Speaking to the Crowd

I’m an American DJ who plays a top 40 night weekly at the same bar. I do a lot of intro / outro mixing, and when I mess up and start the track too late, I get left with a gap of space where there are no lyrics. That gap is awkward. I was taught by my mentor (who had to save my butt a few times with his mic skills) that I use that intro / outro time to get on the mic and hype up my crowd. I’m not the best at it, but I’m also not on stage in front of 30k people. I do birthday shoutouts and tell people I take requests.

Coltrane09, post: 34842, member: 2800 wrote: I’ve seen parties where the DJ never spoke to the crowd, but he had a buddy on board speaking to the crowd. This is a an interesting topic because I’ve seen it mixed both ways and the parties were still good.

Jordylu1007, post: 36751, member: 1776 wrote: I’m a hip hop DJ and any “Mic Work” is to basically hype the crowd. Truth be told to get an idea of how they work the mic youtube videos of Kid Capri, Funkmaster Flex and DJ Premier. Capri especially was an early master of the Mic Work for hip hop DJ’s. Keep in mind you are really looking to keep the crowd up without over doing it. Even repeating certain portions of songs will help you achieve your goal. Depending on where you live you can also get a “hype” person…Here in Philly you shake a tree and 10 fall out hip hop DJ’s here usually had a habit of having them because they didn’t talk to much. Will Smith started out as Jazzy Jeff’s hype man and MC Marvelous and a dude named Supreme All World were DJ Cash Money hype men and even now Skillz serves as Jeff’s hype man so you don’t need to talk. Get a person you know that has an outsized personality, witty and slick with their ability to turn a phrase and voila there you go.

And before that in the 40s and 50s you had the black radio jocks with “jive” talk that predates the MC. In the end our black brothers just know how to throw a rhyme its in your blood lol Respect!

“I’m an American DJ who plays a top 40 night weekly at the same bar. I do a lot of intro / outro mixing, and when I mess up and start the track too late, I get left with a gap of space where there are no lyrics. That gap is awkward. I was taught by my mentor (who had to save my butt a few times with his mic skills) that I use that intro / outro time to get on the mic and hype up my crowd. I’m not the best at it, but I’m also not on stage in front of 30k people. I do birthday shoutouts and tell people I take requests.” dj mark more

yup, he is right. i do allot of work in bars and small clubs so yes the usual birthday shout out and the ever important “last call” is necessary. also if you have to make an announcement or something find the intro outro or just loop 8 bars so you can say what you have to. talking during a verse is the same as mixing in the middle of one; a major no no. and you also might run across the “has anybody found my keys or hey this car left their lights on in the parking lot” request. as far as being comfortable enough to do this, well, you just have to go ahead and just do it. do it with the same fortitude it took you to get out of your bedroom and play in front of a crowd. good luck homie!

LukeAlive, post: 36781, member: 270 wrote: And before that in the 40s and 50s you had the black radio jocks with “jive” talk that predates the MC. In the end our black brothers just know how to throw a rhyme its in your blood lol Respect!

Very true very true. Up until about 1995 when the guys starting passing away there was a station here WDAS that used to do this event every New Years Day where they would bring back the older retired DJ’s from the station. The very same folks you are talking about from the 60′ and 70’s like Jocko Henderson, Georgie Woods and Butterball in fact some of THAT stuff is on Youtube if you put in their names. Now if you want to learn how to hype a crowd and work the MIC check those cats out. Now granted some in fact a lot of the slang is dated but really their approach to working the MIC is impeccable.