This Friday night at NOTO, DJ Aktive reunites with Musiq Soulchild to bring us The Buddy System: a party for all music lovers with DJ Royale and Sianni Love and a live performance by Musiq Soulchild. We caught up with Aktive to talk about The Buddy System, his early days with Musiq and his current days on tour with Janet Jackson.
PSL: Tell us about The Buddy System! What can we expect on Friday night?
DJ Aktive: The Buddy System is a curated party with Musiq Soulchild, who’s actually one of the first artists that I worked with. I wanted to bring him back to Philly and do some classic records from back in the day. Then I’ll keep rocking the party. We also have DJ Royale and Sianni Love, Charlie Baltimore’s daughter. It’s gonna be a good time.
PSL: Speaking of the other DJ’s on the bill that are also from Philly, what do you think sets Philly DJs a part from the rest?
DJ Aktive: I would say the flavor is a little different but not by too much. We like to scratch a lot on in our mixing. We like to mix records and scratch at the same time. Our music selection is a little different. DJs like Jazzy Jeff, Cash Money, and the newer guys like Jay Ski, DJ Bee… there’s a bunch of us. We try to intertwine all of that together.
PSL: You mentioned that Musiq was the first artist you DJ’d for. What’s your earliest memory of those days?
DJ Aktive: The first show I did with Musiq was in NYC in 2000 when he dropped Aijuswanaseing and it was a Courvoisier event. I was very nervous like, man I never worked with an R&B artist before and I’m trying to figure out what I’m gonna be doing with him. So my role was to bring hip hop to the R&B soul vibe. Like dropping different breakbeats and hip hop tracks to have him sing over and come back to the original record. It was a good time back in those days with Musiq. He was the first one to put me on tour!
PSL: Last year you came out with two songs: “90’s Love” with Marsha Ambrosius and “It Is What It Is” with Musiq Soulchild. It was announced that those are supposed to be on your upcoming EP called The Tour. When can we expect that?
DJ Aktive: That’s probably going to come out towards the end of next month. We were waiting on a clearance. I didn’t want to rush and have it be incomplete but now we are ready to put it out.
PSL: You’re headed back out with Janet Jackson to tour Japan soon. One of the things that you do on the tour is hype up fans with her music before the show starts. You are playing for some hardcore fans too. What’s it like having that much responsibility with such an extensive catalog such as hers?
DJ Aktive: It’s real serious. I gotta tell you, I had to study her. When I first started working with her, she came to me and said “Hey listen, at the top of the show I want the majority of it to be my music. You can play other songs but also be sure to play songs that people haven’t heard in a while. There was a lot that I didn’t know. I knew some songs like the hits of course, but I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the B-sides. So I really had to learn that as well as the house records to play to the crowd. I kept submitting music to her and she liked it. That was a blessing right there.
PSL: As a DJ it’s your job to get the crowd hype. What are some records that get you hype when YOU go out? What are your “I was about to leave the dance floor but now I gotta stay” records?
DJ Aktive: If I hear A Tribe Called Quest’s “Check the Rhyme”, that gets me hype. I like the classics so Jay Z’s “PSA” and Nas’ “It’s Yours”. Oh and old school Wu Tang like “Protect Your Neck”? I would probably go crazy.
The Buddy System goes down this Friday, January 11th at NOTO on 1209 Vine Street in Philadelphia. For tickets and more information, visit NOTOPHL.com.