DAVID GUETTA: NEVER-BEFORE TOLD STORY

Article from Vibe.com

(Vibe.com) BEFORE THE PRIVATE JET AND HIGH BPMS, DAVID GUETTA SURROUNDED HIMSELF WITH HIP-HOP AND SOUL MUSIC. CAN THE DANCE DJ SPIN THE FATE OF R&B?

It’s hard to tell where the crowd’s flickering lighters meet the beaming LED screens strung around Randall’s Island like Christmas trees on steroids. The sun has set on the former juvenile delinquent reform school site as David Guetta steps onto the main stage for his performance at New York’s enormous electronic music event, Electric Zoo. The 35,000 dance music devotees look like a sea of neon-clad ants from up here. One thing is clear: The scene is definitely a zoo, and the 44-year-old Frenchman is its ringleader.

The show has begun. Spasmodic lights begin to flash and flicker while Star Trek-esque synths pump from the speakers. Guetta drops the opening chords of...
Sia’s “Titanium (Alesso Remix)” before announcing his arrival to the Big Apple this morning from Ibiza, the island that’s home to his famed Fuck Me I’m Famous party that draws the likes of will.i.am and Diddy weekly. “New York!” he drags out. “Are you ready to party?!” On cue, the break beat drops and concertgoers collectively go ape shit as Guetta dances, flails and orchestrates in the DJ booth. He neither sings, raps, chants, nor ad-libs—yet the man puts on one hell of a show.

“It always means something special to me when I play in cities like New York or Chicago or Detroit because this is where [house] music was born even though it became more of a European thing later on,” says the tall, lumbering producer/DJ from beneath a mangled mane of blonde waves and a grin so wide it teeters on goofy. The one-hour set wrapped 20 minutes ago, and he’s now lounging lithely on the black leather couch in his trailer, wearing a crisp black T-shirt with an eagle screen-printed across. The peaceful energy Guetta exudes is contagious in a way that anyone—from within a room to an arena—can feel, part of why millions flock to see him nightly across the globe.

It’s difficult to believe this gangly guy just performed a pyrotechnics-filled, confetti-blasting set where he spun whomping electronic, bass-fueled tracks like Afrojack’s “Rock the House” crossed with an a cappella of Estelle’s “One Love.” It’s a mash-up of sounds he defines as “urban dance” that he’s tapped and bottled for his five LPs, all self-produced. Imagine a basic down-tempo R&B or hip-hop track like Lost Boyz’ “Renee”—only with the BPMs revved up on eight cans of Red Bull. Then the caffeine abruptly wears off and the track comes crashing down by the time Mr. Cheeks reaches the hospital to find that Renee is gone. This is the glossy-yet-underground aesthetic that’s earned Guetta two Grammys and a rap sheet of superstar collaborators including Nicki Minaj, Akon, Black Eyed Peas, Kid Cudi and Jessie J. Within the past three years, Guetta has become France’s biggest export since cheese. But what is it about him that’s making such a big stink?

“What sets David apart is the understanding that soul music and R&B is about making people feel and giving them the soundtrack to special moments in their life,” says seven-time Grammy Award–winning artist Usher, who reached out to Guetta to craft 2011’s sweet single, “Without You.” “When we finally got together to create a song, the fusion of our two worlds created a new experience of a celebratory party connected to an emotion.”

Before becoming a hit-making producer and globe-trotting master of ceremonies, Pierre David Guetta grew up in Paris saving pennies for vinyl records he’d rush home from school to practice mixing. Begging club owners for a shot, he scored his first club gig at 17, yet neither of his left-winged parents—a Belgian mother and a restaurateur father of Moroccan Jewish lineage—initially disapproved of his DJ aspirations.

“I started as a hip-hop DJ 20 years ago, and then I discovered house music and I fell in love with it,” Guetta recalls. “I was one of the first house music DJs in France, but I kept listening to urban music. It was a dream to find a way to make them work together.” He hosted at Parisian clubs through the ’90s, also releasing hip-hop collaborations like “Nation Rap,” with French MC Sidney Duteil.

