DJ Drama - From selling mixtapes to winning a Grammy and signing Jack Harlow

Legacy of Monsters an Apple original series. The world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th. This place, it's not ours. Believe me, the most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, you'll know everything. I promise.

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Hold music. You want to avoid it and so do your customers. So say goodbye to holdmusic and hello to faster, smarter support with Salesforce. Make service more personal and agents more productive using built in trusted AI. Then watch costs and wait times drop and satisfaction soar. Support customers in a whole new way with Service GPT. Learn how@salesforce.com ServiceGPT all right, welcome back to the Casey Adams show. We have DJ Drama. We are here in Charlotte. Yeah, thanks so much for coming to the show, brother.

Thanks for having me, man.

Of course, man. So I'm in Charlotte, visit the family. I know you guys are on tour right now. Yeah, I just want to take it back. You know your story as a dj. First off, how's tour going?

Tour is amazing. Feels good to be back on the road. You know, I actually just went on a tour right before this called Legends of the Streets, which was me, Jeezy, Rick Ross, Fabulous 2 Chainz, Lil Kim, Trina. Definitely a different demo demographic than, you know, Wiz and Logic fans. It was definitely dope because being on tour with jeezy and watching 20,000 people react to his music, you know, and thinking about my beginnings and, you know, this music that, you know, he created and brought to me when I was living in a 4th Ward in Atlanta and my busted up duplex, you know what I'm saying? And so for 17, 18 years later, you know, to watch the crowd like sing it word for word, like as if it's a religion to them, was insane. It would give me goosebumps every night, you know, just being on stage and fast forward and, you know, being back on the road with Wiz. We haven't been out since 2019. This is probably my sixth tour with Wiz. I've been going out with him since 2014.

And you guys been at it for a minute.

Yeah. You know, and the vibes are great, you know, summer vibes, like, you know, just we're doing amphitheaters for the most part. And so, you know, it's outside and kids like to just be on the lawn or just, you know, come for the experience, so. And for me, you know, it's even doper, like walking out in front of the crowd and, like, getting the type of response that I'm getting. You know, I'm 44 years old. You know, I've been DJing longer than some of these kids have been alive. And, like, to walk out and hear them chant my name is like, you know, I'm always. I always get to points of just, like, in my career where I just. I'm just so amazed of the things I've. I've accomplished, you know? You know, my goal when I first started DJing was to get my name on a flyer.

Like, where did this journey start? Like, what was. When was the first time? You're like, you know, I'm gonna. I want to be a dj. This is what I want to do. And what was that transition? Because, you know, I've had a lot of entrepreneurs on the show, different business, business people, musicians. But your story is so unique. And I feel just watching you over the past couple years with the talent you sign and how you move, it's just so cool to see it and now, obviously, getting to know you and dive into it. Thank you. Like, what was the inspiration to start out as a dj? And then, you know, after you entered that, what was the transition of signing talent and being able to see talent before someone may see it in themselves.

Thanks, man. Thanks for that. The journey really started when I was about 13. You know, I was, you know, going from eighth grade to ninth grade. I was really into skateboarding, and that was, like, my. The hobby of choice at the time. I used to go down to, like, love park and skate, and around the time there was a group of, like, black skateboarders, I was kind of like. We were all kind of like, you know, young black kids skating. When a time when, like, skateboarding was still known as, like, you know, a white sport, in a sense, I was always the worst one. And they used to always laugh at me and crack jokes on me because I couldn't barely land a kick flip.

Yeah, yeah.

