Kid Capri has been a force in the DJing world for a long time and hasn’t lost a step. Known for being outspoken, the native New Yorker didn’t hide his opinion when he was judging DJs on BET’s “Master of the Mix”.
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While in Atlanta for the Master of the Mix finale event, I got a chance to hang out with the legendary DJ for a little bit. We chopped it up about his judging duties on the DJ competition reality show, his switch from vinyl to Serato, and why Eminem is the G.O.A.T. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid Capri!
TUD: You’ve been in the DJing game for a long time. How do you explain your longevity?
KC: I’m extremely blessed! I’ve seen a lot of dudes come and go and to be as strong as I’ve been all of these years is just a blessing. I have no complaints about my life. It looks like I’m going to keep going in this direction. I just thank God!
A lot of the conversation during season two of Master of the Mix was the whole vinyl versus Serato thing. Where do you stand on that?
Let me tell you something. Whatever gets the job done. I used to be totally against Serato, a straight vinyl dude. You gotta change with the times, man. You can do a lot more with your computer than you can do with just vinyl. The bottom line is to just get the job done. If you have all the records that is going to rock the party and do what your job pays for, then that’s what really matters. I did a party and played nothing but 45s and rocked it. So it depends on what you’re doing and what the event is.
When was the moment you said, “Eh, let me start rocking with Serato?”
When DJ Jazzy Jeff kept calling me and trying to convince me to switch over to it. Like I said, I was totally against it. What happened was back in ’06, we had to do Def Comedy Jam and Mike Epps was hosting. They didn’t want me to play the Def Jam records anymore, they wanted me to play my own beats. In order for me to do that, I had to download them into Serato so I could use them as records and cut them. When I did that, I kinda caught the bug. I started throwing the break beats in there and the reggae beats in there. Next thing you know, I had all my crates in there.
What would be the one record to shut the club down? If you don’t have the crowd, what record can you put on an instantly have them?
I would say “The 900 Number” by The 45 King. It’s an automatic classic party record. Timeless records never die, that’s why they’re timeless. There are certain records that no matter what, even if you’re not in a party mood, when you hear it you start to feel good. That’s been one of those records for all of my career.
If you had to compare your DJing style to one MC, who would it be?
Eminem.
Why Eminem?
Because I’m the greatest of all time!
And Eminem is the greatest of all time?
Yeah. Although it’s hard for me to say Eminem is the greatest because I’m such a fan of KRS-ONE, but if you look at record sales, concepts, and everything else, Eminem is that dude. There’s nobody touching him. As a matter of fact, there’s a lot of great MCs. Lil Wayne is one of the greatest. Jay-Z is too. There are a lot of incredible MCs, but Eminem is the one that stands out to me. Who’s your greatest MC?
For me, personally, I’ll say Kanye West. I say Kanye West because I relate most with his back story more so than any other rapper. Plus, his beats and lyrics are dope too.
You know why I don’t think Kanye West is the best? It’s because he does everything well, but I think somebody else does it better. With Eminem, there’s nobody out matching his imagination.
Then, if we’re talking about imagination in hip-hop, why isn’t Ghostface Killah higher on people’s Top MC lists?
It’s a different era of hip-hop now. Ghostface and Wu-Tang were putting out records when most of the teenagers and kids in their early twenties weren’t even born. They don’t know. They haven’t done the research of hip-hop like we used to do.
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