New York City – Wrapped in a white, asylum-issue straightjacket, DJ Craze pogos like a school kid while a dusty boombox coughs up a classic rock tune that echoes through the chamber of our photographer’s studio. Craze’s eyes bulge, his pupils dart and his eyebrows do the mambo. He’s animated, Hannibal Lecter as played by a five-foot-five version of William F. Buckley, and he’s obviously a novice to the delights of being fitted with a restraining device.

"Yo! Do you want me to salivate?" he eagerly asks Ravi, our
photographer. "I can salivate, you know. That might look dope."

Ravi reserves his excitement, an "Is this guy OK?" moment preceding a Polaroid one.

Craze continues. "I should wear this when I come out to do my routine at the DMC’s," says Craze, stiffening his legs as he lurches, predator-like, across the room. "That would be a real crowd-pleaser. Folks would be like, ‘Whoa shit!’"

Funny thing is, to prompt a "Whoa, shit!" response from a crowd, Craze needs no straightjacket. He needs only his two hands, a few battle records and some juice from the local electric company’s power grid.

In 1998, Craze was awarded first place in the scratch category at the ITF. That same year in France he won DMC’s Technics World DJ Championship, a title he successfully defended one year later in New York. This September 24, at the Millennium Dome in London, Craze guns for a Pat Riley "three-peat," which, in the hyper-competitive heat of turntablism, would register as a dynastic achievement. The only other DJ to place first three times at DMC is QBert – and two of those were earned in the team category, with a crew that later became the Invisibl Skratch Piklz.

And what does Craze have planned for his routine? It’s a mystery – a mystery even to him. Or so he claims. Still, he’s stuck in a bit of his own pickle: Does he attack, or does he defend? Does he launch three-pointers? Or does he remain in his own zone?

With Craze at the wheels, clipped phrases volley like a ping pong ball to form complete thoughts – "I’m getting mine in the one-nine-nine-nine." He sneers as he drops a dope dis that hypes the hungry crowd. His beat juggling, more complex than his phrase juggling, requires more manipulation, more fader clicks. Drum sounds are located and linked together, rearranged, recast. New and old scratches converge smoothly. As genres of music zip and spasm beyond recognition, doubles of old-school funk records tag-team to make a half-time drum-n-bass beat.

And body tricks. Oh, the body tricks. Hand over hand, hand under leg, hand behind the back, shoulder blades, spins. Each fluid movement maximizes his compact body and the hand-eye agility of an Iversonian crossover dribble.

This is Craze – attitude, agility, dexterity. He cuts clean, structures tight. The Nicaraguan-born 22-year-old Arist Delgado has not only defined his hometown Miami turntablism scene, but for several years he was the Miami turntablism scene. Starting as a 13-year-old who schlepped equipment for his brother’s mobile DJ company, the neophyte Craze would assume the Technics at the end of the night, when all guests were adequately lubed with liquor. Then he’d drop some Miami booty-shakin’ bass, maybe some old-school electro, maybe even a standard rock-n-roll tune.

Since 1997, his crew, The Allies, alongside the likes of the Piklz, Fifth Platoon, X-Ecutioners and the Scratch Perverts, have helped shift the perception of turntablism from that of first-person expression to a decidedly tribal exercise. Despite losing in last year’s DMC team competition to the UK’s Perverts, The Allies – A-Track, Develop, J-Smoke, Spictakular and Infamous – will return, possibly splitting themselves in two with hopes of facing off, barnstorm-style, at the DMC American team championships.

As Ravi clicked away and the radio coughed some more, Craze spoke about the upcoming DMCs and described how to create the "perfect routine."

DJ Times: Have you got a prepared routine for the September DMCs?

Craze: I’ve got my intro and I’ve got two possible routines, but that’s about it. I want to wait and see what the whole world is doing so I don’t do the same stuff that everybody else is doing. I just wait and watch all the videotapes of what’s happening in the regionals.

DJ Times: Not too many turntablists have their name on a Stanton cartridge. How did that happen?

Craze: Well, it’s the original 500 – that’s what I started out with. They were like, "Yo! We’ll give you your own needle." And I was like, "Well, I use the 500, so why don’t we re-issue the 500 and I’ll put my name on it or whatever." It was a good needle. I switched to the Shure, but they would eat up the grooves a little too much.

