Photo Courtesy of DJ WhySham
Stepping out from behind the decks and into the producer’s chair is an ambitious choice for a DJ. It involves taking your know-how of what blends well together for a live set and applying that to a collection of tracks, often featuring collaborations from peers who hold the mic. DJ WhySham is making something like a superhero landing for her debut album Finally, due out September 7th on Bandcamp and the 22nd on all other platforms.
With a handful of singles from the album out on Spotify so far – including “We Run The City,” featuring CakeSwagg and Kay Wattz, which also go the video treatment recently – Sham has been on the grind during quarantine, assembling beats, contacting artists for potential features, and crafting the album all while realizing the intricate process of curating a release. It’s a learning process that Sham is taking in full stride and with a set vision in mind: capitalize on the rise of drill style beats, make an album that showcases female and non-binary rappers, and push Boston into the narrative as a hip-hop powerhouse city.
To preview Finally drop, DJ WhySham is hosting a virtual listening party on Sunday, September 6th at 7PM.
“We Run The City”
The video for “We Run The City” is an exercise in the producer’s earliest exposure to music and culture in the 90s. Shot in a convenient store, it features a crew made up of WhySham, rappers CakeSwagg and Kay Wattz, plus a host of onlookers all vibing to the track. It’s the first of a handful of videos set to coincide with tracks from Finally, the next being a split video for “Thelma and Louise” and the title track “Finally.”
The version of the “We Run The City” used for the video ends with the beat dropping out while CakeSwagg pushes forward with acapella rapping, a relentless ending that harkens back to 90s ciphers. “That took some convincing,” Sham explains. “I had to bring some of the rappers out of their comfort zones on some of the tracks. When CakeSwagg first heard it, she was like, no. She hadn’t rapped acapella like that.” While the rapper may have initially disagreed with the choice, WhySham decided to flex her role as producer. “I had to leave it; I made the executive decision not to bring the beat back in. Growing up in the 90s, the videos I watched were split videos, rappers going off beat. To me, that’s just raw rapping.” The idea of an artist pushing their own boundaries and getting out of their comfort zones was a major theme in the creative process behind Finally.
“The Female DJ Khaled”
The path from DJ to producer – that aha! moment that made WhySham realize she was capable of building a cohesive collection of material rather than spinning tracks from other artists – began with a seed planted back when she was in middle school, vibing to tracks by a then up-and-coming producer whose name is now nearly impossible to forget (ya know, because he keeps saying it). DJ Khaled wasn’t always the dominant force in charting hip-hop that he’s made himself into over the past decade; that status came from years of making a name for himself.
There’s a parallel there to there to Sham’s own rise as a young DJ making connections with artists to a producer with enough sway to pull in a dynamic roster of features. This is a trajectory Sham is keen to set herself on; to emulate the keeper of the major keys, she’s dubbed herself “the female DJ Khaled,” a nickname that isn’t as reductive as it might seem; for Sham, it represents her ambition as a DJ and producer.
Sham noticed how Khaled was able to bring together different geographical players in hip-hop. She cites Khaled’s 2006 track “We Takin’ Over,” which featured T.I., Lil Wayne, Paul Wall, Akon, Birdman, Fat Joe, and Rick Ross – a.k.a. A who’s-who of mid-2000s rappers – as an important early influence. “I was only in middle school; I had no idea I wanted to be a DJ. But I was saying, ‘How did he get those random people together?’ Just seeing the video, he had the south, the north, a little piece of everywhere. I realized, I can do this myself.”
She believes that part of her role as producer is to push her collaborators out of their elements and into uncharted territory. After all, that’s what she’s doing in her endeavor to release a debut album. This is why the selection of drill is a key choice: “it’s new in the scenery. People are still getting accustomed to Pop Smoke, FIVIO FOREIGN, so I wanted to get ahead of the game, and the females got bars. I want them to rap on some drill beats.”
Sham’s vision was clear from the offset: the types of beats she wanted, the artists she wanted, all this was clear in her mind. “I heard it,” she explains. “I heard their voice on it when I listened to the beat. Every single beat, the person’s face popped up and I saw them onstage. It’s weird. It sounds creepy, but it’s so true.”
None of the featured artists on the album had ever really cut their chops on drill beats before, but WhySham had an unshaking vision in mind. When met with initial speculation and raised eyebrows after reaching out for features, Sham’s response was simple: trust me. “Everybody was nervous about what I gave them, but then they saw the vision and worked with it, because they saw that it was pushing them to do something different. So nobody’s done that, and I wanted to.” Once that initial speculation went away, the process of making Finally – which roughly took about two months once work got started – the featured artists got very enthusiastic about their contributions, going back-and-forth with Sham to make their contributions sound as sharp as possible. “Everybody was nervous about what I gave them, but then they saw the vision and worked with it, because they saw that it was pushing them to do something different. So nobody’s done that, and I wanted to. I sent everybody the beats, wrote most of the hooks, and said, “here’s what you’re gonna do.” They just worked with me back and forth.”
