Students learn the art of scratching from DJ Zo

What sparked my interest in becoming a DJ for my career, I would say I was very attracted to the art of scratching, hip-hop, breakdancing, you know, graffiti artwork, rap music, and I tried all the other elements. I was not good at dancing, I was not good at graffiti or rapping, but the DJing I could do, you know, I was always kind of a shy kid, but everyone wants to be friends with a DJ, so that's is kind of how it started in this day and age with so many DJs you know you have to have something that stands out by utilizing my scratching skills and my you know technical skill set I think that's kind of what sets me apart from the others so digging the crates is the name of the program that we started here in 2016 at Virginia Tech a hip-hop studies program where we celebrate DJing, aerosol art, dance, and rapping and I'm seeing. DJing is all about community, hip-hop's all about community, so this is a good way to foster community of creatives at Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech provides opportunities for them to pursue whatever they're interested in and hopefully meet some other people that are interested in what they're doing. My goal before I graduate is to learn to scratch to a certain extent. Finding out that one of Anderson .Paak's DJs was coming for this event today, I was like, okay this is actually pretty cool like even though i don't dj like i can still learn my plan is to still be fully engaged get involved to soak up the knowledge that he's bringing with him today it feels really great to come back to tech and be able to connect with students and kind of advise them um with some of this dj stuff because you know when i was a kid coming to school here they didn't have many programs like this but what we did have was a good community i think that camaraderie. I'm feeling it again. It's good to be back.