Interview by Jenkin Au
Words by Ryan Goldade & Alan Ng
Photography by Jenkin Au
The justalilhype! crew caught up with Jay Wallace, aka Jay Swing. While most people will think of Jay Swing as that quiet dude who DJed on The Beat with Flipout, those in the know can tell you just how influential Jay has been to the hip-hop scene in Vancouver. Jay has been actively running a hip-hop radio show since the 90′s, and exposing us to new artists at every turn. He started out with college radio eventually jumping on board with The Beat, where most people in the city recognize his name. While running a radio show, a magazine, a record pool, Jay has also become one of the biggest names in the club scene. In some circles he has been referred to as the Kingpin of Vancouver. Huge praise, but fitting when you consider he’s held down some of the busiest nights in the city for the last decade. As a veteran in the scene, Jay has seen many DJs and artists come and go, but you’ll find it’s his love for hip-hop music that’s kept his drive alive.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Jay Swing. I’ve been doing this music thing for many, many years. I started off with college radio (CiTR), made our way to commercial radio on 96.1 and then again when we took our show to CFOX – Hip-Hop on Vancouver’s rock station! Then I got hired on when the Beat 94.5 was created. I did that for 8 years. Now I’m working for DHM (Donnelly Hospitality Management) as their Talent Buyer, bringing shows to Republic, Pop Opera, Bar None and Post Modern here in Vancouver. Bringing shows that I think people want to see, shows that are exciting, and shows that aren’t your average, ordinary, everyday thing. On top of that, we run a website NationOfMillions.ca that’s just for rap nerds like myself and Flipout. And I’ve been doing a whole lot of stuff in between, rocking parties etc.
How did you first get into DJing?
I first got into DJing cause I was a rap nerd like I said before, and I couldn’t rap so I had to figure something else out. My dad has more records than I’ll ever have, so I kind of have the record bug from him, and I just gravitated towards that. He cosigned for my first pair of turntables. I taught myself and started messing around and started playing parties and it just kept snowballing to where it is now.
What kind of music do your parents listen to?
My dad listens to everything, like Beatles, some big band stuff, just everything really.
What are some of your favourites?
That my dad listens to?
Yeah cause it must have influence you.
Paul Simon’s Graceland album was big in our house when I was younger. Don McLean’s “American Pie” was a song that we always used to listen to, or anything Beatles. Really, other than that the stuff that my dad listened to was stuff that I didn’t really vibe with. I found my own direction.
What kind of music did you first start spinning?
Hip-hop. At the time there were only a couple records stores. Rythym Zone was the biggest, or I’d head down to Seattle to Tower Records. Rythym Zone was kind of like Beatstreet today, it was the spot. Anyways, what was I playing back then? I don’t know cause at that point I bought all my music on wax anyways. So even before I was a DJ I was buying albums when they came out on vinyl. It was around the early 90’s when I first picked up turntables, so the classic stuff, Tribe, Pete Rock & CL, Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane, BDP, EPMD. Anything and everything back then. It’s different now, cause back then when music came out, you could pretty much bet that it’s going to be dope. I mean, there was some wack stuff. I got suckered into buying an Awesome Dre record. What else? Oh, KC Flight, I wasn’t feelin’ him. We just bought everything. Music wasn’t as disposable as it is now. We bought everything, man. We would read the liner notes, and whoever Big Daddy Kane shouted out, we’d buy their stuff… Whoever Ice-T shouted out, we’d go buy their stuff.
True, back then a shout out really helped.
Yea! That’s how I discovered Ultra Magnetic MCs! So much music like that. Now with the internet, everybody raps. There’s so much music these days, it’s hard to keep up. I mean, it’s not hard to keep up with the music, it’s hard to keep up with what’s actually dope. You have to listen to so much bullshit to get to the good stuff.
Exactly, it’s hard to filter through all that junk that’s flooding the internet.
Everybody’s got a hot record. But a second or third hot record, or a hot album? Not usually.
What were your first thoughts about DJing?
I got inspired by dudes like Jam Master Jay, Jazzy Jeff and Cash Money. Those were the kind guys that made me want to start DJing. I’ve always been more into party rocking than battling though. Don’t get me wrong, that stuff is so dope, but I’m more of a partying rocking dude. I’d listen to Kid Capri mixtapes, and stuff that like. That’s where my influences came from mostly.
What was your first gig?
My first paid gig? It was at Gracelands. It was on a Monday night and I got $20 a night. That was my first gig, I got ripped off but it was fun. I was playing records through a huge system to a bunch of people partying. You can’t be mad at that. In fact, the promoter still owes me 20 bucks, he ducked out before paying me the last night!
Where did you go from there? Where did you pick up better gigs?
We started our show on CiTR (101.9 fm). A show that Checkmate, myself and Flipout did forever. It was Gman who gave me my first good gig. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact we were on radio and could help promote his shows.
