo Problems or Foxy’s verse in Ain’t No Nigga like Chubby Chub does).

5. Understand what building momentum means
Why are you playing Pop Champagne at 11:30 as people are still piling in? Single Ladies at 12? Got Money at 10:30? I can’t stand coming into a club and hearing the top 5 songs in the country at the beginning of the night. That is a DJ who doesn’t know their craft well enough to build the anticipation in their audience so that when you FINALLY drop that track, the crowd is orgasmic. It doesn’t mean playing slow jams early and then increasing the speed. I’ve started a night with uptempo songs and built momentum by slowing the music down and making the night more steamy and sexy.

First point: don’t play songs twice. If you do, you’re scared that you can’t play other music to keep people dancing.

Second: save the top hot songs in the country until the final hour. Once again, if you are playing Top 10 songs at 11:00, you are not a good DJ.

Third: before the bulk of the crowd comes, your job is to keep people in the club until the crowd comes. If you are using Serato, you probably have at the very least 5,000 to 10,000 songs in your computer. You mean to tell me you can’t play anything other than the Top 10 songs? I’ll give you twelve 15 minute set catagories that you can use before you get to your last hour.
⁃ Old School Hip-Hop (late 80s-mid 90s)
⁃ Old School R&B (90s)
⁃ Old School Dancehall (90s)
⁃ Old School Uptempo (Hip-Hop, R&B, Dancehall and House)
⁃ Funk/Soul (late 70s into the 80s)
⁃ Early 2000s Hip-Hop
⁃ Early 2000s R&B
⁃ Early 2000s Dancehall
⁃ Big Hits from the past 2 years (songs that are not classics)
⁃ Party classics from the past 5 years
⁃ Hot R&B catering to ladies
⁃ Old School Hip-Hop featuring one artist
If you build sets of 10 to 15 songs for each set, you’ll never have to touch the Top 10 songs until the end of the night, when it will have the biggest impact.

6. Sandwich great songs around a new song
You have this great new song by MC Low Clearance that you just have to rock tonight. The best way to introduce it is to hit the crowd with 5-7 bangers in a row. If you know how to get in and out of songs quickly, that should be 8-15 minutes. Then bring in the new song just like you brought in the previous songs.

Here is the key: know what song you are going to go into after the new song BEFORE you play the new song. You are going to lose people on the dance floor with the new song (unless you have a crowd that trusts the DJ). But if you come back with a hot song, your dance floor will come back with a vengence. Then you rock another set of bangers before you slip another new song in.

7. The bar is your friend
Make sure you let this last point sink in: IF THE BAR DOESN’T MAKE ANY MONEY, YOU’RE NOT DOING YOUR JOB. I’m not just talking about getting people into the club. If people are not drinking in the club, the club is not making any money, the club will close (or at the very least close the night you’re spinning) and you’re out of a job.

Most DJs think “keep the dance floor packed no matter what.” And I agree… 90% of the time. But if everyone is on the dance floor and they’re not drinking, that’s a problem. So what, you say. That not my problem, that’s the club’s problem.

But think about it the opposite way. If everyone is drinking, they are more loose. If they are more loose, they get on the dance floor easier. If they are on the dance floor, you can be more adventurous with your music. Yes, you may lose some of your dance floor if you go left and they don’t go left with you, but they’ll most likely go back to the bar for another drink. You hit them with that next banger (see #6), and they’re right back on the floor.

So your goal is to get as many people drinking as possible because it makes it easier for you to get people on the dance floor. Plus the manager, promoter, bartenders and waitresses will love you because you are putting more money in their pockets, and they won’t bother you with stupid requests!

Now, by no means is this list complete, so add your own comments to this blog. I would love to hear if you agree, disagree, think I’m off-base or I’m dead on. Add your own list of what makes a good DJ better.