Hip Hop – Page 3 – akadjblaze

DJ Blaze Set 7: Smooth Grooves

October 21, 2014 by akadjblaze, posted in New DJ Content

So as part of my collaboration set with Madholic, I put together this short mixset of the kind of music I reall enjoy playing and it is the kind of music that I have made a name for myself playing over here, so here it is again, enjoy 😀

Set List

1. Ladies Anthem Intro – Crooklyn Clan

2. Weekend thing – Koffee Brown Feat B-12

3. What’s love got to do with it – Warren G Feat. Adina Howard

4. Straighten It Out – Pete Rock & CL Smooth

5. Loungin’ – LL Cool J

6. Everything I Do – Soul 4 Real

7. Steppin’ out – Big Gipp

8. “I’m In Luv” – Joe

9. Moving Up – PM Dawn

10. Do Your Thing – Next

11. Put Me Down – Donell Jones

12. All About You – 2 Pac Feat Nate Dogg & Snoop Dogg

13. Just In Case – JAHEIM

14. “Like A DJ” – JAHEIM

15. DJ Don’t – Gerald Levert

16. Whatever – Ideal feat. Lil Mo

17. ‘Throw It Up’ – Naughty By Nature Feat Tah G Ali

18. HAT 2 DA BACK – TLC

19. Lets Get Naked – Highland Place Mobsters

20. I Want Her – Keith Sweat

DJ Blaze Set 6: Unleashed Girls Edition

October 13, 2014 by akadjblaze, posted in New DJ Content

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Another music video mix for everyone. This one was obviously set for the girls, so I made it all female pop club tracks, so of course the staple artists in pop for the last decade are here. Also lately I have been playing more pop music in the club so been using these tracks a lot more recently, so feels like a fitting time to reshare this mix

Song List
1. Ke$ha – Take It Off
2. Katy Perry Feat Missy Elliot – TGIF
3. Shakira – Waka Waka
4. Beyonce – Girls Run The World
5. Rihanna – S&M
6. 2NE1 – Cant Nobody
7. Lady Gaga – Judas
8. Britney Spears – Till The World Ends

Review: June, July & August

September 18, 2014September 18, 2014 by akadjblaze, posted in Monthly Reviews

Ok so it has been a busy last few months, 3 trips overseas, various gigs as well as my usual ones so here is a quick recap of what I have been doing these last few months

June

Well June was a interesting month, I got to do some pretty cool things and also finished my 12 week challenge, 10kg lighter and back up to maybe 75% on the touch field

– Spent my birthday and long weekend running around Japan buying as much stuff as I could! Harajuku for clothes and Akihabara for my anime obsession

– Next weekend was UMF which I got to jam out in the redbull party jeep, pretty cool that I got to go to UMF, wasn’t the greatest of festivals but it is def one of the biggest in Korea and around the world… just a shame the line up was mud

– Spun at venue, nothing but old skool and a bit of a MJ tribute. Also it was a great crowd for early on so made the night even better

Well that was June, short but eventful.

July

July proved to be less busy, was back at venue again but the night ended up being a dud unfortunately. The main thing for July was taking on a new residence at King Club, however that ended up being short lived. Scroll to the bottom for that story…

– I spent most of the time working on my BeFM set.

– I did take a trip to Taipei which was a lot of fun

– Met with Blossom Day which was a kick start to working with JC

– TBT at Venue with Pinnacle and Rich Ben, pitty it was a dud of a night

And that was July

August was a good month

– 2^nd Place at BeFM with a trip down to Busan, rocking it out on Gwangali

– Went to WDJ Festival with DJ Korea, jamming in the tent again, but to less fanfare than last year

– Started to do some proper work with JC, exciting times ahead working with her, but did have a fun night out at Bar Fly

– Started on some other projects including learning to produce music

And some other random things I got up to in August…

Went to the One Piece expo in Seoul, it was cool, mostly based around the Marine Ford Arc which was of course total epicness! (Full review in another post)

