Master At Work: Kenny Dope Gonzales on Breaking House in the US
Author: Angie Ng
Saturday, July 13, 2002
Ever since Todd Terry borrowed their Masters At Work (MAW) tag in the 80s, Kenny "Dope" Gonzales and Little Louie Vega have been towering figureheads of house, acclaimed as much for their 4 deck DJ sets as for their prolific blend of Latino flavoured quality house. Best known as a duo for their Nu Yorican Soul project, the pair have also developed simultaneously successful solo careers, Kenny Dope's biggest moment coming in 1995, with the worldwide club hit The Bomb. 7 years on, he's busy releasing a virtual avalanche of new records, from the latest MAW album Our Time Is Coming to a rap album Merciless RNS.
He's also recently been DJing outside the States and met up with Skrufff's Angie Ng in KL last week after his first ever gig in the Malaysian capital. Dressed in a Pirates 66 football jersey, Sean John baggy jeans and whiter than white trainers, he was both friendly and surprisingly chatty, littering every answer with Brooklyn-style 'you know what I'm sayin-' and "you know".
Skrufff: You recently released your latest Masters At Work album "Our Time Is coming"; how much do you feel like it is your time-
Kenny 'Dope': "The title is really just one aspect of us making albums. I know a lot of people are saying 'What are they talking about-' but our main focus right now is to record albums as opposed to 12" singles. We wanna' tell more stories, like we did with Nuyorican Soul. We've also got a more electronic album coming out which is gonna' be alternative music and Louie's doing his own solo projects as well. That's really where our focus is and that's what the title is about; Our Time Is Coming, in terms of doing albums. "
Skrufff: Your biography talks almost exclusively about your production work instead of DJing; how do you prioritize between the two-
Kenny 'Dope': "The main thing is to make the records; you need to make the records in order to DJ and the more records you make the more you DJ, Some of these records don't last that long, so you need to have a lot of stuff in reserve. I end up playing at least once or twice a month though I'm doing a 3 week stretch right now which is my first real tour in about a year."
Skrufff: Your technical rider for the club tonight included 4 CDJ1000s (fantastic DJ sound effect machines), does it get any harder now that there are so many wannabe DJs and clubbers who know how to beat mix-
Kenny 'Dope': "Nah, DJing is all about the way you put your records together. Anybody can mix in a record, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the mix is in the right spot. It's basically your track selection that makes you different from everybody else, it's more about how you put the records together (sequence them) to make that floor go crazy."
Skrufff: Going into your background, you grew up in Brooklyn during the 80s, did you go to any of the legendary Bronx block parties or cross paths with characters like Grandmaster Flash or Afrika Bambataa-
Kenny 'Dope': "No, I was too young for that. But there were local block parties and parties in the park and that was where I first saw a DJ cut records. But I never went to parties in different parts of the city. I was too young to go out to the city (Manhattan) and that's kinda' why our own little Masters At Work clique started. We started doing our own parties in Brooklyn when we were fifteen or sixteen and we just kept doing them there because of our age. The older crowd would go to the city and they would let me know what was going on over there; what records were popping off and stuff like that. That was the way I kept in touch."
Skrufff: You scored a massive European hit with your solo project The Bucketheads in 1995 ("T Tags