DJ Times: Can a turntablist expect any money from a manufacturer to do an endorsement?

Craze: Yeah, I get points on every one they sell.

DJ Times: What was it about the 500 that made you so loyal to it?

Craze: I tried a whole mess of needles, and a lot of them have good points and a lot have bad points. A durable needle is really what you’re looking for, one that won’t break real easy. So a little stiffness is always good, so it won’t go all over the place. Make sure they don’t eat up your records a lot. Some needles, they’re made a little finer, and they eat up your records a little more, so you want a nice thick needle.

DJ Times: What can you do if they are tearing up your records?

Craze: Well, I turn my needles to the side, and that tends to eat up the record a little more, but it prevents them from skipping. When you put the needle on, ordinarily it’s straight from the headshell. But I flip my needle to the right a few degrees, ’cause, when the needle’s straight, and if the record hole is too big, and you’re cutting, the middle thing will vibrate and it’ll skip. But when the needle is coming in on an angle, it’ll never skip.

DJ Times: But it will eat up your records…

Craze: Yeah, but no skip [laughs], and that’s the most important thing…you can lose a lot of points during a competition. The whole routine is supposed to be tight. It’s supposed to be creative, original, but more than anything it’s supposed to be tight. When the needle skips your whole focus is like, "Didn’t mean for that to happen."

DJ Times: The key, then, is making a skip look like part of your routine…

Craze: Yeah, if that happens, just don’t stress it. Don’t show it. If it skips, flow with it and people will notice that it didn’t affect you. But when you show it and you’re obviously pissed off, people will pick up on that – especially the judges. Don’t stress it. Just try and improvise it as much as you can.

DJ Times: How is a routine born?

Craze: Sometimes you want to not look at the videos that are out there, so you won’t be influenced by what you see there; sometimes you do want to see just to see what everybody else is doing. I try to see what people are doing and go home and try to build something and just stay away from all that – in terms of records, disses, whatever styles that are being used at the time.

DJ Times: Describe how you’ve arranged past routines.

Craze: I try to be as crowd-friendly as I can. I try to pick tracks that, as soon as they drop, people will already be on my side because they like the track. Try to pick some weird, fucked-up sounds that you know will sound hard in a big atmosphere. Try to pick the right sounds…

DJ Times: Like…

Craze: Hard sounds, you know. Some vinyl, they’re lower than other vinyl. So the whole routine has to be dope vinyl.

DJ Times: What should an intro do?

Craze: It should set the tone for the rest of the routine. It’s one of the most important parts. You don’t want to bring people down with a fucked-up intro. You have to hit them hard with some crazy shit, so they’ll be like, "Damn, I want to see the rest of this shit."

DJ Times: What’s some crazy shit for an intro?

Craze: I like to have a dope intro with words that explain what I’m there to do, or explain my history. You can’t just play something like, "I’m the baddest muthafucka," you know, you got to go deeper than that. You got to be like, "Alright, look, this is what I’m here to do. This is my name – boom!"

DJ Times: Like dropping your name?

Craze: I’ve used my name twice, but now I try to stay away from it because you expect them to know it, and if they don’t, it’s like, forget it, hear the routine and then maybe at the end I’ll throw something in with my name.

DJ Times: A routine at DMC lasts six minutes. How long does it take to get that routine together?

Craze: Throughout the year, I’ll work on little pieces here and there. And then the last month before the competition I’ll piece everything together and make it flow.

DJ Times: Do you record the routines?

Craze: I’ll videotape myself sometimes to see how I look, to see how the transitions look and how it sounds, to look at what I should be doing to improve it. It’s good to improve your showmanship and improv skills. Like, for my last routine, there was a part that I was doing in the very beginning that was real intricate, and I was like, "Oh, this is going to go over everybody’s head." There was me doing a lot of weird shit, it was real technical, but through the video I saw that people wouldn’t get it. So I just toned it down a little bit.

DJ Times: What should up-and-coming turntablists know about how judges judge a competition?

Craze: You got to meet somewhere in the middle between technical and crowd-pleasing, and originality impresses the hell out of judges. Do something that sets you apart from everybody else. Like maybe a little fader trick or maybe crossing your hands a little bit, where the judges may be like, "Oh, damn, I’ve never seen that before. It’s a normal juggle, but at least he flipped it that way." Anything that sets you apart from the rest.

