A-Trak's soundtrack to his life

"I remember buying C+C Music Factory and MC Hammer at the same time. Those two cassettes."

"Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Blood Sugar Sex Magik. I just loved it. Basically in my childhood, when I was like 10, 11, 12, I was really discovering rock and classic rock. I had an older brother who was playing in bands and getting into a lot of the late '60s-early '70s classic stuff, whether it be Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix or Pink Floyd, any of that stuff. I love Zeppelin, from when I was 11 or 12 I still remember every drum fill John Bonham every played, that's how much I listened to it when I was at that age. But that was the music I was listening to through my older brother and his group of friends. I feel like when I got into Red Hot Chili Peppers with 'Blood Sugar Sex Magik,' that felt a little more like my album. I had more of a connection to it. It's such an incredible record. The videos are incredible. That's probably the first record that I really felt a strong connection to."

"I think the artist that had the strongest influence on my music has to be the Beastie Boys, because they facilitated so much of an education for me. It's thanks to the Beastie Boys that I went from listening to rock to listening to hip-hop when I was like 13 or so. When I saw the video for 'So What'cha Want' that was it for me. That whole catalog together, it influenced me so much because I heard scratching on those records and that's one of the things that made me want to start DJing and scratching myself.

"Even though they were jokesters, you could look at the photo collages on their album or listen to the names they were dropping in their rhymes and actually learn a lot of crate-digging kind of records. They even influenced the way we would dress, my friends and I. Even just being like a white Jew from Canada and falling in love with hip-hop, the Beasties showed you how to behave almost, how to listen to hip-hop and embrace the culture in a way that’s respectful but not too nerdy either. They just had something about themselves that they felt comfortable in what they stood for. That's something that showed a lot of kids where to fit in and how to soak in the culture of hip-hop in a way that was just right."

"It's funny because it's not a love song kind of music at all but Mobb Deep. I remember my first girlfriend and I used to listen to Mobb Deep a lot, which is like hardcore hip-hop, very un-romantic music."

"'Reelin' in the Years' by Steely Dan. It's just fun to sing, and the cadence is really weird. The way [Donald] Fagen sings those lines, it's almost conversational, so it's kind of hard to deliver it. You can never fully hit the same cadence as him."

"Boys Noize did a remix of Feists's 'My Moon, My Man,' and that to me is like the holy grail of remixes. It's a remix that really influenced me a lot, in the remixes I was starting to produce myself around the same time. When I started making remixes, I wanted mine to be like produced in a way that people could listen to them as songs. A lot of DJs would do remixes that focus on the clubby part of production, but I wanted my remixes to have song structure while still being DJ friendly and club friendly in a sense. That's a remix that really bridges that gap."

"A Tribe Called Quest’s 'Get a Hold.' It was produced by J Dilla and there's just something about the vibe of that vocal sample that fits that solemn, general atmosphere."

"It's funny because as a DJ in electronic music, a lot of the fans assume we only listen to dance music, but there's good music that’s not in the scope of what I play. Let's say Frank Zappa. The combination of the quirkiness, you can hear the personality in the music, but also the fact that he would get some of the best jazz and funk players. He had George Duke playing in his band."