DJ Eddie Def defies description. He's like some kind of hip-hop renegade from the Twilight Zone. His music is neither here, nor there and yet somehow manages to fuck you up in the head. He is simply The Last Kreep.

Back in the day, before the whole turntablist movement, there was hip-hop. B-boys were busting moves, writers were bombing trains, MCs were kicking freestyle rhymes, and DJs were rocking the house. Eddie Def grew up in that scene, the old school, and you can hear it, physically in his music, and aesthetically in his style.

"I try to do megamixes," says Eddie Def of his Hemp Lords mixtapes series. "It would be like 15 minutes of just crucial shit: like drum and bass, the Beastie Boys, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, fucking Slayer, Metallica, Nirvana – just everything collided in one, like 15 minutes of mayhem."

"That's crazy shit and that's totally a lost art form now. You got some 15 year old kid who's just into turntables, going, 'Whoa, what the fuck is that?!' That's a shame. That's the old shit that used to inspire me. It's like a lot of shit has changed. It's just all scratching and kicks and snares – that's so played out. How many times can you do that?"

Although hip-hop has advanced to some next level shit in the last 20 years, it has also become more fragmented. Somehow hip-hop music became rap music and the MC left behind the DJ. Now turntablists seem to be following suit.

"I don't think the hardcore b-boys into the whole hip-hop culture are the same guys as the record bag DJ guys," says Eddie Def. "I think its two different kind of people. Even though the turntablists are supposed to be part of hip-hop, I don't even think they go out and pick up like a fucking Gang Starr record. They probably think Premier is too simple or something. Instead of crackheads, they're just like scratchheads – dramatized and hooked and addicted to scratching. It doesn't matter who the fuck it is, where the fuck it is – they're just all into scratching. That shit is hilarious."

As turntablists splinter off farther into their own musical genre, they continue to expand the art form. But by removing themselves from hip-hop, they may be inadvertently leaving behind some of their skills and originality.

"The young cats start off good," explains Eddie Def. "They're real technical and they've got a lot of skills but they lack old skills that would make them develop to be a better individual DJ. Like 90% of the DJs today, they kind of sound all the same. I don't know if that's because of certain videos they watch or certain heroes and icons that they have, but they all sound the same. Like they all do crabs and flares and they kind of forget their freehand scratches or their transforming or the Philadelphia style, Miami style of scratching. They just kind of forget that shit. It's really kind of watered down now for me."

"You ever seen Tableturns, that video? Everybody was kind of doing the same juggle. That's like cool the first five times, but a whole one-hour tape of that shit – that's lame, y'know? Back in the old days, it would even be just more nuts. Motherfuckers wouldn't even use the same sound. Everybody just uses 'ah' and 'fresh' now and shit. Everything is becoming standard because of a certain scratch being exploited or a certain style… y'know what I mean?"

"Everybody wants to be like this guy or that guy. You rarely come across an original DJ where you're just like: 'Fuck I've never seen any of that shit!' There's not even one DJ that can do that now. It's like every DJ has a little bit of Craze, a little bit of Qbert, a little bit of Mista Sinista… y'know what I mean?"

"I always tell little DJs coming up to pick up your Aladdin record, pick up your Rodney O and Joe Cooley records, pick up all your 2 Live Crew records, because all those records have the old scratches that you should learn 'cause all you know how to do is flare, crab and chirp. You need to study other people, y'know?"

"It's like fighting," teaches Eddie Def. "You don't just want to learn how to punch. You want to learn how to punch in the face and fucking throw an elbow in there and then hit someone with the fucking knee. If you learn your freehand [scratching without using the faders or line switches] and then incorporate that with your flares and crabs, then you'll be hella dope. Freehand scratching will lead to combos. That's like a big secret."

"Don't be afraid to mix either," warns Eddie Def. "All the great producers mix. You have to learn how to mix sounds right to make the hip-hop beat."

While the homogenized sound of the current breed of DJs can be attributed to their lack of hip-hop history, it can also be blamed on the current influx of generic breakbeat records.
"I would agree that 'ah' and 'fresh' are probably the worldwide best sounds to use in practice but not really if you're going to make a scratch song," says Eddie Def. "That's kind of lame. Even break records are getting lame. They're so watered down. You have this guy using my record and this other record and he'll make his own record off of two other break records when the whole idea of the purpose is to dig for DJ sounds individually and come up with this song, this sound, this stab and your own breakdown."

"There's like at least 10 records on the market that's been done with Hamster Breaks, and like maybe Booger Breaks and Battle Breaks. It's like Kool-Aid with Kool-Aid. Why start doing that to the new art form that was created by DJs? It's getting real cheesy."

