Interview DJ Alejan (Alps Cru) Hello! Just like we told you before, we had the honor to interview DJ Alejan: founder, producer and DJ of the successful Hiphop group ‘Alps Cru’. P Da Wicked Vocal and Shorty Live are also members of this crew. Before starting this Interview, I want to thank DJ Alejan of the Alps cru for making this possible. Its my first interview ever, but he really helped me in making this a success. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- How did we get in touch with Alejan? By accident. A long time ago, let’s say 6 years, I visited a guy in Groningen (Holland) who sold Hiphop records (vinyl of course) and checked some of his shit before I bought something. On a very prominent place in the room, there was a record on top of the closet. After checking out a couple of records I asked the guy: “Yo man, I’m constantly looking at that record on the top of the closet, what’s that?” He answered: “That’s ALPS CRU, with their ‘Just can’t explain EP’, but I think it will be too expensive for you.” “How much?” “150euro”, he said, and I immediately continued diggin’ for other records. After I came home with a small bag of records, I turned on my computer and looked on the internet for the songs from that EP on the top of his freaking closet. DAMN, I thought, this record is booming! I really played it for seven days in a row before I continued looking for new shit. So this was like 6 years ago. About a month ago, this record was crossing my mind again, so I turned it on and it caught me, just like six years ago! “Yes!”, I thought, “People need to hear this shit!” So I pasted the Youtube-link on this FB-page and looked for some additional information about this unknown group. But there was really NOTHING to find about them so I checked out their individual names and started with DJ Alejan. The only Google-hit I had, was “DJ Alejan, wedding DJ”. I didn’t believe it was him so I sent him a mail saying “Wassup, are you the producer of Alps Cru?” After he replied “Yes, do you know our group?”, I knew this was the beginning of an interesting and nice conversation with someone who really appreciated our interest and love for Hiphop. Our main goal in this interview was to gather information about the Golden Era period and his contribution to the scene in all different aspects. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interview: Where does the name ALPS CRU come from? The name comes from the first part of my name “Al” and the “PS” comes from P da Wicked vocal, who originally went by the name P Smooth. And, because of our good friendship, we felt that our union was strong like the Alps. Where did it all start? In St Louis, I fell in love with Hiphop (thanks to a record called “Planet Rock” by Afrika Bambaataa & Soul Sonic Force) on an early age and wanted to do something with it. After a while, I had the possibility to do an internship somewhere else so I went to New York. Of course school wasn’t the only reason that made me decide to go there, the music was also an important reason for me. The first thing I did when I arrived was going to a big music store to check out different kinds of beat making machines. In 1994, internet was not a common thing so it was kind of difficult to discover what the best equipment was. Of course I heard a lot of good stories about E-MU’s SP1200, so I wanted to check out this fine machine and thought that it would be the best choice. But the sales guy recommended me to pick an ASR-10, which is still my weapon for beats. At that point I finally felt like I had the tool to really get to the next level with my productions. During the time in NY, I met another guy: Shorty Live, who also participated on some records, just like Rob One. You have a track with Sadat X, quite a big boy in the scene, are there any other big fishes with who you were in contact with? Yea, I had contact with the big DJ Premier. We opened for Gang Starr and saw DJ Premier on the wheels of steel, this really opened my eyes. I tried to get in touch with Premier and I managed to get his phone number. I contacted him and sent him one of our records, which he eventually used in a mixtape. It was just a small part of it, but this was great for me at that time: The big DJ Premier which listened to a song of Alps Cru! Apart from that I met a lot of other big guys like Pete Rock, Smiff n Wessun, you name it. We were in contact with Sadat X regularly. We recorded a song together called “Relevant”. He is a really nice and disciplined guy which made it easy to work with. I can imagine you didn’t have your own studio, how did you record your tracks? We recorded the songs in a studio which we had to rent for about $60,- per hour. You can imagine how expensive that is on such an early age. Because time was money, we recorded all the vocals & scratches within 1 or 2 times. We prepared ourselves as good as possible before we went into the studio. Because we managed to tape everything within 1 or 2 times, it’s quite fair to say that we were really skilled. What are you the most proud of? That we released our records on our own, with our own money, just for the love of Hiphop. We had to do it on our own, because it was difficult to find a record label which was willing to release our records. This had something to do with the huge amount of good records which came out in the same period. We had a lot of perseverance, because we were so confident about the quality of our own music, that we put our own money in it to make it a success. What’s your opinion about Hiphop today? It’s not my cup of tea. I don’t say that there’s only shitty music nowadays, but I prefer the sound from the 90’s. The problem is that everybody is able to make music. Just buy a laptop, download Fruityloops and put the track on the internet, you see? Of course I don’t mean anyone, but a big part of the beatmakers are doing that these days. It’s totally different in comparison with the early days; people nowadays don’t know what music really is! I read books about music, biographies (about Miles Davis for instance), just to understand the meaning and complexity of music and understand where it originally comes from. I miss that. Talking about sound and productions, who are your favorite producers? This is really a difficult question because there are so many good producers. If I really have to choose I go with Pete Rock, DJ Premier & Diamond D. And.. what are your favorite albums? Also a difficult question, but these albums did the most to me: Gang Starr - Step in the arena Pete Rock & CL Smooth - Mecca and the soul brother Diamond D & The Psychotic Neurotics - Stunts, Blunts & Hip-Hop Showbiz & AG –Soulclap EP ATCQ - Midnight marauders Can we expect some new projects from you and your crew? Yes! We do our best to drop an album this year. We expect to release it later in 2014. We will let you know when it’s on!! youtube/watch?v=sOl4Jcr4yqc&list=PLoeP_jgnA9zGtOs5pJ2zrCnW2GsprOSXj&index=104
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 19:00:00 +0000
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