thaFormula.com - When  did you make the transition from DJ to Producer?

DJ Battlecat - I was DJ’ing and really making a name for myself so that paved the way to eventually getting my own DJ set up. When I needed help getting a piece of equipment that costs like 3000 dollars, I ran into some cats that’s was real good with money and they liked my approach to them about purchasing this equipment and then I gave them a demonstration of what I could do with it.  So once I did that, they was enthused and said “okay we are gonna invest in you.”  So they invested and got me the machine.  It took me some time, about almost 6 months to really get the swing of it.  Like learning the process of sampling and sequencing and actually making music with it making sense to the point to where the sound was marketable.  So once I started making a name, different people that I grew up with like Kurupt in the junior high school days, he was coming to me getting beats done and my reputation grew to the point where I ended up doing additional drum programming for people like Club Nouveau and stuff like that.  So that's how those two came together.  It wasn't very long before I started learning how to be a producer.

thaFormula.com – I’ve seen your name on a lot of production credits under keyboards…

DJ Battlecat - How it all tied in is putting all the elements together with DJ’ing and sampling, I took it to another level.  I started learning the art of engineering at an early age from DJ’ing with Bobcat.  It took a while to just to learn how to get it together, but the main thing that helped me was just putting a CD on and just start playing along with it until I can match the tempo and some of the same sounds or phrases that the record was doing so that helped a lot.  It stayed with me.  My family is definitely musically inclined.  My father and my mother they both sing.  My mother is a pianist and my cousin is a pianist.  My uncle he sings so all that helped a lot with learning chord theories and melodies.  I learned that at an early age, DJ’ing and sampling at the same time.  I got my first opportunity to really start doing it later when I ran into Domino.  During the “Bangin’ on Wax” project you started hearing my keyboard skills around 1992.  I learned fast because what was there before I started doing the DJ’ing.  Drums and pianos were always around me so that helped a lot.  

thaFormula.com - How did you get approached for the “Bangin On Wax” project and how much do you think that changed things within the Bloods and Crips?

DJ Battlecat -  When I did the project, there was a friend in Compton who I met named Tweedy Bird and I was working on his project and he ran into a dude named Ronnie Philips and they wanted to do something different and positive.  The project just happened to be called “Bangin’ On Wax” and I was like “how are we gonna do this, how is it gonna work?”  They said “well the whole thing is to get them to bang on each other on wax, show them the business aspect of making a record, being an artist, becoming a producer, an engineer.”  All that was like all in one making and some good came out of it.  Me and Domino, we did our thing out of it.  It brought us props and clientele and the success of it is that it brought different walks of life together that we never thought would have come together, and out of it came me and Domino.  We took it farther than the project and we wanted to show another side from somebody who comes from the walk of like from you know a Crip neighborhood or influenced in the Crip way of life.  

thaFormula.com - What was that first big hit for you as a producer?

DJ Battlecat - Well my first big hit was “Ghetto Jam” with Domino and that went platinum.  That was definitely my first mark with Russell Simmons.  So my first hit is with Russell.  Then there was records with Faith Evans, Eastsiders, Snoop’s “Paid The Cost To Be The Boss,” and “The Last Meal” were definitely platinum records that I was responsible for.  Records like that definitely paved the way to show that I am hungry and have high expectations of still being a musician and a producer and giving good music.  But what's happening now is that I have been behind the scenes as an entrepreneur as far as the business side.  My children are musically inclined, I have other producers that's with me that's into film that learned all the different theories of music and are going into a wider audience as far as music and entertainment is concerned.

thaFormula.com - Production wise, do you see a difference between a producer and a beat maker and in your opinion what is the difference?