The Wednesday night?
No this was before that, before Gman was in the clubs. It was all warehouse parties. Honey Dips was the big one. There were a ton of parties I did for Gman, then El Famoso rolled around. It was G & Rizk’s first foray into the clubs. It was Wednesdays at Red Lounge, which was next to Lucy Mae Brown, which is now a parking lot. Before that my man Zak Santiago gave me my first residency at Ya Mama’s, a night he promoted at the Twilight Zone which is now Post Modern. It got rolling from there…
When you were doing CiTR were you ever involved with Elements Magazine?
Yeah that was me and Flipout! That was all us! I mean all us! Cause we never really let people help, which is also why the magazine isn’t around anymore. I mean, we got really possessive with it and wanted to do everything ourselves. We had help but when it came down to doing the main layout and main interviews and selling advertising, it was all me and Flip. After a while it just got to be so much work! That was a labour of love, we weren’t getting paid for it. That basically evolved into NationOfMillions.ca, which is what we’re doing today. It satisfies our Element magazine itch.
I was looking through an issue and saw some of the artwork done by Virus and Dedos.
Yeah! Big up those dudes man! AA Crew. It was cool because they are friends of ours and they are also some of the illest artists in the world. They looked out and did all that shit for free. We had people help us out with different sections. Kemo helped us out, Checkmate helped us. Shortkut helped us out writing a column.
It’s really evident when people aren’t doing this just for the money.
Yeah, that’s the reason why any one of us are doing what we’re doing. I’m sure I could have figured out another career path that would have been more lucrative than doing Elements Magazine for free.
Has being a DJ ever limited you from doing anything else?
No I don’t think so, I’ve always been able to do everything else during the day, the record label work promotions, DJScene.com, and the record pool were all day jobs for the most part. DJing is a night time gig.
What’s been your biggest gig?
(Jay laughs.)
I should be able to remember, too many gigs! The illest moment was playing Afrika Bambaataa’s records as he was selecting them for me and passing them to me. My hands were shaking! Didn’t want to fuck up his records. Aside from that? Alot of Gman and Rizk. El Famoso, Grande at Sonar even though I didn’t play there a whole lot. I was more stuck on being a rap dude, not playing R&B and that stuff. So I played upstairs a lot in the rap dude room. It all sort of blends together. Bent Tuesdays at Wild Coyote was a crazy night. Big Ups at Gossip until recently was a huge night. There have been so many gigs in between.
How long have you been DJing in the scene?
I’ve been getting paid as a DJ since the mid 90’s, that’s a long time!
And you’ve lived through the whole Serato phase. How’s that changed things for you?
Well with the record pool Flavour West. We had 30 DJs, you’d know every name on the roster, because its everyone that plays in the city. We got the records from the record labels and distributed them to all the DJs. I went from doing that, to within the span of a year, having no more DJs to supply cause of Serato. That affected me monetarily, but whatever. That’s the only real way it affected me. I think, and this will never happen, that you should need a license to use Serato. You should learn on records before you are allowed to use Serato. You can tell between a DJ that learned on vinyl and learned on Serato. There’s a difference there. It is what it is. I fucking hate Serato, but I love it at the same time. Serato is the shit, but at the same time there’s some animosity there! I mean, I don’t go to record stores anymore. I might go every couple months and buy a few classic records, but I used to live in record stores and go through all the bins almost daily.
Sometimes people tend to rely more on the technology side and less on the skills, has that every happened to you?
With Serato I found myself spending too much time in the same crates, and not always making sure I had new music to play every gig. I’d rely on the crates that I had. I found myself relying on those too much; and I had to check myself and realize I had to constantly find new music, new edits and remixes and keep it fresh. That’s what I would do when I was using wax, because there would always be a new set of vinyl every week. It got stale for a quick second before I checked myself, but that’s about it.
Would you ever go back to lugging vinyl around?
No way! I still have my Ikea bookshelf full of records, my gems. I’d never part from it, they’re still in my living room. Anything I want, I have. My record collection is pretty good so anything I want to play at the club I ripped on to mp3.
Is there any audible difference?
Oh yeah, records sound way better. But the convenience! Having Serato is like having your own record presser. Anything you want is on wax, basically. On top of that I used to go to the club carrying three crates of records, breaking my back! Everything in those crates you knew you were going to play. But with Serato I have 25,000 plus songs. You can’t do that with records, you can’t bring 25,000 records to a gig. Like I said, I love Serato even though I kind of hate it! It’s definitely a love hate relationship.
You’ve been a long time partner with Flipout. On CiTR, Elements, and the Beat 94.5, can you tell us about all these ventures?