Even DJ battles, where turntablists are most likely to be in their element, have not been able to escape the growing pains of the DJ as an artist. After Cash Money popularized the battle scene by winning virtually every competition in America, a lot of hip-hop DJs wanted to be like him. Now at DJ battles, all you see are turntablists cutting and scratching. What was once fresh and new has ultimately become mundane and boring. It is also ironic that DMC, one of the most popular battles on the circuit, is an acronym for Disco Mixing Club.
"If you mix now, you get booed at," laments Eddie Def. "But you can't put a straight turntablist to rock a four-hour party because all he'll do is scratch and he'll just make a fool out of himself. And those guys who are called turntablists act like there's no skills in mixing. They say it's all easy and this and that but they really can't do it deep down inside because they're siting there 24-7 trying to be like the other guy because it's cool to be a turntablist DJ. I guess it's not cool now to be able to rock a party and make bitches shake their ass. Back in the day, that was the shit. Everybody would want to go to parties: 'It's going to be going on –the girls, the music, the bass!'"

"Now you got 10 dudes and everybody else is sitting down drinking beer getting blasted. Then you have those 10 dudes that are into turntablism going, 'Yeah, uh….' That scene is so played out, man. I think turntablism has made lots of DJ art forms lose."

DJ Eddie Def may be from the old school but he doesn't live in the past. He's moved on and his music has evolved with him. Whether working solo or with his crew, the Bullet Proof Space Travelers, Eddie Def continues to break off joint after joint. Besides the now classic Hemp Lord series, you can find his demented sound offerings on the Deep Concentration and Hip Hop Slam Pirate Fuckin' Radio compilations. If you want to step to the next level, check out the sonic gumbo that is El Stew which features the collaborative efforts of DJ Disk, Extrakd, Brain, Buckethead and Eddie Def himself personally cooking up beats, keyboards, vocoder, and movie skits to serve your aural senses.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: If you slept on Eddie Def's earlier recordings with the Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters, the Space Travelers, or any of the groundbreaking Hamster Breaks, then you'd best wake the fuck up and ask somebody.)

Perhaps the most eardrum devastating composition yet by the Last Kreep is DMT (Drum Machine Technicians), a five-part CD series trading off between Eddie Def and fellow Space Traveler, DJ Cue. Jokingly described as "crazy music for drug addicts," Eddie Def readily admits that some people don't like the music: "It gives them headaches. I was cracking up."
Though both Eddie Def and DJ Cue anticipated the hallucinogenic effects of DMT's twisted sound signatures and crazy timing, both were unaware of how just on point their drug references truly were.

"DMT [Dimethyl Tryptamine] is actually a drug that you smoke and you have like a dismemberment out of body experience," explains Eddie Def. "This scientist, he smoked some, and he says he felt like his legs started walking away from his stomach and his chest and his arms. His hands and his stomach they–stayed on the chair–and his legs started walking around and his soul was looking at both of his body parts. Everywhere he looked, everything looked like glue or plastic. And he was hearing music and he could see the music. Ironically, it fit in with the music. That was dope."

Eddie Def has been in the game for some time now and he's gained much-deserved props. Success, however, has a way of spoiling things and hip-hop is no exception. Nevertheless, whereas some turntablists have taken the greedy commercial route, Eddie Def and the rest of his crew have managed to stay true to the art and more importantly, true to themselves.
"Oh yeah, we're definitely just like poor or something," says Eddie Def. "Everybody's cashing in and shit but we kind of really do it more for ourselves and in general hip-hop. Like we look at shit, like try to be different. We don't want to sound like that guy; we don't want to do that scratch too much 'cause it's so trendy right now. We don't want to battle 'cause battling is so silly right now, y'know what I mean? I think battling would be dope if it was like back in the days in the park when you didn't have to pay for a battle."

In our consumer society though, people are willing to pay, and if Skratchcon2000 was any indication, with its $100-$300 seats, people are willing to pay a lot.

"I look at that event like it really didn't need to happen," says Eddie Def. "That was like a bunch of Internet dudes from Alaska or something and they get no hip-hop or scratching up there at all and they just need a fix. They need to see it in their face or they're not motivated or something, y'know? But I also looked at that like a big cash in: 'Let's make some money off these little punks.' Something like that."

Eddie Def's disdain for the event led him to rename it "SkratchCon-artist," and he made no attempts to hide his views. So much in fact, that he and his crew sparked a heated debate on the Piklz's message board for their behavior.

"I think they're crying because that event really meant the world to them," says Eddie Def. "You've got to realize that our crew is really thuggish. I'm not saying we're like Wu-Tang or nothing but we all like smoke crazy weed and drink fucking a lot of alcohol. Of course, we went to that event and fucking partied out. We're just loud motherfuckers. Ever since I was a kid, I got kicked out of schools. That shit is already in me. I'm not going to change because of some Skratchcon event. It wasn't on purpose that's just the way we are. It was all in fun."

The mainstream is always fucking around with fashions and fads. Whether or not turntablism completely crosses over as a legitimate art form remains to be seen. While others wait and watch, Eddie Def the Last Kreep will be there to represent hip-hop.

This interview took place on July 17, 2000 over the phone and under the influence of the old school.
Dopestyle, yo.