DJ Times: When you’re behind the decks, you have your battle attitude on like, "I’m gonna get mine." Do you think this impresses the judges?

Craze: Well, not really. Some of the judges that judge DMC, it’s just like, "Whoa. What the hell are they judging for?" But all the people that know...it depends, ’cause you can tell different people’s flavas. If Noyze is judging, you know he’s looking for dope-ass disses and dope attitude. If Roc Raida is judging, he’s looking for body tricks – I mean, well, not even. You know, they’re still looking for everything else, but you know what they are into. Some judges I think like it, some judges don’t.

DJ Times: What is your weakness on the decks?

Craze: Staying the same all the time. Sometimes I’ll stay the same for a month or two and then I’ll come up with some weird stuff and I’ll just add that on to my routine. Scratching for me is more like a feeling, and then you just do it. I plan out a beat juggle because a beat juggle has to be planned out. Scratching I’ll just let them come out. I’ll practice my scratches, but I’ll never plan my scratches. Sometimes if you plan out a scratch and fuck up on a pattern, it just throws you off. If you do that with a beat juggle, it throws you off but at least you know where the sound is at so you can pick it back up.

DJ Times: You’re a two-time defending DMC champion. I’m sure people have been checking out the videos to see how you’ve been winning…

Craze: That’s what I always tell people, "How am I supposed to beat me?" I came up with this shit, and I can’t do anything similar to what I’ve done. That’s real hard. Other people….

DJ Times: What can a kid do to prepare for competition?

Craze: Try to do as many shows as you can before a competition. You can practice a routine for a whole year but then when you get on stage, you’re shook. Picking up the needle, I see these kids shaking, trembling.

DJ Times: Can you get conceptual at a competition? You mentioned you’d like to come out in a straightjacket.

Craze: The hardcore turntablists would say I’m cheating. But that’s something that the crowd would be like, "Whoa, that’s fun!"

DJ Times: You always know beforehand who’s judging?

Craze: Yep.

DJ Times: Do you adjust your set to certain judge’s tastes?

Craze: You can’t concentrate on pleasing the judges. One judge might be looking for something completely different than another judge. I try to just keep it crowd-friendly at all times. I mean, you still have to be good. When I’m judging, I always take into consideration whatever pleased the crowd.

DJ Times: When you’re judging a competition, what are you looking for, technically?

Craze: I look for new stuff. I don’t care how hard it is. I credit originality more than technicality. It’s way harder to come up with something completely original and freak that than it is to freak something that everybody’s already done.

DJ Times: But what are you actually looking for?

Craze: For beat juggling, for example, one of the things it should be is tight. You can have a lot of crazy shit, but if it ain’t tight, why do it? People have some crazy ideas, but they’re so crazy they’ll get it one time out of 10. Like when you needle-drop a lot of times – that is tricky ’cause you might drop it on the wrong sound.

DJ Times: Do body tricks impress you, as a judge?

Craze: I don’t really look for body tricks. It’s cool if they’re done in a different way. If you’re doing a beat juggle, and then you throw in a little body trick, but it still sounds tight, on-beat, that’s dope.

DJ Times: After six minutes, though, what else can a turntablist do?

Craze: There are two types of DJs. You’ve got your hardcore turntablist that doesn’t give a damn about nothing else but turntablism. And there’s a DJ, you now what I’m saying? You’re there for the crowd, whether it be battling
or rocking the crowd. They’re a dee-jay. A lot of people hate on a turntablist that mixes, and a lot of people hate on
a turntablist that don’t mix. I like to be
a DJ.

DJ Times: Let’s talk about your battle records. You’ve got your own coming out.

Craze: Yeah, I just finished it, Bully Breaks. I have a lot of disses on it, on Ammo Records, the battle break record label. And there are a lot of new sounds, a lot of new drums. And I have this one where it’s all the old sounds, the old drums. A lot of stuff that people can beat juggle with, a lot of new different type of beats. Usually the beats on battle records are low riding type of beats, electro beats. These have a little different kind of production in it.

DJ Times: Tell me how you put it together.

Craze: I made it in my house with an [Akai] MPC2000 and a little keyboard where I found these little weird noises, and the rest was sampled. It took me two or three weeks to put it together.

DJ Times: What prompted you to put it together?