What resulted was a fruitful and communicative collaboration process that saw WhySham enlist the aid of other artists who have been established their names around town: Brandie Blaze, Red Shaydez, Marcela Cruz, to name a few. Even those listeners out there who are most familiar with the unique styling of each of the featured artists will hear them in a new arena on Sham’s debut. With a little gentle nudging, WhySham has been able to not only put artists in new sonic territories, but also pushing the boundaries of what constitutes drill beats. “Red Shaydez is on the project too, and they’re singing. They’ve harmonized on their own albums, but now they’re full on singing. So I took everyone out of their element and what they’re used to. I took them out of the comfort zone, pretty much. Especially with the drill music. Marcela Cruz sings, but she’s on a drill beat, and that’s not really something you hear.”
This is all part of an effort that isn’t just about releasing solo music; it’s as much about crafting something unique and exploring a subgenre that is still gathering momentum. “I had to figure out what’s going to make me different from the other DJs, the artists, and the overall music scene of what’s happening in the city. [Other local DJs] have mixtapes and stuff like that, but nobody has created an album yet. I realized that.”
Photo Courtesy of DJ WhySham
“Your Community DJ”
The better of the two nicknames DJ WhySham touts, “your community DJ” is a bit more to the point of what she’s accomplished in her role in the local scene.
Back in June, she pulled a double shift, working the crowd during the day at the Trans Resistance Vigil and March then later closing the night on the inaugural HipStory live stream. It’s these kind of events that give Sham’s “community” label substance: she gets out there and teams with other organizations that seek to make Boston a haven of equality across a spectrum of media, culture, and social life.
Sham’s goal with the album is to shine a spotlight on female and non-binary rappers, the majority of whom hail from Boston. In a post-”WAP” world, there’s an ever-growing list of female rappers receiving due recognition for their contributions to hip-hop culture. The praise excites Sham, but she also noticed some incongruities. “There’s no mixtapes or albums with just females on it. But there’s articles coming out about how females and non-binary people run hip-hop. But I’m like, hold up: what have they all done together though?”
Ultimately, this focus on female and non-binary artists is helping to create more space for their contributions to hip-hop and open new doors for them, especially along the lines of what sort of beats those women and non-binary rappers might get featured on. “I’ve heard a lot of male rappers do drill, and they’re killing the Boston drill scene, so I wanted to put the females on. And the singers too; you don’t really hear singers singing over drill beats. Every single track is drill.”
Plus, it’s not limited to just rappers. WhySham asked Red Shaydez to come up with a drill love song, and that’s what she did, combining her rapping and vocal harmonies on “Got Away.” Marcela Cruz, a local R&B singer, features on a song, and Sham was well aware that not many drill tracks as of yet feature singers. Additionally, there’s some spoken word poetry that’s going to pop up on a couple of tracks. “I’ve even got [Boston poet laureate] Porsha Olayiwola, who’s a poet. They’re reciting the poem, but I put a drill beat on the back of it. I was on tour with them before and we did a couple things where they were doing their poetry and I was playing instrumentals in back, so I already had a feel for what I wanted, but I was taking a chance with the drill music.”
DJ WhySham’s community focus also extends to social justice, which is critical after a summer of widespread national protests seeking justice for widespread systemic change and for Black lives impacted by police brutality. She addresses this directly on “Sin Justicia, No Hay Paz” (English: “no justice, no peace,” a blatant reference to a common protest chant). The track features Eva Davenport and Sophia Islander. “That’s also taking everyone out of their comfort zone. It’s a drill beat, I’ve got singers singing, and one does not speak Spanish. One of the singers is Filipino so they said “no justice, no peace” in Filipino. Everybody’s spinning it their own way. The rappers both contacted me the other day for me to resend them the beat because they were having a writing session amongst themselves. That’s what I really want; I want the network.”
“Boston Got Next”
This one’s the slogan that she’s printing on t-shirts, a rallying cry to Boston’s creative community to put their work out there, build a network of artistic minds, and prioritize a local arts economy. The slogan – as much a personal mantra as it is a statement of intent – is emblazoned on a bunch of shirts hanging in DJ WHySham’s studio space, one of the offshoot rooms in Dorchester Art Project. BGN is a series of local artist meetups and listening sessions, further emphasizing Sham’s focus on creating a creative network and bringing artists together.
She puts extra effort into making people feel welcome, evidenced by the “Welcome Allston Pudding” graphic she made custom to welcome me to her studio at the beginning of the interview. She goes out of her way to make guests feel comfortable, can talk on end and hold up a conversation, and prioritizes making connections with peers. She’s carving out her own space in Boston’s hip-hop scene and then sharing that space with others, hyping them up and putting them on. “It’s been a journey,” she adds. “A short journey, a long journey, a journey learning.” Truly, your community DJ.
Tune into DJ WhySham’s live stream listening party for Finally before it drops on September 7th. Listen to the advance singles – like “Sin Justicia, No Hay Paz” below – on Spotify.