Back To Interviews Archive The Hip-Hop Headrush

11:00PM...
La Roc rocking the crowd at 206 We're in the cramped back office of 206, one of Johannesburg's few dance venues that doesn't cater to the overly-commercialised type. It's about an hour before Cut La Roc is due to get on the wheels of steel inside the club to rock the crowd Brighton Style, with a big dose of even bigger tunes. I sit next to him while he recounts the non-stop action that has gone down in the past 48 hours of his life. "I got on a plane in England, flew over to Cape Town, did loads of interviews, went to dinner, then I'm in a club behind a pair of turntables with some woman pouring tequilas down my throat and a right bunch of nutters are dancing around the club in strange costumes, next thing I know I'm being woken up by the phone in my hotel ringing, so I head off to the airport again, fly up to Johannesburg, drive around a bit and here I am!". And no doubt before he knows it he will be back in front of a pair of decks again. So this is it, the life of a DJ in the 00's - being flown around the globe to make people party. Doesn't sound half bad actually. Realising my time is short, I press on with the interview.

As it turns out, Cut La Roc doesn't see himself only as a DJ - he actually gets up to a lot more than spinning tracks for party-goers around the world. "Yeah, for the most part I'd say I'm both a DJ and a producer. The DJ'ing pays the rent while the producing is my musical outlet. I mainly produce my own stuff but do some remixes which also help pay the rent. I won't remix just anything though - I'm quite selective. I've stopped doing remixes lately so I can concentrate on finishing my own album". The album is the first in a 5-record deal he has with Skint records in the UK. The album is going to take on the name of one of his recent singles - La Roc Rocks, which is quite fitting when you listen to the songs he puts together. Big, meaty tracks which mix in some Hip-Hop elements with a healthy serving of the manic electronic sounds that have firmly placed Brighton on the big beat map.

Cut La Roc twiddling with the EQ

Although Cut La Roc is not as well-known in South Africa as one of his other labelmates (Fatboy Slim) he still managed to draw quite a crowd to the newly-revamped 206 venue. When asked how his expectations of South Africa prior to his arrival matched up with the real thing, he calmy responded that it wasn't half as bad as it was made out to be. "You kind of get all these preconceptions that Johannesburg is deadly and you'll get shot, but it seems quite chilled at the moment. It's funny, everywhere in the world you have these ideas of what a place is going to be like and then you go there and it's kind of the same as home with a few differences. I've always wanted to come here 'cos it's one of the few places I haven't been to where there's a big scene going on. I get to see loads of nice places, which is a good thing about my job". Yes, yes, don't rub it in OK?

Back to the interview abstract

Next