It’s lunchtime at the Dream hotel’s penthouse lounge, but aside from the late summer sunlight filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the scene seems positively nocturnal.
Questlove, the venerable drummer and frontman of the Roots, is stationed in the DJ booth, his trademark ‘fro erupting from the headband of an oversized pair of orange headphones. He’s readying himself to launch a 60-minute set, part of a series of mid-day dance parties backed by Absolut vodka and Flavorpill Media.
“Probably the biggest challenge I ever had,” he says of the gig. “You only have an hour to make a statement, and I’m notorious for taking three or four hours to get that point across. For me, I like to do every genre. I just don’t want to play all the hits, I want to kind of sneak lessons in there.”
These days, he’s got ample opportunity. In addition to the lunchtime series, he landed a residency at Las Vegas superclub Hakkasan, home to EDM’s top earners, Calvin Harris and Tiësto. Though his nightly rates are about a tenth of theirs, Questlove now banks more from spinning than he does for his role with the Roots. Boosted primarily by those DJ gigs, along with his other jobs as an author, professor and producer, FORBES estimates he earned $6 million over the past year, placing him on the Hip-Hop Cash Kings list for the first time.
The electronic dance music boom has created a surge in demand for DJs, and just as top EDM producers like Skrillex and Avicii are cashing in on the road, some of hip-hop’s top beatmakers are now getting behind the decks to bolster their bottom line. Besides Questlove, big names include fellow Lil Jon, Swizz Beatz and Jermaine Dupri. And many of them aren’t mincing words about their electronic counterparts.
“A lot of these EDM dudes have their sets already recorded,” says Dupri, who boasts a residency for Wynn’s Vegas clubs and DJs about 100 shows per year. “So they don’t really be doing nothing when they get on the stage, they’re just faking the knobs and putting their hands in the air.”
Indeed, at a recent Tiësto show in Las Vegas, the Dutch DJ left the stage in the middle of the stage to use the restroom. His music continued blasting through the packed club while he relieved himself. When he returned a few minutes later, it seemed that many in the audience never noticed that he’d been gone.
This sort of occurrence is common in the electronic music scene, and makes easy fodder not only for the genre’s critics, but for some of the DJs themselves. Last year Deadmau5 publicly disparaged David Guetta in Rolling Stone, saying, “He just plays tracks” and generally deriding “button-pushers.” Swedish House Mafia’s response: “That’s exactly what [Deadmau5] does.”
Tiësto, for one, isn’t fazed by this sort of critique. “If I would have played piano for twenty years, and I played live,” he says, “it’s also pushing buttons.” (Then again, he probably wouldn’t have made $32 million last year as a piano player).
The controversy only makes hip-hop DJs more viable. Dupri points out that he selects tracks on the fly instead of simply pressing play on a pre-recorded set—and typically adds to his performance by rapping along to his own songs on a microphone, a live element that’s not available at most EDM shows.
It only seems fitting that stars of his ilk are getting in on the action. After all, the modern concept of the DJ—along with hip-hop itself—traces its roots to the South Bronx block party scene, to pioneers like Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash and DJ Kool Herc. With the help of facilitators like Fab 5 Freddy, the genre became the bridge that brought turntables and thumping beats to the club scene decades ago.
Sujit Kundu has witnessed the changing economics of turntablism firsthand. He now books gigs for Dupri, Lil Jon and a host of others at his firm SKAM, but got his start in 1999. “Back then,” he says, “$1,000 was like $1 million.”
By 2001, the demand for DJs had started to grow, and some of his acts were getting $1500 per show. Two years later, mashup legend DJ AM scored a landmark residency at the new Body English club at the Hard Rock in Vegas for $3,500 a night. Within two years, he was up to $19,000.
Sin City still had only a handful of nightclubs on the Strip where music was the main attraction. Then casinos went all in on the DJ economy. Steve Wynnpoured $100 million into XS at his eponymous hotel, while Sheldon Adelsonbuilt up Tao at the Venetian and Marquee at the Cosmopolitan.
Sensing an opportunity to get in on the management side of the action, Jay Z and his manager asked Kundu if he’d consider selling part of his company to them a few years ago.
“It was like, ‘Would you rather own 100% of $1 million or 50% of $10 million?’” Kundu recalls. “Implying that if I gave it up, it’d get a much bigger much quicker. But the valuation, to me, didn’t add up.”
This year, as the EDM explosion reached new heights, Cirque du Soleil’s Light opened at Mandalay Bay and Hakkasan debuted at the MGM. Even at new clubs where electronic music is the focus, there are side rooms where hip-hop is the genre of choice. That’s where Questlove spins when he plays Hakkasan.
“I’m in the room for, like, all the midlife crisis people that don’t want to move on,” he says, laughing. “The first time I tried to do an EDM set, they were like, ‘No, no!’ I’ve never been to Vegas before where I was allowed to play break beats and old hip-hop.”
DJs like Questlove earn far more these gigs that they would playing with a band. There are no bandmembers to share the proceeds with, and there’s no need for a traveling crew or backup dancers (“I’ve got a USB stick and [turn-tables], and there’s no production cost,” Skrillex told me last year. “But you throw a great party and people have the best time.”)
FORBES estimates that the likes of Questlove, Lil Jon (who returns to the Cash Kings at $6 million) and Dupri earn $20,000-$40,000 for a typical DJ set, perhaps 50% more than they could clear on a standard non-DJ gig at a comparably-sized venue.
“Right now, they’re making more money as DJs,” says Kundu. “That could easily change … If, all of a sudden, Lil Jon has a No. 1 record, he might be able to do Staples Center tomorrow.”
There may be more hip-hop stars on his heels. Earlier this year, Jay Z signed Timbaland to his Roc Nation label, which also has a management arm. Could the superproducer be headed for the decks on a regular basis? Depends who you ask.
“I think Timbaland likes to be in the studio,” says Tiësto. “But maybe not. The touring life is so hard for a lot of people, it’s not for everybody.”
Meanwhile, Kundu claims he has no regrets about spurning Jay Z’s advances, and sees a bright future for his line of business.
“I’ve put a lot of blood sweat and tears into that brand,” he says of his firm. “I wouldn’t just give it up for a couple bucks.”
As for Questlove, the next step is another DJ gig–a residency at Brooklyn Bowl’s new location in Vegas.
“I could go there and do EDM, but I’m old school,” says Questlove, who owns 70,000 vinyl records. “I like the feeling of wax.