Photo by: Joe Dantone

Interview by: Justin Rossi

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What is DJ Nappy up to these days? Coming back hard I assume.

I’m just catching up with what’s been brewing during the past 3+ years in dubstep and sorting out which tracks I’m going to refix. Working some rough mixes and seeing what sounds appealing. Also linking with producers, emcees, singers, and dj’s for collaborations. I need others to properly operate, and the input is way more important than the output. Movement is slow but precise. Been watching old episodes of ‘The Wire’ and Jersey Shore. That Snooki…. she’s so crazy!

Haha the Wire is pretty dope. I actually just started watching it a couple of weeks back. I still have a bunch of seasons to view. I could see you kicking it with snooki… that would be a hilarious tv show! Speaking of jersey, where did you grow up?

A little town called West Windsor, but I spent most of my time in Princeton as a teenager and young adult. It’s the next town over and there was a lot more trouble to get into in Princeton.

” Thugstep works best in clubs in my opinion. I have some r&b and underground hiphop cats on Dubstep beats, and it doesn’t feel right to me. I’d prefer to hear Snoop than Murs with this type of production. The ignorant rap over complex bass and drums and synths seems like the perfect blend, and you can take a shitty Soulja Boy song and make it fun with a dubstep track behind it.”

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Little Sammy has been holding it down on the video tip.  This video was done by  the same dude responsible for the Rime / Trailer Park fiasco.  I was just with Sammy this weekend at the Chiller Show and we were throwing around ideas for some new video content for the Art of Storytelling.  At any rate, check out this new Young Zee and Mr. Green video.  You may remember Young Zee from the Eight Mile Soundtrack as well as the Fugges album ”The Score”  Zee is also a member of the legendary ”Outsidaz.”

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.

I want to say it was 2002 or 2003, I was already established in skating and I was riding for a company called USD. My problem was that I had my head wrapped around a lot of projects. I had one distribution company that I worked with making my wheels/hardware, another company I was working with doing a street contest called IMYTA, and there was also this video game that was coming out that was called Rolling and I put many hours in on that project. But that’s a whole different story.

“During this time period, I was also working with a bunch of music artists like Sage Francis, Sole from Anticon, and Masta Killa from the Wu-Tang. I was making a DVD surrounding all those artists and rollerblading.”

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THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.

When I first started Beautiful Decay Magazine, one thing we always did was throw release parties. At the very beginning, the release parties were vital to the business because advertising didn’t cover the cost of publishing the magazine, let alone making a profit. So my friends and I would throw warehouse parties, to raise money to put out the issues.

“He opened up the trench coat and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun, and was just working the crowd with it, threatening everyone.”

The great thing about Baltimore is that space is cheap, and you can rent out an entire level of the warehouse for $400 to $500 a month. I was friends with a lot of bike couriers at the time and they loved to party. All they cared about was having enough money to pay their rent and buy cheap one dollar canned beer. I became friends with a courier who lived in a large warehouse downtown, and was willing to rent me his entire warehouse which was about 3,000 to 4,000 square feet for about $100 and all the beers he could drink for the night.  Read more »