DJ Battlecat - Yeah there is definitely gonna be one.  You know a beat maker is a beat maker, that's all he do you know? He makes different rhythms.  But if he happens to be musically inclined to where he is putting melodies or sounds over it, it doesn't make him a producer.  It just means that he has ideas.  It's like a drummer.  That’s what a beat maker is, he just happens to be a programmer.  Sometimes you get some guys that are real good and some guys that are not real good.  If you really wanna be a beat maker, you really got to go back and study the art form of drums and how they really work.  They got videos at the guitar center and Sam Ash.  A real producer is a gentleman that can arrange other instruments than just drums.  You know string instruments, flutes, percussions, and know where to place them and play them.  It also would be good to listen to the records that have been here before you which would give you a greater opportunity to be heard.  So you really come with the real true traditions of the music.  Like right now the young generations, I feel like they haven't spent enough time to go back to they roots and find out what is a certain category of music as far as style and sound.  I think once they find out where it all comes from and what theory is, then they will take it in a better perspective as far as a form of creating and then they’ll really see who they are.  Like right now they got different competitions that they put out now from coast to coast where beat makers can go and play their music and get it heard.  That's cool because that's something like a Boy's Club.  That's something we never had so I like that.  I think that’s something we really need even that much more because we can take  a beat maker to another level.  If some of the producers that are real producers in R&B and Rap and Gospel would just come to the summit and just really hear what’s there, they can help them understand what theory is what.  Like “this is where they got this from.”  You will have a DJ there with all the records from Rock, Pop, Reggae, Dancehall and Country, whatever.  A lot of people sample and put music together from everywhere so if we could just show where it came from then we could help them understand the structure and the characteristics and what sound is really marketable as far as with what they are coning up with.

thaFormula.com - Now early on the West had major artists out like Ice Cube, NWA, Ice-T, King Tee, CMW, D.O.C., etc. making legendary albums.  What do you think is the biggest difference between that group of artists and the group of artists of today from the West and why they can't make the breakthrough that those artists made?

DJ Battlecat - I think once they take time to listen and see what was the outcome of every artist that came up from the West Coast through all the adversities and trial and tribulations, once they seen how far they have went then I think they would get a chance to understand integrity and ambition as far as you being very focused in how to make an impact in today’s music.  Like it was more so a movement when you mention Ice Cube and that’s what helped a lot because there was an actual movement behind an artist like Ice Cube and he had a alliance of producers that came from different walks of life that loved music and each producer had it's own characteristics and flavor on the album.  It was like maybe 7 to 9 producers but all on one record, it still had one voice and that was Ice Cube so it was uniquely arranged, thought out and planned.  They thought about what they said and what they did and I think once you get back into that art form of making music, I think you would really have a major impact.

thaFormula.com - Now what are your thoughts when Ice Cube started the West Side Connection?  When Cube came out screaming Westside, it created a big divide between the coasts.  Do you think that was the best thing that could have happened at the time for the West or was that one of the things that really has left the East still bitter to this day?

DJ Battlecat - Well it's a combination of both.  It happened both ways.  What effect that it had is not really looked at as something that's needed right now because it would look like obviously we are hating or we wanna be the mad rapper because the coast doesn't have it's favor right now.  But that’s got a lot to do with how we are as human beings, the nature of us as a human being its gonna show how its gonna be in the form and nature of making music.  At a time as far as showing that we can be effective in getting our point across, they proved that they could.  Was it a success? Yes it was did the record plaque, yes.  There were people from they’re own coast that felt the same way because they didn't like the way some of the artists were being treated as far as bringing them in the game or what not.  Just even as a human being a lot of people felt like some of the rappers that was being talked about, needed to be talked about.  You would be surprised at who would glorify it or be behind such an expression that the West Side Connection pushed.  But they was the only ones that didn't want to let the coast not be heard as far when we was getting bomb shells and feeling like we weren’t gonna be nothing in life.  Its funny that they would say so many bad things about this coast because you will find a lot of these cats with girls and baby mothers or soul mates or business partners and they find themselves coming out here and living and having a home or finding their niche in being successful through film and entertainment or whatnot.  So this coast can't be all that bad as different people have painted it.

thaFormula.com - What does the music represent to you?

