An Interview With DJ Frisco954, the Remix Heavyweight of Florida Fast Music

Photos courtesy of DJ Frisco954. Graphic by Chris Panicker.

Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre’s rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention.

When DJ Frisco954 answers my FaceTime call, he’s sweaty, out of breath, and the camera is shaky like he’s in a found-footage horror movie. “Is it still a good time?” I ask the new heavyweight champ of Florida fast music. “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says, talking with the anxious speed of Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. “Rod Wave dropped last night; I literally just finished uploading it; I got it all fast already.”

The night before our interview, Rod Wave, the tormented Florida superstar, dropped his new, instant-hit album Last Lap. And, for South Florida fast-music DJs, Rod Wave release nights are what Black Friday is to Best Buy. “My fans were messaging me ‘The music better be up by 12:05 a.m.,’” he claims. If he didn’t give into their demands, they would just get their fix from one of the other YouTube and SoundCloud channels (DJ Fetti Fee, DJTye305, DJ Rawhh, Certified Promotions, to name a few) pumping out fast remixes.

In many ways, the nonstop grind of fast music DJs is a hell of Frisco’s own creation. Back in 2017, when the Broward County native was 18 years old, he turned on notifications to Kodak Black’s YouTube page, and it helped him make his name as the fastest DJ to upload songs’ fast versions. His consistency made him recognizable, though it was the sauce of his remixes that made him truly stand out.

DJ Frisco fast remixes aren’t simply sped-up music—a TikTok trend that just bumps up the BPM of popular songs—but a complete reimagining of rap songs and mixtapes, usually from the South or Midwest. Almost every one of his edits opens with his favorite part of the song, which is then rewound, loaded up with tags, drops, air horns, and explosions, and then restarted at hyperspeed. He can turn slow Southern pain-rap ballads into party anthems. Or turn party anthems into life-changing party anthems. And, like all great DJs, it’s as much about his taste and curation, what he chooses to crank the fuck up.

Back in the mid-1990s, the fast-music sound evolved from the racing tempos of Miami bass. As areas like Houston, with the emergence of DJ Screw, went slow, South Florida took it in the other direction. Frisco, now 25, hardly remembers a time when fast music wasn’t a part of his life, reminiscing about remixes from some of his favorite South Florida DJs, like DJ Gator Boots and DJ Showtime, the latter of whom is now Kodak Black’s official DJ. “When I was a kid, I’d go to a hood birthday party and the DJs would always be playing songs at a faster BPM,” remembers Frisco. Nowadays, it’s one of the region’s signature dance sounds, like club music is to New Jersey or footwork to Chicago. And, even as the internet and record labels have threatened to steal the juice, the original still stands, because it is more than turning a knob. It’s a culture. Below, is a lightly edited interview with DJ Frisco about his remixes and the homegrown South Florida sound.

Pitchfork: Who made you want to start making fast music?

DJ Frisco954: Fun fact: I started DJing because of DJ Fetti Fee. He’s from Tampa and another one that people go to when they looking for fast music. He’s a few years older than me, and, since Tampa got a bit of slower sound—they like chopped-and-screwed stuff over there—there’s a lane for both of us. But he was the first DJ I heard who would pick apart the songs, restart it, and then have someone from the hood come and do a voice-over before the drop. It made it feel so authentic.

Are the drops at the beginning your favorite part of the remixes?

Yeah, looking for a part to start the song, then figuring out which effects to put in. I used to get a lot of local people to add voice-overs, but, now, I try to find some local celebrities.

You upload so much music. Is it stressful trying to keep up, making sure you’re on top of all the new music?

I get overwhelmed sometimes. I been thinking about starting a team of younger DJs to help me out, and it makes sense since I was influenced by the generation before me and the younger generation is influenced by me. But I do it for the love. As long as people appreciate what I’m doing and give me my flowers while I’m here, I’m good.

What was growing up with fast music like?

There would be so many DJ groups that there were groups inside of groups. Fast music is such a cultural thing that I don’t think there’s a DJ in my city that doesn’t speed up music. You know those hood birthday parties at the park with the bouncy houses? That’s all they would play; the DJs would just be playing their own remixes. So, it started at parties, then went to mixtapes or USBs, then to underground radio. And then when SoundCloud and YouTube came around, everyone started putting it on there. Now, nine times out of ten, when you go to a club in Broward, the DJ used to or still does make fast music. That’s why I love my city because everyone is doing it and everyone show love to my face.

Do you consider it dance music?

It is. It’s happy music, music that just makes the vibe better. Come to any of our parties, everyone is dancing to it.

What type of dances do you hit to it?

Depends where you are; over in Miami they do a lot of footwork. What we do in Broward, we call it “sauce.” It’s more of an upper-body swing, with your hands and shoulders.

How has your experience with labels been, do they copyright a lot of your remixes?

I get stuff deleted all the time because of copyrights. Some of them give me problems. I remember Atlantic Records got in contact with me to speed up the first Luh Tyler mixtape [My Vision], and, me, I’m gonna’ keep it authentic no matter what. They wanted to call it the “sped up” version because they said that’s what everyone thought the style was called because of TikTok. But I was like, “No, it has to be called ‘fast.’” We went back and forth so much until they gave in, but they said everything after that is going to be called “sped up.” It’s me against the industry.

What’s your opinion on the “sped up” trend?

