One thing that I learned in recent years from working more with other people is this idea that part of a producer's job is to make people comfortable and confident.

I've been doing it since I was prepubescent when I loved to scratch records and play good music. As it happens, you know I sort of fell into the mix. I really feel like I played a role in bringing dance music to America years ago.

That's what a DJ is at the end of the day - someone who leads where the music goes. The only thing that's changed is that in America, people have woken up in the last few years and realized it.

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.

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.

I was a bit of an outsider in the hip-hop world because I was a scratch kid and people weren't necessarily trying to hear that all the time.

There's a ton of amazing music that's not getting heard.