DJ Battlecat - Music is supposed to bring hope or whatnot and when the high end of the industry don't really want to discipline or really police the industry.. that's why anything goes.  It is because they are the same as well. They like how it’s going down.  They like the lifestyle, they like the fact that the Hip-Hop side or just the Rap side or whatever you wanna call it have given them an opportunity to venture into something that they never tried to create or be a part of in the first place.  They just stumble along with it and decide to finance it or fuel it to a certain degree.  Some of the atmosphere of the Hip-Hop or the Rap world or producer world has been fundamentally appreciated and embraced as beautiful place to be.  Then you got another side of it that is not a good side of it.  You’ve done seen death behind music before and shit like that.  So its like we never thought this industry machine would be that crazy like that but it is, and they act like they don't want to be real about it so it's kind of like giving a lack of hope to people that really wanna be positive with what they are doing or what they are capable of doing as far as a rapper or musician.  There is no arena or platform big enough for them to say “hey okay there is room for this.”  So independent is the business for you to have control of your visual ideas.

thaFormula.com - Do you engineer and mix down your own music?

DJ Battlecat - Yes I do.  Like I said I learned in the early days from music people like Uncle Jams Army like how to put a sound system together, a crossover, tops, bottoms, and amplifiers.  So all that helped me balance my ear in engineering.  Like learning how to work with bass, learning how to work with mids and highs. You know, just learning how to set up a system to sound good no matter where it's at.

thaFormula.com - So how important is the engineering and mix down to your own tracks?

DJ Battlecat - Well the more things that you add to a song you wanna make sure that it's heard and it's felt and balancing each instrument or each sound that is added to a song is very important ‘cause it's obvious that you want them to hear everything that you bring, so you have to have arranging skills in composing a song.  It’s very important that you spend time on your own time at home learning how to engineer.  They got software now where you can learn at home, you don’t have to be in the big studio if you have some fair monitors.  I’ve done touched them all and learned them all.  Different records that I have produced uh, listening to others peoples records through them, I learned how much a speaker can take when you dial in frequencies, when you EQ and stuff like that.  Learning how to compress a sound that is to loud, keep it at one level so that it will sound smooth, but it will have some presence at the same time.  It took a long time to learn the sound and learn the character ‘cause every sound has a character, it has a feel and it has a mood to it so I learned that.  It took a while but then I had the pleasure to work with Raphael Saadiq and people like that who are high end like Puffy, Faith Evans and Kenny Lattimore just to name a few.  I’ve been around George Clinton, Stanley Clarke and they all have loved my contribution to music.  So with them giving me thumbs up on what I'm doing it let me know that I'm there, I'm certified as far as I'm concerned.  Dr. Dre who is my ultimate, Bobcat and a few others have helped me a whole lot.

thaFormula.com - How do you feel about the computer software that's out now for producers?

DJ Battlecat - I'll tell you one thing, it's affordable and it works man.  It's self-contained, and you don't have to worry about trying to spend that money on hardware or gear.  But I'll tell you one thing, it is good to learn both sides.  I would rent hands on hardware and take the time out to learn the difference.  You could take your money and invest in that.  Take your money and have an engineer mix a demo or mix something else and you would be surprised in seeing the difference.  But like I said, for people who can't afford a studio, they definitely became a hero for young engineers and producers and even the engineers and producers that have been here already.  There is nothing like being portable with what you do.  I could be on a plane doing what I'm doing.  I could mix a record on a plane if I wanted to.  The convenience is endless.

thaFormula.com – Are you the type that samples a lot off of vinyl or are you more into the instrumentation now?

DJ Battlecat - I'm into both worlds.  For the publishing sakes of it, I don’t really like making the sample obvious so what I have learned to do is create the same elements that's in the record as far as sound wise and then I make a new track with the original elements of a record from the past.  Just like if we was to make a new record but it still has that flavor.  If I wanted to do the Motown sound, it’s easy because I know what it sounds like.  I’ve been around musicians for years.  Sometimes you will see album covers and look at the back and see the kind of instruments that they were using.  I would go to this place there used to be in Los Angeles and I would go buy all that old shit and try it and it would sound just like the record or even better.  

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