I went to go see the movie Juice between eighth and ninth grade. It came out in the theaters. Classic movie. Omar Epps, Tupac, Rest in Peace. And that was the first time I had seen a DJ on the big screen, you know, like, really watching a dj, like, cut and scratch and make a demo tape and. And, you know, like, going to a DJ battle. And I just was like, man, that's what I want to do, you know? And I was already a kid, you know, born into hip hop, and I used to listen to all types of music, too. Like, I had a little, like, Heavy metal stage, a little rock stage. But, you know, I grew up, you know, run DMC with KRS1 with Big Daddy King, watching him on the box and stuff. So I convinced my mom after I saw Juice going into ninth grade, I convinced my mom to buy me a, a turntable and a mixer. Thankfully, she did. And I would literally, she would give me like $5 every day for lunch money. I wouldn't buy lunch. I would go downtown, downtown Philly. There were stores called Funko Mart, Sounds of Market and Armin's. And I would buy records. And that's kind of how I like started my record collection, you know, with lunch money and yeah, like again, you know, I was, I was in high school, I was like, I did my first party for a friend of mine named Ari. I think he paid me like $40. I had like one creator records and I did my best for his birthday party. And you know, my goal was like, when I used to go after school, the subway stop was broad and eerie near my high school. And that's when people used to pass out all the flyers for like all the parties. And I was like, man, I just want to get my name on a flyer. Like, gotta get my name on a flyer, you know, like, that was my goal. So I've always said, like, you know, everything past that has been extra, you know? You know what I'm saying? Like, that was literally my first goal as a dj. My sister took me to New York the summer after and I bought my first mixtape in Harlem on 125th Street. It was DJ SNS Old School Part 2. And that literally started my fascination with mixtapes and mixtape DJs. And I was hooked. You know, there's a lot of branches of DJing. There's battle DJs, there's radio DJs, there's party DJs, there's mixtape DJs. And I used to study it all, but it was always something about the mixtape DJ that was so much like larger than life to me. Like listening to a Clue tape and like being ahead of the curve with the music or like even later on. With who Kid and Green Lantern and like the type, like who Kid was literally like making these eight page fold outs of his CDs and they were like albums and, you know, I was just like totally blown away. And I had moved to Atlanta to go to college and I became a college DJ for the most part. And I met my business partners and my friends. DJ Sense, Don Cannon Lake Show. We all went to school around the Same time. So, you know, we clicked up and we were, you know, literally splitting $150 or $300 to do parties together. Fast forward some years later, once I got out of school, you know, never got a, quote unquote, real job. And I just was kind of like, hustling my mixtapes and, you know, doing clubs and doing gigs. And that was really when I started Gangsta Grills. And, you know, one of the first artists to ever reach out to me or give me a phone call was TI's manager, Jason Jeter. And he literally got my number from the. Off the back of a cd and no way off the back of a cd. The first phone call I ever got for somebody to come freestyle on one of my tapes. Wow. Was ti. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, that's crazy.

You know, I think about all the people that are in my DMs now or call me or reach out to me, and it's like, imagine if I would have turned that phone call down, you know what I'm saying? So I, um. You know, Gangsta Grills, I started it, you know, it went from a compilation of songs to just being, like the hottest, you know, brand in mixtapes, you know, in the South. It literally changed hip hop, you know, I mean, Gangsta Grills is arguably the most important hip hop mixtape brand ever. You know, I'm saying, I think there. There can be conversations based upon who the greatest mixtape DJ is. I definitely am in the runnings and contentions for that guy. But beyond that, when it comes to. To mixtape brands, nothing touches Gangsta Grylls. So, you know, in a sense, I've been doing A and R work or been like breaking artists for 15 to 20 years already just with Gangsta Grylls and creating that platform. I got my first deal at Atlantic Records through Grand hustle. I did two albums there, wound up leaving Atlantic, going to EOne. I did three albums there. The opportunity presented itself for me to become an A and R back at Atlantic around, like, 2013. Around this time, I was also building my studio, Street Studios, when I went to go meet with the powers that be, Julie Greenwald, Michael Kaiser and Craig Kalman. I told him, hey, listen, I also have this studio you guys might want to partner on with me. So they agreed. So they came and, you know, they helped me build out Mean Streets as what I had already started building from it. And then Cannon comes back one day and says, hey, Lil Uzi.

I was gonna ask that, how did you meet Lil Uzi?

And so basically, there were a couple artists that we had the opportunity to sign beforehand that didn't work out, you know, so me, Cannon, and Lake at the time were like, listen, we're not missing no more artists.

Yeah.

So Cannon came back to Atlanta one day. He had had a gig in Atlantic City. He was driving through, listening to the radio. He heard DJ Diamond Cuts playing Uzi. He called the station. She answered. He said, who's that? She said, this is the artist I'm working with, Lil Uzi. He came back to Atlanta. I remember being in a radio room and him like, yo, I heard this kid named Lil Uzi. And I was just like, let's do it. Didn't hear no music, didn't hear nothing. I just, you know, I had faith and trust in my man, my brother, my business partner, as well as, like, just, you know, listen, let's, like, we don't want to miss anymore.

So what does that look like, though? So you take a bet on Uzi back then. Like, what's the game plan, right, when it comes to breaking an artist? And what was that journey like with him going from, you know, just someone you heard to then being one of the biggest artists in the world?