I’m beefing with people that make sped-up music because I feel like they’re taking business and opportunities away from us. They don’t get it; it’s a culture thing. We been doing this for decades. It’s not anybody from Florida making it; they probably got someone working at the label with their own technology doing it. I call it “Whitewashed Fast Music.”

What’s your favorite type of rap to make fast?

Rod Wave and Kodak ’cause they have made the biggest impact on all my pages. And they gave me my flowers; Kodak booked me at a festival and everything. We love Young Thug, too, he was big for us, the stuff he did with London on da Track and Metro sounded so good fast. And then I like when fans come to me like, “Can you speed this up? This song too slow.” And when I do speed it up, it gives the song a whole different type of sound. I even got some white fans asking me to do white people music now. Maybe I’ll try to get into that.

What’s your favorite fast remix of all time?

Man, it’s gotta be from Fetti Fee or FastMusic954. But, oh my God, it’s gotta be Fetti Fee’s remix of Kodak’s “Brand New Glizzy,” the way he did that beginning was crazy. I remember when I first heard that I was like, “That boy is him.” It’s a masterpiece.

What are you working on next?

I gotta finish my Hurricane Milton mix. Since Hurricane Irma, I been doing mixes whenever there’s a big hurricane. Michael, Dorian, whatever. Everyone been in my DMs asking for the new one. Sometimes it’s remixes of old songs, like Jeezy and stuff, or it’ll be my greatest hits from the year. And I haven’t done a mix this year other than my Rich Homie Quan one. The cool thing about SoundCloud is usually if you play a mix once, it’ll still play when you’re offline. So, when everyone got no power or internet from the storm, they’ll have something to feel better while they’re getting through it.

Conner O’Malley’s Rap World Will Bring Back Buried Memories

When I was about 17 years old, I linked up with two of my friends for a teenage boy’s rite of passage: starting a rap group. We liked Odd Future and Pro Era and Mm…Food and found brooding beats on YouTube that sounded like they were off ILLFIGHTYOU’s self-titled mixtape. We spent most of our time talking about rapping rather than actually rapping. And, when we did record, it was mostly dumbass shock raps and pop-culture-referencing punchlines—I’ll never forget when one of them rapped, “I’m 2 Chainz, but with 2 cocks”; I still don’t know what he meant by that one, but it sounded hilarious. We showed our other friends a few songs, and they all said we sucked, and they were right. It was a great time anyway.

Starting a rap group with your friends is way sadder in comedian Conner O’Malley’s Rap World. Before clicking on the YouTube link, I had never engaged with O’Malley’s comedy, writing him off as “white dude shit,” and, while that judgment feels pretty true, I was still into the overall vibe of the flick. It follows three aimless guys (O’Malley, Jack Bensinger, and Eric Rahill) and their cameraman in bumblefuck Pennsylvania, in 2009, as they document a night in their lives where the goal is to record a rap album. Naturally, they can barely even work the recording software, and spend most of the night doing absolutely anything but making music: playing bogus pranks on the McDonald’s drive-through worker, doing a photoshoot with a gun, homoerotic weed smoking, crashing a miserable house party, getting into arguments with women who hate them.

The characters are in their twenties and thirties and they’re all bored and stuck and feeling their youth slip away. And, surprisingly, O’Malley’s character—Matt Lohan, a dopey 32-year-old father who is insecure about his masculinity—might be the least developed and funny of the group. The best guy comes from Jack Bensinger: He plays Casey Foy, a dude who looks like he picks up dates at Zumiez, rocking a beanie with a brim and an oversized Avenged Sevenfold T-shirt. He’s the center of my favorite scene in the movie, when someone at a party asks him if they’re making a “concept album.” He responds no, that the album is a tribute to their hometown and then immediately rips into a freestyle: “Illuminating the Illuminati/See me do a bukkake on Benghazi.” That’s pretty much what it’s like to rap with your friends.

Shaudy Kash: “Wassup”

The Bill Bellamy of Detroit rap is back at it again. When Shaudy Kash drops you know you’re in for macking not seen since the days of ’90s Bay Area hip-hop—specifically the work of Too $hort, right down to the excessive use of $hort’s favorite word. Sometimes half-assed beat selection holds back Shaudy Kash’s near spoken-word raps, though that’s never a problem when he links up with human funk machine Topside like he does on “Wassup.” The Michigan producer’s groovy psychedelia sets the mellow mood, and Shaudy Kash cruises in spitting smooth talk: “Even if a bitch with her boo, I slide in/‘Yeah, bae, we can still do what we do, don’t mind him.’” Game is game.

Papo2oo4 & Subjxct 5: “Robbery”

I’ll say it again: Jersey producer Subjxct 5 is on a heater like Giancarlo Stanton. Check the beats on Mr. 3000, his newest joint tape with husky-voiced MC Papo2oo4: They’re referential (he probably could have been in Terror Squad) and futuristic at the same time. And nobody flows over his twitchy East Coast bounce like Papo, who always sounds like he’s on a The Come Up DVD freestyling on a park bench in his winter coat. “Can’t give false reality, prepare for the worst/’04 Red Sox, ballin’ out, fuck a curse,” he raps in his second verse of “Robbery” that had me doing the Funk Flex stank face. Over Subjxct’s anxious instrumental—laser beams, ringing phones, and 808s like Godzilla’s footsteps—Papo sounds like he’s barring out through the apocalypse.

Originally Appeared on Pitchfork