dj white

In an old warehouse on Hope St., music is being made.

"Music has always intrigued me," DJ White said. From the earliest, he remembers his father and friends playing a variety of instruments on holidays. When they took breaks, White would wander over and experiment.

High up on the third floor and down a hallway is the closet studio of White, crowded with turntables, boards, stereo components, and an iMac.

His childhood was rough: he grew up in the pre-artist Williamsburg. His father died while he was still young, and choices had to be made to survive. He got "caught up in the game," and paid his dues with a stint in prison. The way White looks at it, he was lucky: in the game, you either go to prison or you die. He remembers Williamsburg as "Fort Apache, Brooklyn. I had definitely seen it at its worst." But times have changed, and White (a father of two) likes it. "It’s safe now. It’s good for the kids. There’s not abandoned buildings at every corner. The change is good."

White is a local institution, a homegrown product of Williamsburg. He has djed for 20 of the 35 years he’s been alive. But for now, he has retired the turntables in favor of producing, a skill he picked up only four years ago.

He finished school while in prison, and upon release did odd blue-collar jobs, but "music was always calling me back." His days as a dj continued, but he had already begun to stake out his independent streak. He refused to get music solely from the "record pools" at clubs and bought his own. "I needed to judge my own music;" not what somebody else said to play. This experimenting brought him to varying types of music: rock to classical to hip-hop; all of which he uses in the studio when he makes his own beats. "I’m looking at all sorts of music. If I have knowledge, why not use it?" "I make music as a painter would paint a painting. It’s just like colors. The music has to move me." But he has decided not to just make music, but to help other people make music. "I want to give back to this community. I’m part of this area, I’m bonded to it. I’ve thought about leaving, moving on, but my roots are here. I want to do something positive for here. I can’t help with the financial end yet, but I can provide artistic help."

He was around when hip-hop began and sees himself as an "underground pioneer." He djed in Brooklyn, with few ventures into the city. He admits he never achieved the status of a super DJ, because while good at mixing, he wasn’t the best at scratching. But his exposure to varying music over the years has allowed him to learn about music: how it is arranged, how sounds fit, how sounds flow together. He has taken that knowledge and created his own beats (infusing R&B with hiphop) that people began to notice ("They are now feeling my music," he said) and want to use.

So young musicians like Gage and Lace, who form the group Cuz-o-Callab, find someone who can help them sound good. "It’s fun to work with White. You can be here for hours and not feel it. He’s my producer, and he’s a friend. He’s got lots of patience, especially for someone like me who had never been in a studio before." James, Cuz-o-Callab’s manager, agreed. "White’s on point with the music. He leaves the bullshit to the side. He’ll tell you straight – whether he likes what you’re doing or not – he’ll tell you." Cuz-o-Callab picked White because "his beats were moving me. They sounded different from what you hear out there. It stands out from everybody else. He’s got what other people are lacking." White chimed in, "What’s the point in doing what everybody else is already doing? This is new."

When I arrived to meet White at his studio, there were a crowd of friends, management, and artists on hand. They ranged from Dominican to African-American to Panamanian to Puerto Rican.

White actually got his name from his breakdancing days as a kid. "They called me White Rock, because I was the lightest Hispanic guy they had seen."

Welcome to White’s extended family.