When it comes to DJs there’s no comparing DJ Z*Trip. He’s different from the rest and shines brighter than the best. Sixteen plus years of DJ'ing has prepared Z*Trip to take on the world. After more than a year he has finally completed his album, Shifting Gears, featuring hit song, “Walking Dead” to be released this spring. Fortunately, Z*trip was able to take a short break to talk to HHDX about his album.

First off, congratulations on the completion of your album; I understand it took some time. Can you tell me who some of the people you worked with were?
People that stand out as far as being very monumental to me are Chuck D from Public Enemy, Whip from the Fantastic Romantic 5, Grandmaster Kas from Cool Crush Brothers. Some of the classic guys who started basically the Hip-Hop scene. Having some of them on the record is key. Then having somebody like Chester from Linkin Park on the record is huge, but I don’t want people to get confused. The biggest reason both of us did a track together is because we’re actually both from Phoenix so it was more of a reason of he and I connecting and doing a track because we wanted to do something together and it sort of stood out and was a little different from what people expected of us.

What is the sound of your album?
It’s a Hip-Hop record. It sort of spans around the time I got into Hip-Hop. So we’re talking maybe mid 80s up to now. It’s sort of in a weird way chronological in that it starts out on some very classic party rocking sort of old school Hip-Hop vibe and then throughout the course of the record it sort of skips into things a little more current and things that are some darker tracks and things that have sort of an apoctolyptic feel at the end and then it brings up to date. It’s definitely a Hip-Hop record but I was trying to span the globe of early 80s up til now.

That is different. How did you originally get into DJ'ing?
Basically it was me being a lover of music. Collecting records early on and people would be like hey let’s have Zach come over he’s got a huge collection and do you wanna play some records at our house party and I bring some records over and before I knew it I was making mix tapes for people and those parties turned into school dances turned into weddings turned into night clubs turned into me opening up for bands at shows. It just sort of snow balled into itself. I never planned on this being what I would do, ya know. Continued on page 2 »