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Todd Terry started DJing around his home city of New York in the mid-'80s. “When I started — around '84, '85 — I was just doing random parties, weddings, Sweet Sixteens, a lot of different parties — anything I could get my hands on,” Todd tells DJ Mag. “I just wanted to DJ at the time, so me and my friends would load up speakers and a system and everything, and stress ourselves out just so that we could get to this party — and DJ. Rain, snow — whatever we had to do, we made sure we got to the party.”
Todd was into hip-hop, electro and 'freestyle' breakbeat stuff back then — “John Davis 'I Can't Stop', 'It's Just Begun' [by the Jimmy Castor Bunch] and all that kinda stuff” — and explains to DJ Mag how he and his pals used to cut those records back and forth. “It was more like a b-boy style of thing,” he says. “Then we would throw in some popular records by Prince or something like that for the parties too, so we would kinda mix it up — but I was definitely more into the b-boy style.”
With assorted pals, he'd hang at NYC clubs like Roseland and hang out around the DJ booth wondering what records the guy was playing. “My friends were like, 'You should try to make records like this', and I was like 'I dunno, it sounds kinda expensive', cos they had symphonies and everything, it was more like those Salsoul records,” Todd says. “But then as electronic music came out, I figured that I could figure that out — I just had to learn how to do it.”
Todd says that his early productions were “horrible” — “I was trying to do too much at once” — and it took him a while to fix tracks up a little better. “I was doing more breakbeat stuff, electronic drum machine stuff with samples and basslines — I was just into the raw sound of everything,” he says. “I tried to make everything like a breakbeat.”
He first heard house music when his friend was over and jumping around to some new music he had on cassette. “I was like, 'It kinda all sounds the same to me', cos I was used to a breakbeat style,” Todd thought at first. “But I knew that there was club music that was like that, and he was saying 'You should try making records like this' — you do a lot of hip-hop, you should do this'. I was like 'I'll try it', and one of the first records I did was 'Party People'.”
Todd was already semi-successful doing freestyle music (“cheesy songs with hard-assed beats”), but when he started doing house music he took it to another stratosphere. 'Party People' in 1987 — released under the name Royal House — was one of the biggest club records of the year, and yet he tells DJ Mag he was just joking around when making it, introducing the memorable, stuttering “party people” refrain just to demonstrate how easy it was. “I didn't really understand what was going on — I was just doing it,” he says of his rapid rise to success. “It was like, 'I'll just do another one of these — what's this, what's that?' It was a free-for-all.”
Todd was knocking about with a variety of music guys in the late '80s, including a nascent hip-hop group called the Jungle Brothers in New York at the time. In a recent interview with DJ Mag, Armand Van Helden speculated that the JBs probably went to a house club and ended up thinking that they wanted to do a house track too. Todd confirms this. “They was just hanging out, they came to a house club and came back and was like, 'We've got to do a house joint with you',” he says. “At the time I used to hang out in Tony D's basement producing Whodini, Dynasty & Mimi, Slick Rick & Doug E. Fresh and all that kinda stuff, I was working on stuff like that as well as some of the house tracks. They heard the 'Can You Party?' record and they was like, 'Yeah, we wanna put a vocal to that'.”
Todd didn't think that idea had any legs at all at first. “I was like, 'Come on man, that's ridiculous, that's not gonna work, what are we gonna call it? Hip-house or something like that?'” he laughs. “We was joking around.”
“I went somewhere for about a week and when they came back they were like, 'We've got to play you this joint',” Todd continues. “They played it to me, and it was 'I'll House You'. I was like, 'We've got to tighten some things up here', it was a mess. They then went back and did it again and I was like, 'This is better', the first time they was just bugging out, but the next time when they did it again it kinda really worked out.”