Went to my first Baseball game in Korea

And that was August, simple but fun, Sept is halfway done but it is also turning out to be another great month, it’s already coming into Autumn and the end of the year is rapidly approaching… again…

So here goes with the King Club story

My hours at bar fly changed to the late shift, so it opened up a time for me to play somewhere else, I was going to look at a second residency after summer since I am usually busy during summer but King Club offered so I thought why not, they are under new ownership and have a new direction that wanted to go in so at first I was excited about working there, because honestly I never liked the place at all or the people that use to frequent it but the hope that it would change and the possibility of the place had me in… But as I began working there it was quickly apparent that any change was going to be slow if at all. The American soldiers still frequented the place, and they bring their own brand of bullshit with them (for the 4 weeks I was there, there was at least 1 fight each weekend…) as well as wanting to hear all the new shit that you can’t dance too. The music they (the boss etc) wanted me to play wasn’t the kind of music the crowd they want to attract want to hear (I even had the bouncer? stop me at the door and start going on about some shit with the music, I just gave him the yeah whatever, like I’m going to listen to you look and walked on by, I listen to the crowd and the boss, not you) and it was just becoming apparent that the direction they wanted to go in was pretty blurry. Also at Bar Fly, the boss asked me to switch back to my old time, so since they come first, had to talk to king club and see if could switch up the schedule, the problem is all of the DJs there have a second residency that is more important to them than king club so none of them can change, which was fine with me, I was the late comer to the party and also working there was really starting to become an annoyance rather than fun, not to say I didn’t have some fun there thou! The place has a lot of potential, always has, and has some good people working there but as is always the way, direction needs to be decisive, not blurry… and changing styles up between the military and Korean/expat scene… seriously there is a reason why I hate Itaewon and even more so hate those young American soldiers and all their bullshit. I avoid the place like the plague

My Holiday to Taipei

September 11, 2014September 16, 2014 by akadjblaze, posted in DJ on the Road

Taipei is a pretty nice city, very green and settled in what I believe used to be a lake bed till it drained out thousands of years ago (I think there is still some remnants of the water towards the center of the city, but if your that interested, Wikipedia and Google!) Anyways my trip got off to a stella start with being upgraded to business class on my flight, got to love that, the reason thou being over booked is a bit of a fail… but apparently airlines do this to cover themselves in case of changes or cancelations… I’m guessing last min ones but still, it can be a risk, but in my case it was a gain.

Arrive in Taipei and wholly shit is it hot there, but the first thing I notice is how clear the sky is and how green it is, kind of puts Seoul to shame really. After checking in at the hotel I decided to check out Taipei 101 since its close to my hotel and not sure what my next 2 days will entail so thought might as well bang it out early. Easy enough to get there, the place is really modern and has that feel to it, however it is def off set by all the 100’s of tourists floating around, and since it was a Sunday, screaming shit kids. The wait to get on the elevator going up was maybe 30-40mins so not too bad given the elevator ride to the top only takes all of only 40 seconds and the view at the top is def worth it.

Taipei is a funny city in that it doesn’t have a huge amount of high buildings or a big concentration of them in a single area so 101 really stands out (almost comically if you wana be a stink guy about it) The view at the top and seeing the mountains surrounding the city is really something. The tower itself is nothing overly special, well it is but as far as towers go they all have their own little something. 101 has this huge ass swinging ball as a wind dampener (cue dirty jokes) but it is an impressive structure and if it wasn’t so tourist heavy the surrounding/adjacent mall and facilities would be much more bearable. I wanted to eat there but yeah nah, waaay to busy so ended up getting a feed from a place close to my hotel that sold NZ beef, score! and dam, the price of food is really cheap