By 2001, production took the forefront. Guetta signed to Virgin France and dropped his debut album, Just a Little More Love, a major success in his home country that quickly opened borders for international DJing gigs, from the States to Japan. He continued dropping albums and compilations that buzzed heavily in Europe, and by the time U.S. mainstream artists started discovering the eager producer-DJ, it was only natural that a new breed of superstar was born.
In a happy twist of fate meeting talent, Guetta got his big chance while spinning at a club one evening in 2009. “I played the instrumental of ‘When Love Takes Over’ and Kelly Rowland was there. She became really emotional and asked me what the record was and if she could sing on it. It was an honor,” says Guetta, who remembers receiving a call from will.i.am to produce “I Got a Feeling” for the Black Eyed Peas the same week. Everything truly changed when Guetta linked with Akon for “Sexy Bitch,” a smash hit that torched airwaves, house and urban clubs. “That was the beginning of that new sound,” he pinpoints.

America suddenly had a new musical hero. But the crossover crown didn’t come without backlash. R&B purists condemned him for bastardizing artists like Usher’s and Jennifer Hudson’s customary soul and converting them into worldlier, party-starting anthems. “I’m just using electronic sounds, soulful chords, rock codes and urban melodies on up-tempo beats. It’s like taking the best from all of the different worlds,” says Guetta. His crystal blue eyes light up when he speaks about music. “‘Without You’ was perfect because it’s capturing that emotion, but also the pumping… [But] I don’t want to be stuck in that sound. Because I’m a DJ, I also have the responsibility of moving things forward. I’m already somewhere else.”

Back in his trailer, David Guetta’s musical journey is coming full circle. A pensive, illuminating look takes over his should-be exhausted eyes as he greets Mike Bindra, the man who once ran NYC club Twilo in the ’90s—a nightspot Guetta would wait in line for hours to get into. The man is now producing Electric Zoo, where Guetta is the headlining act. “When our friends’ 11-year-old kids—and their parents—are begging to come to E-Zoo to see David Guetta, we know that a paradigm shift has taken place,” says Electric Zoo’s executive producers Mike Bindra and Laura De Palma.

Yet, even as Guetta worked the knobs and controllers poking from the DJ console like a scion of sound during tonight’s live show, there are naysayers. For the millions of fans out there hanging onto Guetta’s every bass-drop, there are plenty of bloggers and artists who enjoy jabbing at his skill set. In a June 2012 Rolling Stone interview, fellow jockey deadmau5 poked at Guetta, calling him a button-pusher who needs merely “two iPods and a mixer” to make people happy. But Guetta insists he’s working his ass off behind the decks.

“For so many years I DJed in clubs and learned the hard way,” Guetta explains. “The big DJs start by being bedroom producers and they have a hit and suddenly start playing in front of thousands of people. But the way I did it was by working six nights, playing eight hours sets every night. I’ve learned a lot about how to communicate with the crowd, so when my music crossed over that stayed. The connection with the people is what makes the difference for me.”
But just what exactly separates Guetta from, say, a Funkmaster Flex? “If you listen to a hip-hop DJ, he’s not playing his own music. It makes a huge difference,” he clarifies. “When I perform, everything you hear is me playing my own music. You’ll hear unreleased music; every record I play, I will edit and use parts of another record to make it unique. I’m not gonna play what you hear on the radio.”

Guetta has to bolt. His nonstop itinerary has him in El Paso, Texas, tomorrow for Sun City Music Festival, followed by a gig in Vegas the following night. But for now, he’s got some friends camping out in front of his trailer. Guetta has adjusted to the lifestyle, and he’s confident the electro tunes currently dominating charts will continue to sustain it. “It’s going to have the exact same cycle that hip-hop had,” Guetta says of EDM. “When hip-hop first started becoming mainstream, it stayed there for 10–15 years. I think we have 10 more years at the top.”