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Todd Terry started DJing around his home city of New York in the mid-'80s. “When I started — around '84, '85 — I was just doing random parties, weddings, Sweet Sixteens, a lot of different parties — anything I could get my hands on,” Todd tells DJ Mag. “I just wanted to DJ at the time, so me and my friends would load up speakers and a system and everything, and stress ourselves out just so that we could get to this party — and DJ. Rain, snow — whatever we had to do, we made sure we got to the party.”
Todd was into hip-hop, electro and 'freestyle' breakbeat stuff back then — “John Davis 'I Can't Stop', 'It's Just Begun' [by the Jimmy Castor Bunch] and all that kinda stuff” — and explains to DJ Mag how he and his pals used to cut those records back and forth. “It was more like a b-boy style of thing,” he says. “Then we would throw in some popular records by Prince or something like that for the parties too, so we would kinda mix it up — but I was definitely more into the b-boy style.”
With assorted pals, he'd hang at NYC clubs like Roseland and hang out around the DJ booth wondering what records the guy was playing. “My friends were like, 'You should try to make records like this', and I was like 'I dunno, it sounds kinda expensive', cos they had symphonies and everything, it was more like those Salsoul records,” Todd says. “But then as electronic music came out, I figured that I could figure that out — I just had to learn how to do it.”
Todd says that his early productions were “horrible” — “I was trying to do too much at once” — and it took him a while to fix tracks up a little better. “I was doing more breakbeat stuff, electronic drum machine stuff with samples and basslines — I was just into the raw sound of everything,” he says. “I tried to make everything like a breakbeat.”
He first heard house music when his friend was over and jumping around to some new music he had on cassette. “I was like, 'It kinda all sounds the same to me', cos I was used to a breakbeat style,” Todd thought at first. “But I knew that there was club music that was like that, and he was saying 'You should try making records like this' — you do a lot of hip-hop, you should do this'. I was like 'I'll try it', and one of the first records I did was 'Party People'.”
Todd was already semi-successful doing freestyle music (“cheesy songs with hard-assed beats”), but when he started doing house music he took it to another stratosphere. 'Party People' in 1987 — released under the name Royal House — was one of the biggest club records of the year, and yet he tells DJ Mag he was just joking around when making it, introducing the memorable, stuttering “party people” refrain just to demonstrate how easy it was. “I didn't really understand what was going on — I was just doing it,” he says of his rapid rise to success. “It was like, 'I'll just do another one of these — what's this, what's that?' It was a free-for-all.”
Todd was knocking about with a variety of music guys in the late '80s, including a nascent hip-hop group called the Jungle Brothers in New York at the time. In a recent interview with DJ Mag, Armand Van Helden speculated that the JBs probably went to a house club and ended up thinking that they wanted to do a house track too. Todd confirms this. “They was just hanging out, they came to a house club and came back and was like, 'We've got to do a house joint with you',” he says. “At the time I used to hang out in Tony D's basement producing Whodini, Dynasty & Mimi, Slick Rick & Doug E. Fresh and all that kinda stuff, I was working on stuff like that as well as some of the house tracks. They heard the 'Can You Party?' record and they was like, 'Yeah, we wanna put a vocal to that'.”
Todd didn't think that idea had any legs at all at first. “I was like, 'Come on man, that's ridiculous, that's not gonna work, what are we gonna call it? Hip-house or something like that?'” he laughs. “We was joking around.”
“I went somewhere for about a week and when they came back they were like, 'We've got to play you this joint',” Todd continues. “They played it to me, and it was 'I'll House You'. I was like, 'We've got to tighten some things up here', it was a mess. They then went back and did it again and I was like, 'This is better', the first time they was just bugging out, but the next time when they did it again it kinda really worked out.”
Top 100 DJs: http://www.djmag.com/top100djs
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1tr9sNh
Twitter: http://bit.ly/1AxeMR6
Google+: http://bit.ly/1k6xlq5
SoundCloud: http://bit.ly/1pE3QIU
Mixcloud: http://bit.ly/UK6i85
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