Flipout is a multi-talented dude. He can write, he can rap and DJ, plus he dances. He’s a pretty funny guy too and he likes to get in front of people and talk. That’s one thing I realized bout him right from the start, he likes to entertain. So when it came time to do the radio show, it was myself, Checkmate and this other cat. That dude flaked out so we needed someone to come in and Flip seemed like the obvious choice. There are people that are into hip-hop and then there are hip-hop nerds. Flipout might be the biggest hip hop nerd of them all. I’m right there with him, and there are a handful of dudes like us. We get really into shit like that, like with the radio show, and Elements, and Nation Of Millions.
And what about “Straight Goods”? Which recently got cancelled.
Yeah we got cancelled, but we’re back!
But a different incarnation right?
It’s the same show just different outlet. “Straight Goods” is essentially what “The Show” on CiTR was, what the “World Wide Ride” was on 96.1 and CFOX what the “World Wide Ride” was on the Beat 94.5 until that got cancelled after 2 months. The program director back then that cancelled it got fired, and the new director gave us our show back almost immediately. We decided to call it “Straight Goods”. We did that for 7-8 years till this past January when the powers that be gave it the axe. Now you can find us on Samurai.fm, it’s a web-based radio station out of the UK and Japan. You can find us at samurai.fm/straightgoodsradio and also NationOfMillions.ca, we have the shows up there too. We just put up our first new show in six months!
Where’s your music career at right now?
As a DJ, doing parties, doing this radio stuff, and putting mixes out and mixtapes. My main focus right now is DHM. We just finished the Pete Rock show, we had Das EFX, we had E-40, and we had Ali Shaheed Muhammad (ATCQ) recently. Funkmaster Flex, Naughty by Nature, Smif’n’Wessun are all coming up. We just booked Rakim! We booked Collie Buddz. Got a show with all of The Freshest, also Mick Boogie, and Shortee Blitz from the UK are all coming up too. Shows and shows and shows. Trying to do some cool shit. Fortunately when the radio thing at The Beat ended, I was able to land on my feet, and still do what I like, which always has something to do with music. The radio gig, honestly, it had gotten to a point where it was tough. Even though I gave it my all, it was hard to get motivated for it. My first six years at The Beat were great. They let us do what we wanted, we had our own creativity. In the last two years, after we were bought by the big corporation, it was like “Here’s your list of ten songs. Don’t break any new records. Don’t break any new artists. Hit! Hit! Hit! Don’t play a remix if it’s a beat they don’t know. Don’t do blends. Play at least two verses of the songs. Don’t cut anything up because people think the record is skipping.” It just got the point where it was “do the same thing over and over”, and it just got as bland as possible. And that got real tough.
I can’t blame you, because it’s cutting into your passion.
There was nothing better than a Friday or Saturday night on the radio for me, doing the “Thunder Storm” or the “Hot Mix” or whatever followed by “Straight Goods”. Being able to play all the hottest records, also stuff that was going to be hot, or breaking new artists. They just pulled all that away from us. It’s a business, they were doing what they felt was right for the business and I understand that. Like playing Lady Gaga and BEP over and over is good for their business. It wasn’t necessarily good for what we wanted to do with our shows.
In terms of supplying people with music, radio used to be what people depended on. Now it seems like radio is at last call.
Pretty much. It got really bad when this new rating system came in called PPM (Portable People Monitor). Basically, you have 400 people walking around Vancouver with a beeper on, and it picks up everything that they hear. Like right now this music in the background playing here, it would pick this up. It picks up everything! If you change the channel, it gets noted that the channel was changed. Before, it was called “Recall” where they would send out journals to people, who would write down what they “think” they were listening to. What they remembered. That’s why you would see billboards everywhere, because billboards would stick to people’s minds. They would think “Oh yeah, I was listening to this” even if they weren’t.
The station was #1 when it was the Recall system, but when PPM came in, it went downhill. The ratings got really bad but I think they’re doing pretty good now. They made the adjustments they needed to and are back on track. So, once PPM came out, they got real sticky about it. It got really “We don’t want to play anything that’s not a huge hit.” Like I said, it’s all big business, so that’s cool. It was a nice ride and something that I am proud I was a part of.
Going from where your music and DJing career is at right now, where do you see yourself in five-to-ten years from now?
Man, I don’t plan to stop playing parties because that’s where everything started from. That’s my passion; rockin’ parties, rockin’ clubs, making people dancing, having a good time, and exposing people to new music that I like. Fortunately I look like a young ass dude, especially when I shave.
(Everyone laughs.)
So I don’t see that stopping anytime soon. With the radio show, our outlet now is Samuria.fm, and with the website too, so we can keep going and going and going.
Are there any bigger goals?
I have ultimate goals but I don’t like to speak about them till they come to fruition, cause otherwise your just talkin’ smack. It’s all music and entertainment related though.
What is HYPE?
HYPE is anything you think is dope. Period. End of story.