Last Monday Smirnoff & The Sol Kitchen (Big Ups 2 Mike Kitchen) put on a DJ Battle at The Forum in downtown Charlotte. The Contest featured performances by Special Ed & DJ Dummy (Common’s Tour DJ & American DMC Finalist) and had 6 DJs from the Queen City battling it out.

The format was simple: each DJ gets 10 mins to impress the crowd, with 3 mins of ur set required to be DMC style (Scratching, Juggling) and 7 mins to rock the crowd with a “mixoff” style of battling.

I put a lot of work into my set, especially since it was my first competition that had a mandatory DMC portion. Knowing where I’m at in my DJ game so far… I knew my DMC set wouldn’t be spectacular, but I really wanted to make sure that if I couldnt scratch a record w/ my chin……. that I would atleast sound crisp and be in time w/ my routine.

After the first 20 seconds of my set I had to start over because of a poor needle contact issue (one more lick to the back of the cartridge was all it took)… these types of things happen at battles when you’re switching setups back and forth constantly w/ little time to test everything. I recovered though and went through my juggling and scratching routine pretty smoothly.

For the mixoff portion I came w/ a wide variety of  joints ranging from Gang Starr to Maze & Frankie Beverly to Travis Porter. It definitely got the crowd hype & I felt pretty good about the set, but there were still 4 more DJs to go. When the votes were all tallied though I ended being the winner!

Overall it was a really good experience… I got a chance to play for a lot of people that haven’t had a chance to hear me play, got to hear some other DJ’s lay down some dope routines (shout out to DJ Red, DJ Skinner, DJ Precise, DJ Swift & DJ Gabie) & got to watch DJ Dummy and Special Ed do their thing…. nice lil Monday Night lol.

Mike McCray from Creative Loafing was in the building and posted a live review of the event on Creative Loafing’s “Vibes” Music Blog & I should have live footage of my set online by the end of the week.

-Complete