So on to my second day, was meant to meet up with my friend but didn’t hear from so decided to first go check out a popular anime spot I had read about under Taipei Main Station, well its not actually under the station, its close to it thou (ill post specific directions in another post) but it quickly became apparent that a lot of shopping in Taipei is located underground almost directly following the subway lines, the mall here wasn’t huge, but looooong! and that was only the part I checked out. As far as toys go, they (and it seems everyone else) is miles ahead of Korea… weird but my guess is Korea is still on that whole anti Japanese buzz could be the reason… But I digress, there was many small shops rocking mostly One Piece, Hatsune Miku, Gundam and various other popular anime products, but not many of the less popular ones as expected. I was surprised to see some old G1 transformers floating around. After grabbing a feed here I decided to check out Xmien, the main ‘trendy’ shopping district, similar to Harajuku in Japan, and it is very similar but I did notice that the same local brands tended to show up in most places, it did however make a nice change from seeing immigrant Nigerians (or whatever country) peddling their bullshit gears. The area consists of maybe 4 blocks by 4 blocks space worth of shops, lots of stuff tucked away in small places but the best spot to check out is the department store, well its not really a department store, its just a big ass building fill to the brim with a heap of really good shops, kicks, clothes and anime, winning! Anyways I ended up spending most of the day shopping and by the time I rocked back to the hotel, it was food and crash while deciding what the hell to do on my next day…

I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I decided to go to the zoo, i thought about doing the temples and museums etc but honestly there is too much associated history that I know nothing about so doing those sites kind of felt pointless (I wasn’t in the mood to learn either) so I decided the zoo would be great since it is a well known zoo, and I have never seen Pandas before! So after lunch I headed out to the zoo, so easy to get to, just jump on the subway (side note, the subway system there is really good, clean and efficient) It was a little tricky at first to figure out how to plan my zoo trip since there was no real guides at the entry but I figured it out pretty quickly and started making my way thru the different sections checking out the animals. Now I love animals, I think they are so amazing and beautiful, so seeing them in a zoo is both a pleasure and depressing at the same time. Feeling happy that I can see these amazing animals but depressing that I cant see them wild and free in their natural habitat because humans are basically heartless, greedy fucktards.

First stop was the Pandas, I want one! But my god, their enclosure was just depressing, I felt so sorry for them. The line was pretty big, but the cueing line for when it gets really busy was insane, I would hate to hit there during a weekend, i was there on a Tuesday arvo, it might be holidays at the moment, I’m not sure who is and who isn’t on holiday but you can be sure weekends are stay away times. Anyways after the pandas I steadily made my way from the bottom up to the top of the valley which the zoo is nestled in, they have done well with the space they have, but as always, more is better. I really enjoyed my time at the zoo, however, people, control your fucking children! I could see quite a few people getting really pissed off with how some of the kids were acting and I was beginning to get the same way too, poor animals, having to live with that shit everyday, its bad enough they are stuck in cages…

After the zoo i decided to head up the gondola after hearing/reading it was worth the trip, yup it was! the ride is maybe 30mins of nothing but spectacular views all the way to the top where you kind of just get dumped in a hillside community that’s famous for its tea houses. I looked around for one that would have a good view of the sunset and found one that was pretty much perfect, funny that the lady beckoned my to come in but I had every intention of going there. I was surprised how quiet it was but I guess it was a weekday. Anyways had some fresh tea (im not a tea person but it tasted good0 and had some wild chicken, that ended up being waaay bigger than I thought it would be, but at any rate I got to enjoy an awesome sunset. Headed back down and made my way back to the hotel to crash again after a long ass weekend! Kind of failed with my flight time, need to remember to coincide my flight time with my check out time.

