Dance it out: Dupri’s sets stay high-energy

Take your pictures, but the Atlanta star wants you to keep moving

By Lori Kurtzman

Metromix
June 15, 2011

Just a heads up: You might hear a Miley Cyrus song at the club where record producer Jermaine Dupri is on the turntables.

He’s known to play “Party in the USA,” and not in an ironic way.

“People are like, ‘Where the (bleep) did that come from?’ ” Dupri said, speaking from his home in Atlanta. “I like that song…it’s a good song as far as clubbing goes.”

Besides, it’s all part of the musical roller coaster Dupri shoves down the tracks as he tries to dance an audience into exhaustion. What makes a club exciting, he said, is to see where a DJ goes after, say, Miley Cyrus is noddin’ her head like yeah. Dupri doesn’t want to be predictable, doesn’t want to give the crowd a chance to rest.

“I like to DJ…until you’re tired from listening to me and dancing,” he said.

Dupri kicks off the summer DJ series Thursday at Mount Adams Pavilion, and while some might be surprised to see the record producer spinning, he’s actually been making the club rounds for a couple of years. Dupri said it’s a producer’s secret – finding the tempo at clubs across the country and then heading back to the studio to turn that energy into records.

Dupri, 38, got into the music game even before he could legally drink, forming the teen duo Kris Kross and helping them to their monster hit, “Jump,” in 1992. He later launched the So So Def Recordings label and put out albums for Xscape, Da Brat, Bow Wow and others. He has worked with a ton of R&B and hip-hop superstars, put out a bunch of his own music, and yeah, he had that longtime thing with Janet Jackson. But right now he is focused on this DJ business and keeping the spotlight off him.

It’s not always easy.

“I try to get people to stop looking at me the whole time,” he said.

Dupri doesn’t like to play his own records when he DJs. He doesn’t want to give the impression that he’s throwing a JD concert. He understands that people are fascinated to see him at the turntables, but he’s more interested in the party than his personal performance.

Of course, just because he wants it that way doesn’t mean the audience does. He talked about a club in Canada where the gawking was so out of control that he stopped to let the people take their pictures.

And then, he told them: “It’s over. You’ve all got to stop taking pictures and start dancing.”