I always knew that he had it in him. I mean, from the. From the first moments that we met, we got in business together. You know, he would say stuff to me like, john, I'm going to be more famous than you. And I used to be. Like, well, should I hope so? If not, I didn't do my job. So, you know, when we signed Uzi, we had also signed a couple of other artists at the time. And, you know, it's. It's a. It's a. It's.

It's a.

It's a game of dice. You know, like, as much as you want to say, you know, like, you never know. Like, you know, we knew Uzi had talent and that he was dope, but would I know that we would be sitting here talking about him being one of the goats of his generation or, you know, being one of the biggest streaming artists ever. Like, absolutely not.

You can't predict that.

You never can predict that. So I was literally about to get fired from Atlantic. I was two years into my deal. They were looking like, why are we paying this man all this money? And why have we spent so much money on the studio and what has come from it? Craig Kalman took a trip to Atlanta, sat down in the studio with me, and said, listen, I believe in you. We're going to stay partners in Mean Streets. We're just going to let you take Uzi and focus on Uzi. And then, you know, even when you used to go to our A and R meetings, I remember them telling us, like, hey, listen, you got to get this guy hot in his backyard. He's from Philly. You got to get him hot in Philly. And I'd be like, listen, y', all, it's not 96 no, more like, that used to be the way an artist would break. You'd have to get hot where you are and start branching out. And whether it's Atlanta or. Or New York, Philly, Louisiana, you'd be the man in your city, then you'd be the man in your state, then you'd be the man in that area. Then you. You go, and the whole country knows about you than the whole world. We were in a different day and age. You know what I'm saying?

Social media. Yeah.

J. Cole. J. Cole didn't break in Fayetteville. Drake didn't necessarily break in Toronto. Wiz didn't necessarily break in Pittsburgh. You know, these guys had fans over the Internet.

Yeah. So they were doing it like smoking on MySpace back in the day.

Yeah. And it was, like, brand new. And then they would double back and become the man in their city. So that was kind of the same formula we use with Vert. Like, you know, he lived in Atlanta. One of his first big looks was on a Young Thug project. I brought him on tour with me with Wiz. I literally put him in front of 15,000 every night. We were doing a Wiz and Fall Out Boy tour.

So, you know, actually at a show in 2019, I think it was. Or. No, that's before.

This is 2015.

Okay.

This is a long time ago. 2019. I brought Jack out on. On my tour and did the same type of.

Yeah, I would do in Jack Me.

So a friend of mine mentioned him to me in, like, 2017. I went to his Instagram page. He had, like, 7,000 followers. I saw him performing in front of an audience, and I went and I pushed the follow button. And I remember my homeboy being like, yo, don't follow him. Like, he's going to see it. And he. He literally followed me right back.

Yeah, he's on it.

He wound up telling me later like, yo, I think I'm going to sign the drum. Ky engineer who's worked with Lil Wayne, who's worked with Meek Mill, who's done a lot of my projects being from Kentucky, was also working with Jack at the time. And he told my partner Lake about, like, listen, I got something I want to bring to you guys. Jack wound up finding his way to Mean Streets. One day we met for the first time. We vibed, we kicked it. He asked me what I was into, you know, I was like, man, I just sit home and watch movies all day. And we started talking about movies. And there's this movie called E2ma Tambien. I don't know how. How it came up, but it came up. And Jack was so amazed that I had seen that movie. And it just. I think it really impressed him. And, you know, we had a meeting with the team and Jack and he wound up, you know, dropping Dark Knight around, like right before we had made the final decision to sign him.

Okay.

And Dark Knight started getting buzzed and we were like, yo, we gotta do it before we miss it, you know? And literally, like, Jack looked like Napoleon Dynamite when I signed him, you know? And the same way you see those.

Pictures now, it's like they back 2017, 2019. That's the Jack you signed. That's the Jack you believed in, which I think is so cool. Like betting on the horse, right?

That's the Jack I took to sway in the morning, you know, and put him on it.

What was it about Jack, outside of his music that you were betting on?

Just him as a person again, he's somebody that I could tell he had a vision, like he had his goals, like Jack was gonna be here regardless. You know, I think the fact that him signing to Generation now, him being able to stand on the shoulders of DJ Drama and Don Cannon, you know, the guy that's responsible for fucking gangsta grills and the careers of Jeezy and Wayne and TI And Meek and Fab and, you know, all this part of hip hop, it gave him a good cosign, especially coming in the game as a white rapper, you know what I mean?