Shanghai Graffiti Wall – Moganshan Road

September 11, 2014September 16, 2014 by akadjblaze, posted in Graffiti

So, if you are interested in Graffiti and want to find some pieces in Shanghai, then one of the main places to check out is the Graffiti wall on Moganshan Road. It is pretty easy to find if you just get a taxi, the best thing is to start on the corner of Changhua Road and Moganshan Road and just follow the road. Some of the pieces look kinda old but a few of them look new so it seems as thou it is still used. Shanghai Railway station is kind of close (it looks close on the map but it is a solid walk)

Here is the pics I took, enjoy 🙂

DJ Blaze Set 4: Thre3style 2013 Qualifier

September 5, 2014 by akadjblaze, posted in New DJ Content

So following up on from 2012, thre3style was again back in Korea for 2013, however this year there was def a lack of quality DJs entering with a few from the previous year not coming back to compete, however there was also some really good DJs entering this year who had some awesome performances, prob better than the previous year so it kind of balanced out (except some DJs really looked out of place up there)

Anyways here is my set for the year, had a lot of mash ups and genre switches which ended up in a pretty varied set. The performance itself was mostly ok, except for dust screwing up my needle, twice! Ruined my intro, thou no one noticed lol and another time during my set it also almost screwed me up. I was pissed about my intro thou because I had to skip a bit of it and ended up using a safe version I had made (just in case something like this happened, yeah I think things thru that far) But apart from that my set came out nice and got some good reactions from the crowd this time round and just overall had a good time up there

As for the result, well yet again didnt make it thru, and yet again there might have been some controversy on that matter, one of the comments I did manage to hear about my set was use of pre mixes, which yes some of it was pre mixed while other parts werent, there was a balance between the 2 since somethings live just dont go well and I hate having ‘dead’ space inbetween switching tracks etc which is unavoidable if your only using 2 decks without having some pre mixing going on to keep the flow going, but I had some premixes just the same as all the other DJs there (some had a lot of their sets pre mixed) so while that does make some sense, in the overall scheme of it compared to the other DJs, well yeah, possibly robbed… Also my heat was definately the hardest, I would say 6 out of us 8 should have made it thru and only 2 from the other heat were good enough to make it thru (the second heat was really very average) But again, its hard to know what the judges are thinking, its also hard to know if the foreigner card is in play or not, I would say it is likely it is but cant confirm either way, also I did hold back which maybe I shouldnt have done, it was only a heat so I did enough to make it to the finals (which obviously wasn’t enough) which if I had made it, would be a no holds barred set, but it was not to be.

DJ Blaze Set 3: Unleashed Video Mix 4

August 30, 2014 by akadjblaze, posted in New DJ Content

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So, here is the next video I decided to upload, continuing on my uploading of my videos here rather than Vimeo and Youtube, thou it appears my Vimeo block has been removed… least for now… but it seems to make sense to post them all up here, so I will continue to do so

Anyways, this is an R&B mix and as you can see the video quality is much better and the look of each video and transition is a lot tighter now that I have got a proper feel of how to fine tune the editing process

Anyways, enjoy!

DJ Blaze – Unleashed Video Mix 4 – Song List
1. Mike Posner – Bow Chicka Wow Wow
2. Katy Perry Feat Kanye West – ET
3. Baby Bash Feat Slim Thug – Swanananana
4. Chris Brown & T-Pain – Best Love Song
5. Keri Hilson – Pretty Girl Rock
6. 50 Cent & Jeremiah – Down On Me

DJ Blaze Set 2: Unleash Video Mix 1

August 27, 2014 by akadjblaze, posted in New DJ Content

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Ok, its a new week so time to throw up another old mix, this time its one of my video mixes, this is the first one in the ‘Unleashed’ series I did and prob my second video mix (that is longer than 5mins, my first one was about an hour long, I need to dig it up and post it online at some stage)

The idea for these mixes was to make short 12min long vids of 5 or 6 pop songs just basically mixed together in video format. I kept them short so that the file sizes woldnt be to large and people could watch the on their cell phones (least that was the idea, in the end they ended up being good short tracks for bars to use when there is no DJ…)

