I've talked to people who say that their music and their creative work is a much needed and appreciated escape, where they don't have to think about the state of the world; they're not even thinking about themselves so much. They're not trying to express their own experiences of that day or relationship strife or anything.

I think one of the biggest things that's changed in terms of the rapport with the crowd is that now crowds come to hear our songs. We're getting closer and closer to an artist performance.

Traditionally, with a DJ set, you just go hear DJ that has a good reputation and let the DJ take you somewhere. It was up to the DJ what he wanted to play. Typically in dance music, people didn't know most of the songs a DJ played.

Now I'm able to play on the main stage and play my own tracks and the crowd likes them. I feel like a lot the other DJs play a lot of the same songs, and not to knock them, but it's important to me to go up there and sort of sneak in a bunch of stuff the other guys aren't playing.

I think whether dance music had exploded in America, I still would've been a DJ a long time. This is my first love.

There are things I like, there are things I strongly dislike. In my DJ sets and in my production I just gravitate towards what I like.

I'm still a hip-hop producer. I never put a label on what I can do as a producer or a DJ.