Craze: A lot of battle records out there are the same – a lot of low riding, 808 beats. I wanted to add new sounds. I have a weird 3/4 beat in there, an electro beat that keeps on switching up, two more downtempo hip hop-friendly beats, a weird loop that I have there. I have samples in the middle of beats so you can be scratching and then do a juggle with it, break it a little bit.

DJ Times: What are some of the battle records that you use?

Craze: Plug: "Handthritis."

DJ Times: How difficult is it to juggle drum-n-bass beats?

Craze: That’s what I’m doing. I’m going to flip some drum-n-bass beats, but it’s different. Usually, when they flip drum-n-bass into hip hop, it’s always this little steady paced juggle. I’m going to take the sounds and make it like a 3/4 beat, instead of making a hip-hop beat. It’s going to sound fucked up. It’s a little harder because there are so many things going on with drum-n-bass; like with hip hop, the sounds are chopped up and it’s easier to do stuff with it. With drum-n-bass, there are so many sounds, you gotta leave some sounds out sometimes, stop it and push it. There’s just a lot more sounds to play with.

DJ Times: How do you juggle hip-hop beats to make them sound like drum-n-bass?

Craze: There’s a lot of ways to juggle hip-hop records to make them sound like drum-n-bass beats. See, they’re both on half-time. You just have to mess with the drums and rearrange them in your head. Since they’re both on half time, you still have your boom baps and your high hats – it’s just that there’s a lot more of them in drum-n-bass. So you gotta find a way to do it real simple to make it sound intricate.

DJ Times: How long have you been DJing?

Craze: Mixing? Eight and a half years.

DJ Times: Why did you originally get behind the decks?

Craze: I was living with my moms and my brother was still living with us, and he bought equipment with my cousin and they started doing mobile parties. After school, I used to go and practice.

DJ Times: Do you remember your first mix?

Craze: Naw, I just started mixing. I think it was at a banquet hall or something, on an old Numark – I think a 1750 or something. They would put me on when nobody was there. I was doing the shit that nobody else wanted to do, setting up, breaking down. Miami bass and freestyle music, that’s what I started out with.

DJ Times: When did you first catch on to turntablism?

Craze: Two or three years after I started messing around with the turntables, I found out about the New Music Seminar turntable battles, and the DMCs. And I started getting the videos from my friends and I started practicing in my room. That’s how I started. In Miami, at the time, there was no battle DJ scene. So when I saw the videos, I was like, "Whoa, this is way better than just scratching." I saw people doing body tricks.

DJ Times: Who were some of your main inspirations?

Craze: MixMaster Mike was one of the main inspirations, like at the New Music Seminar battles. He was just mad funky. He looked hard. He wasn’t just out there doing his routine. He was in it. He was like fighting on the turntables and shit.

DJ Times: What was the most difficult scratch for you to learn?

Craze: Transforming. You know? Transforming with style, not the simple transform. It’s like being real funky with it and learning how to manipulate it.

DJ Times: Does the DMC or ITF cost you any money to compete?

Craze: ITF doesn’t have regionals, so, no. DMC has the regionals, which you have to pay your own way; and then the nationals, when they take care of everything else.

DJ Times: You’ve had the chance to travel extensively as a result of your turntable skills…

Craze: Aw, man, U.K., Iceland, Australia, Japan, all over Europe, South Africa. It’s cool.

DJ Times: What’s the turntable scene in, say, Australia?

Craze: It’s like the same all over the world. Kids just watch the videos. That’s what I used to do and that’s how they learn.

DJ Times: Have you ever lost your records while traveling?

Craze: Way long ago I lost my records. I left them in my room, lost a whole crate of records. That hurt a lot. I can’t even talk about it.

DJ Times: Your preferred mixer?

Craze: The Vestax 07 is working for me right now. But I’m working with Stanton and we’re making a Craze edition and it’s going to have a lot of shit on it that the 07 doesn’t have. It’ll be more club-friendly. I’ve put effects on the top. It’s for a battle DJ who likes to do clubs.

DJ Times: Tell me about your
first crew.

Craze: The Techmasters. Me and my boy Infamous from Miami, Coupe Deville and Envy. We were it down there in Miami. It was just me for a year or two, and then Infamous came out of the woodwork and we started hooking up. I was kind of like a rude guy to practice with, cause I would get aggravated. After a moment, it was just me and infamous – he was the only one who could stand being with me. I was a little bit more aggressive with my shit, focused, like a geek, and after awhile everybody would be like, "Why are you taking this so seriously?" And I would be like, "Aw, nobody understands me." And Infamous was like, "Yo, I understand. Let’s do it."