To, you know, doesn't happen like that for. At such a big scale. You don't see that often, right? To know the stardom that he has now in the, you know, past couple of years, right? It's so cool to see that's like one of a kind.

And it's about trusting the process, you know, Jack has a record called River Road. That's one of my favorites. That's a fan favorite, where he literally talks about it on the record about like, you know, getting that frustration of like, why isn't it my time yet? Like, yeah, when is it going to come? You know what I mean? And it's very introspective, and it's how a lot of artists feel a lot of times. And especially, you know, even in Churchill Downs, where he says, like, the label used to wonder how I was going to stand next to Vert, you know what I'm saying? Like, here we have this superstar rock star artist, and then we sign a Jack Harlow. You know, again, who people are looking. Even the label was looking, like, I don't know about the white guy, you know, so to have done it once with Uzi and to have done it again with Jack, it's like, okay. You know, it brought a lot of validity to us. I always feel like we're as generation now. And myself, I've always been kind of the underdog in my career and. Which I love. You know, I love. I love. I love the challenge. I love the. I love the drive of it. So, you know, it was like, okay, you know, they kind of make a hov, go make another hov. And, you know, with all due respect to both Jack or Uzi or her, totally in their own lanes, you know, for us, it was like, yeah, like, we're those guys. We've been them guys. Yeah, we told y'. All, we. It wasn't a fluke. You know what I'm saying?

I want to talk about that. Like, you've. You've done it not only more than once, but you've done it consistently over decades. Whether that's breaking yourself, breaking new artists. If you had to point to not only a formula, but just, you know, the. The track record, how does a young artist as maybe listening to this today? Like, what do you recommend they do, you know, for, you know, Jack popped up on your radar back in 2017. Like, how do you recommend an artist break today to get to the point where they can start working with, you know, more experienced players in the industry?

I mean, the thing is, there's really no handbook. There's not a handbook to this thing. You know, I just love, drive and passion for me is like, it's going to be part of history that a kid from Philly moves to Atlanta and changes the mixtape game, not only for the south, but overall and, you know, goes to jail for mixtapes and becomes this martyr. Like, I always. I was gonna be here anyway, you know, but it's part of the story that, you know, so I'm so thankful that I didn't go to school in New York or la. I wound up in Atlanta and, you know, living around the corner from Coach K, who managed Young Jeezy. Like, you know, these things are destiny. Like if you look at like Drake and Wayne or Yay and Hov or things of that nature, or us and Vert and Us and Jack, like, you know, just to new artists, man, it's like, you know, first of all, like, I always believe in being a student of the game. So you study your craft, you know what I'm saying? Like ins and out. It's, you know, there's no school for music tech. I mean, there are, but you know, there's like, it's not like when you go become a doctor, you have to pass this or being a lawyer, you have to pass the bar. So it's like you got to, it's kind of on your own to like do your own come up or you know, find your own path. Find your own path. Like put your own music out, you know, I mean, you know, literally you can put your own music out on your own DSPs now and. But you're also competing with a hundred thousand other songs that come out every day. So it's like, how do you get someone to pay attention? So, you know, with social media, you. Everyone's easily accessible, you know, they're a DM away.

Yeah, this is that we got this.

Podcast and it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work, but there's nothing wrong with trying that. It's nothing wrong with.

I mean, I'll say, like I've done 400 interviews and I think 380 have done have come from a DM, right? Like you're speaking that language, you know.

I mean, listen, I get a lot of dms from a lot of artists and I, I don't, I can't reply to everybody. I don't reply to everybody, you know, but I'm at a different point in my career, you know what I'm saying? And you know, one thing I like to tell artists a lot of times is like, don't try to go big all the time. You know what I mean? You don't have to go to a DJ drama or the upper echelon. Like when I came up, like Jeezy wasn't the man yet, like Tip was. We were grinding together, like it was the come up together, you feel what I'm saying? So, you know, look around your circle and my business partners are my friends from college, you know what I'm saying? Like, so it's like before you try to go big, like come up with those guys around you, like same like with Dababy and Jetson, you know, I'm saying those are. Those are guys from Carolina that made a sound and, you know, came up together. So, you know, before you try to reach out to the big boys, you don't necessarily have to, like, you know, your. Your manager or your. Your producer or, you know, look at, look at Noah and, and Drake's relationship, you know what I'm saying? Like, and, And Drake literally put himself in the. You know, everybody has a story of, I almost signed Drake, you know what I'm saying? Like, from this person and that person to this person, you know? But Drake's manager is. Is future the Prince. I was his DJ, no different than LeBron with Maverick and Rich Paul. Those are his. Those are his homeboys from, you know, back in Ohio, you know what I'm saying? So, absolutely, it's about creating your own movement, you know what I mean? And I would suggest that before you try to necessarily reach out to someone like yourself or someone like myself when, you know, they know we get a thousand DMs. DMs.