Anyways, the way I would do these mixes was to pick 6 songs that were similar and that would mix well together, then I would record the audio, fix up anything I didnt like, then in Vegas I would add the video tracks for each song and do the mixes and transitions there. The reason why I didnt record the video live was because even in live video recording, its hard to get the video side perfect (or near enough to) on the surface it might look ok, but when you look at it closely, there is always going to be random frames etc that you just dont want. Beig the first one, it isnt perfect, there is a few things in the editing process I later managed to fix up and change to make it render more smoothly (as you can see in later videos)

And lastly this is a bit of a trial, uploading these kinds of videos seems to piss of the record companies (they are fucking idiots anyways but thats another story) so youtube and now vimeo basically has copyright filters on them, so things like this are deemed to be in violation of copyright… that shit annoys me to no end, so I am trying the video option here on wordpress and seeing how that goes…

DJ Blaze – Unleashed Video Mix 1 – Song List
1. Flo Rida – Turn Around (5,4,3,2,1..)
2. Chris Brown – Yeah 3x
3. Jay Sean – Hit the lights
4. Busta Rhymes & Tiesto – C’mon
5. Pitbull & T-Pain – Hey Baby
6. LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem

DJ Blaze Set List Saturday August 23rd 2014

August 26, 2014August 26, 2014 by akadjblaze, posted in Set Lists

So, thought its about time again to post up another set list, it was from Saturday night just been at bar fly, honestly I thought it was going to be a rubbish night but it actually ended up being ok. Set wise it was ok, there wasn’t enough people there to go of on to many tangents so ended up playing a lot of tried and tested song combos etc but managed to throw in a couple of different ones in there as well as jumping a lot of genres as per usual

Set time 1.30am – 4am (2.5 hours)

New/Re-up/Decided to Play Tracks

Serebro – Mi Mi
LMFAO – Shooting Star
Joel Fletcher – After Dark
Lorde – Royals (Caked Up Trap Remix)
Craig David – Walking Away (House Remix)

Set List Saturday August 23^rd 2014

Calvin Harris Ft. Tinie Tempah – Drinking from the bottle
Robin Thicke Ft Pharrell & TI – Blurred Lines (Justin Sane Rmx)
Bruno Mars – Treasure (Cosmic Dawn Rmx)
Pitbull Ft Ne-Yo & Nayer – Give Me Everything (Throwback Intro)
Rihanna – Only Girl (ext mix)
Flo-Rida Ft Ke$ha – Right Round
Psy – Gentleman
Timati Ft Kalenna – Welcome to St. Topez
Pitbull Ft Jump Smokers – Now You See It
LMFAO – Shooting Star
Hanmin Ft Ingram Jones – Show Me Your Bba Sae
Savage & Joel Fletcher – Swing (Combo Rmx)
Reece Low & Lefty – Monk Funk
Static Ravenger Ft Kay – Back Off Bitch
Daft Punk Ft Pharrell – Get Lucky (Starjack Rmx)
DJ Cassidy Ft Robin Thicke & Jessie J – Calling All Hearts (Frankie Knuckles & Eric Kupper Rmx)
Craig David – Walking Away (DJ Shtopor & Alex Menco Rmx)
Serebro – Mi Mi Mi
DJ Starjack – Move Your Feet 2k13
Redfoo – I’ll Award You With My Body
Joel Fletcher – Afterdark
TJR – Eat God See Acid
Klaas & Bodybangers – Freak
Scndl – Gypsy
DJ Snake & Lil Jon – Turn Down For What Transition
Punjabi MC – Beware the Boys (Trap Remix)
Lorde – Royals (Caked Up Rmx)
Kardinal Offishall & DJ Snake – Slow Down
Far East Movement – Bang It To The Curb
2NE1 – CL Solo
DJ Scene – Damn
Nicki Minaj – Boss Ass Bitch (Rmx)
Chainz – Im Different
Memphis Bleek – Like That
Macklemore – Thrift Shop
Trey Songs Ft TI – 2 Reasons
Chris Brown – Strip
Beyonce – Love On Top
VIC – Wobble
Chris Brown Ft Lil Wayne – Loyal
Sean Kingston – Beat It
Drake – Hold On
John Hart & Iamsu – Who Booty
Next – Too Close
Craig David – Time To Play
Musiq Soulchild – Anything
Akon – Belly Dancer
Mohombi – Bumpy Ride
Major Lazer – Watch Out For This
Staying Alive/ Da Funk Remix
NERD – Lapdance (Mombah Rmx)
Chemical Brothers – Block Rocking Beats (Rmx)
Skrillex – Bangarang
Vanilla Ice – Ice Ice Baby Transition
Jay Z – Encore Electro Mix
Showtek – Get Loose
Swanky Tunes – Blood Rush
Anthem Kingz – PSA 2k13
Kanye West & Jay Z – Niggas in Paris (Satisfaction Rmx)
Asap Rocky – Wild for the Night
Kanye West – Mercyy Trap Rmx
Lil Wayne – Lollipop (Trap Rmx)
Anthem Kingz – Birthday Song (Trap Rmx)
SHM – Don’t You Worry Child (Trap Rmx)
Just Blaze Ft Baauer – Higher
Wiz Khalifa Vs DJ Khaled – Black and Yellow Wins
Tae Yang – Ringa Linga
Shop Boyz Vs LMFAO – Party Rock Like A Star Transition
Don Omar – Danza Kuduro
Daddy Yankee – Limbo
Wisin Y Yandel – Algo Me Gusta De Ti
Michel Telo Ft Pitbull – Ai Se Eu Te Pego
Don Omar – Zumba
Shakira – Waka Waka
Beyonce – Run The World (Girls Hype)
Rihanna – S&M
2NE1 – Can’t Nobody
GD & TOP – Oh Yeah
Pitbull – Don’t Stop the Party
Usher – DJ Got us Falling In Love (Hypercrush)
Justice Crew – Everybody
MFBTH – Sweet Dreams