DJ Times: When did the Allies get together and when did A-Trak join?

Craze: The Allies got together in 1997. And A-Trak, we clicked. He was a Pikl, but he wasn’t doing stuff with them. I was like, "Yo, join my crew and we can represent together and enter competitions together and we can make you a full member of the Allies."

DJ Times: What does A-Track bring to the crew?

Craze: He brings the technical craziness to the crew. He’s the technical god. He gets real creative when it comes to that. He gets real intricate with his scratching and his beat juggles, real on-point.

DJ Times: And Infamous?

Craze: He’s the comedy relief. He’s constantly joking. But he’s also real technical. It’s good, ’cause around competition everybody’s real edgy and he comes in and loosens stuff up. When it comes to the team stuff, he has a lot of input.

DJ Times: You’re not just a turntablist, are you?

Craze: Most of the time, when I’m booked to do gigs, it’s regular DJ stuff. And turntablists come out and they’re like, "Why is he mixing? I hate this shit." They think I’m doing it because I have to do it. They don’t know that I’m doing it because I like mixing, you know. When I’m DJing, you’ll see the entire front row of kids with their arms folded, and everybody behind them is having a great time. Then when I start doing my routine, it switches.

DJ Times: You combine the two for your club gigs?

Craze: I’ll always mix and then do a routine. They can stick around for all the fun and stuff.

DJ Times: D-Day is the name of The Allies EP. On it you’ve got an original track…

Craze: It’s called "Freedom of Speech."

DJ Times: How did you make it?

Craze: An Akai MPC2000, which I got four months ago. That’s the first piece I ever bought, production-wise. It’s hip-hop friendly and not tough to learn. I wanted to start at the bottom. I thought it was going to be way harder. I’ll get a computer next, probably Logic Platinum.

DJ Times: Eventually, is production the direction you want to go?

Craze: That’s my love now. Turntablism is my love, but making beats is way much funner. It’s not so competitive. That’s a whole ‘nother world.

DJ Times: You’re big into drum-n-bass, right?

Craze: Sometimes I play that out and people will think it’s some weird shit. But it has the sound that I look for in hip hop. It’s underground. It’s like a new sound, all distorted, but still funky, nice bass lines. The whole production is tight, and every time you hear, say, a Dillinja track, it moves you. Bad Company, too, Ed Rush and Optical is the shit. John B is crazy. I’ve been mad into it for three or four years. Hip-hop clubs got boring, so I started going to raves and they’d put me in the drum-n-bass room. I wasn’t hating the music, but I was like, "What is this crazy shit?" But after a couple of beers, I was like, "Whoa, this shit is dope." That’s how I got hooked on it.

DJ Times: Are you making any drum-n-bass tracks?

Craze: Yep.

DJ Times: A lot tougher than making hip hop?

Craze: Making a drum-n-bass track, man, I’ll spend three or four weeks, just programming the drums. With a hip-hop track, not downing it or nothing, but I can make one in a day. But I want to start making my hip-hop tracks like drum-n-bass – weird, fucked-up bass lines with hip hop. Maybe I can start a new sound. Those bass lines are sick, those futuristic bass lines on some hip-hop beats? Man….

DJ Times: Turntablism has branched out past the hip-hop clubs. How do you feel about turntablism becoming more abundant in the rave scene?

Craze: We have no other choice. We can’t do what we are doing in the hip-hop clubs because the hip-hop clubs nowadays are more older and jiggy. They’re not really into the art anymore. So it’s like we have no choice. Those are the young kids. Those are the open kids. Those are the kids that are ready to see some new shit. Trying to reach the open minds. We can’t do that in any other club. Those are also the people who pay good. Ain’t no hip-hop promoter gonna pay each one and ask, "What? You’re just going to do tricks? Are you crazy?" We get more respect in the rave scene so...respect to the ravers.

DJ Times: What is the future of turntablism? How do you feel it’s going to progress?

Craze: I think it’s just going to keep morphing. I don’t even know. I’d like to see more DJ bands, more set up songs. Like Klamz of Death for example. More things like that you can actually do live. Make it like a whole little band thing.                            n

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