Requests. Yeah.

A day, like, the people that you might be able to make history with might be around the corner from you.

Yeah, I love that. Well, two more quick questions before we wrap up DJ Drama. One is, what does success mean to you? When you, you know, you've done so much of the past couple decades, you've signed talent, you've broken artists, what does success mean to you?

At this point in my career, I just really feel like success means. Means happiness. You know, Success for me now is about, like, being able to empower others, being able to make other people rich as shit, being able to, like, continue to thrive with. Within the culture and keep going. You know what I'm saying? Like, bro, I've been DJing 30 years. I've been in the game for 22. I'm literally about to get my first Grammy. I mean, I already won it with Tyler, but thank you.

Hell yeah, brother.

It's coming in the mail on Monday for a mixtape series that I started 22 years ago.

You know what I mean?

Success is just, like, it's being able to do what I love. Like, I was doing this with when I didn't have any hot water. I got an artist, Seti Hendricks, and he has a song called Can't Go. And I tell us, I say, true story. I said before all this gangster grill shit, money was tight. Things weren't going right. I was literally about to move back to Philly. It's a true story. I was like, man, this shit as much as I love it. It's not working out. And I almost went back to Philly and who knows, you know, and imagine if that would have happened. Imagine all the classics we wouldn't have or.

That's crazy.

Imagine to think about, like if I wouldn't have, if I would have gone back to Philly, like there would be no gangster grills, there would be no generation now, like none of this would exist. So it's like, you know, you gotta, you gotta bet on yourself. And that's what success is to me. I mean, to be able to travel the world and do what I love and provide for my family and my loved ones and to watch Jack be like a multi millionaire and to watch for be like this rock star on another planet. It's like, yo, I remember these kids when like they just were wide eyed and bushy tailed, you know. So I love, that's what success is to me. I love that.

Well, last question, wrap it up. If you could go back in time and give your 18 year old self advice, what would that advice be and why?

Oh, that's easy for me. Now the two of the biggest mistakes that I've made was when I first kind of like got on and became the man. In 2005, I moved and I had a box of flyers of every flyer I ever had with my name on it. And by that time I had already started being in magazines. I was kind of feeling myself and I moved and my landlord called me and said, hey, you left this box of flyers behind. And I was like, I don't need it. And I let them throw them out. Years later I had a lawsuit. There was a guy saying he owned the name DJ Drama and he was gonna sue Atlantic. So my first two albums don't even say DJ Drama, they just say Drama. And my lawyer told me, well, if you can prove, if you could have proved that you been using that name for this amount of time, you would have had a case. And I was like, fuck. I threw my flyers out. Just recently I had a storage unit that I had all my records and all my memorabilia in that I literally had since 2000. And I had it up to 2020. During COVID my phone got fucked up. The way I used to pay the bill got lost in the mix. They changed companies. Just recently I went looking for the storage unit and they wound up telling me that they sold it off for $393.17.

Oh my gosh.

I'd been paying these people $22,000 for over 15 years. And when I moved into my home in 2017, I could have very well easily went to the storage unit, got all this stuff and put it in to my crib. So I've lost between the box of flyers and the storage unit with all my records on my old photo albums, you know, I've lost a lot of memories and things that.

Sorry to hear that.

You know, would mean so much to me at this stage in my career. You know, it's the small things that, you know, I would love to look back on flyers of me from 95, 96, or old photo albums that I had like, of Lauryn Hill holding one of my mix tapes and all that stuff is gone. So I would have told my 18 year old self, yo, make sure you hold on to everything and keep everything and document everything.

Love that. Well, Drama, I know you're busy. You're about to go on stage soon. I appreciate you so much for coming to the show, man.

Congratulations to you.

Thank you, man.

And all your success and all you've done, man. I'd love to see it.

I appreciate it, man. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much for watching. Yeah, I'll talk to you guys soon.

One Monarch Legacy of Monsters An Apple original series. The world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th. This place, it's not ours. Believe me. The most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, you'll know everything. I promise.

Oh, my God.

Go, go, go. Legacy of monsters streaming November 17th only on Apple TV. Plus.