DJ Blaze Set 1: Redbull Thre3style 2012 Qualifier Round, Club Eden

August 19, 2014 by akadjblaze, posted in New DJ Content

So I was looking back thru my DJ bio and promo stuff and thought I should re-share some of my older stuff as well as touch up and sort out some of my more recent stuff. So will try and post up a mix from either one of the comps I have been in here over the last few years or some of my other mixes over the next few weeks

And we will start with the first DJ comp I entered since coming to Korea, and of course that was Redbull Thre3style back in 2012. It came about at a good time for me, I had just finished my residency at the loft so had a few weeks to throw together and entry set and a few weeks after that to plan out and practice my performance set if I made it thru. But of course being an expat, I wasn’t even sure if I was allowed to enter, but after getting in contact with Redbull they were more than happy to allow me to enter and of course I ended up being one of the 16 qualifiers.

As you might know, Thre3style is 15mins per DJ and you must use at least 3 different genres of music (thou often this is hardly the case) and is a crowd and skill based competition. In Korea the top 16 were divided up into 2 groups of 8 with the top 4 going thru to the final, and yes I was the only expat to enter and the only one to make it to the top 16 so I was in an interesting position.

After arriving late and missing sound check on the night, I got to watch a couple of DJs before laying down my set, it went well enough, but honestly it was kinda funny watching the crowd’s reaction to the fact I wasn’t a Korean, I knew this would be the case thou so didn’t plan much crowd interaction or anything instead sticking to music selection, flow and skill. My set went well without a hitch so I was happy with that. To me this wasn’t about winning but about putting my name out there, and that’s exactly what happened, thou I didn’t qualify, there was a lot of people who came up to me afterwards who said they thought I should have got thru, so that was enough for me. During that time I met a lot of local Korean DJs and made some good friends and very important connections as well as showcasing myself as a DJ here.

I have always been the kind of DJ who has let my playing speak for itself so having this competition to showcase that was a great step up since being here in Korea and allowed me to properly get into the DJ scene here and away from the expat DJ trap which is Itaewon bars and clubs.