PRODUCE LIKE…
The in-demand DJ and hit-making producer demonstrates his approach to crafting bootleg edits
British producer James Hype has become well known in recent years for his crossover track such as the top 10 singles Ferrari and En Vogue-inspired More Than Friends. He’s also an in-demand DJ, regularly touring across the UK, Europe and the US, playing high-profile shows in Ibiza and at festivals like Las Vegas’ Electric Daisy Carnival.
A cornerstone of James Hype’s career lies in his use of edits, bootlegs and remixes. As a fledgling DJ, he made his name by posting countless hip-hop and R&B edits to SoundCloud and social media. Now as an established artist, his own home-made edits, acapellas and creative sampling of high-profile artists provide a unique and distinctive centrepiece to his sets. At this year’s Brighton Music Conference, James set down with Future Music editor-in-chief Si Truss for a live track breakdown, digging into how James went about flipping US rapper Lil Uzi Vert’s track, I Just Wanna Rock, into a house-style club VIP.
You can watch the full session from BMC in the video found at this issue’s download page.
Here are some highlights from that conversation…
Tell us how you started making edits and remixes
“I’ve been a DJ for 18 years. I DJed for a long, long time before I ever started producing music. I started making mashups and edits of records in Ableton. I started adding extra drums and things like that, and before I knew I was sort of teaching myself how to produce music. That was probably 10 years ago, when I started dabbling in producing. Thanks to publications like yours, you know, I was able to teach myself via the internet.
“I was just making edits of other people’s records. I was making things for the dancefloor for my own DJ sets. They were like the remix that I’m showing you today – an R&B/hip-hop record that I turned into a house record.”
What was the idea behind creating house reworks of hip-hop tracks?
“I’m a big fan of many genres of music, but as someone who became a DJ in Liverpool, it’s always been a very house music-orientated city as far as the nightlife was concerned. I was playing in clubs with all the DJs playing house music. I was listening to different genres of music and I was like, ‘How can I bring this to my house music DJ set?’. “I used to remix anything and everything. There was a point very early in my production career where I was making a remix a week and putting it on SoundCloud. And then as I’ve become more established as an artist, I’ve done less and less of it. I’ve just been trying to find those ones that will really hit as opposed to just doing e
