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Tittsworth :: B'more's big break

By Dani Deahl   Photography by n/a

04/08/08 :: URB web

The name might be a punch line waiting to happen, but Tittsworth (yes, that is his last name) is nothing to laugh at. This DC native has been rising the ranks with unbelievable speed, going from local opener to global headliner within a couple short years with his infectious blend of Bmore, hip-hop, 80s and mash-ups. Fresh off touring with the likes of Kanye and Kid Sister, Tittsworth is now focusing on upcoming album 12 Steps which he hopes will be a chance for him to spread his wings beyond the world of blog-friendly remixes. URB sat down with the party jam savant about finally being on the radar, 12 Steps and his strange addiction to adventure eating.

Hey! How’s Asia treating you?
I’m freezing my ass off at the Jia hotel in Hong Kong. I have my Hong Kong debut tomorrow night at Volar and I’m super excited! I had curry ox tongue tonight, also exciting. I just had a twenty-hour flight after four back-to-back cross continental gigs, so forgive the occasional nonsense.

No worries…and wait, curry ox tongue? I’ve never had that, but I had “hundred year” eggs in Hong Kong.
Oooh, those gray and black eggs? Those are good.

God, they’re disgusting. What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten overseas?
I had moth soufflé in Australia, fried testicles in Sao Paulo…oh, and there was the raw horse sashimi I recently had. Just to clarify, that’s horse as in Mr. Ed, not horse mackerel.

This keeps getting worse. Moth soufflé? How was it, powdery?
They’re pretty brittle by nature so you have to basically flambé them. They almost taste like burnt pieces of fat. I don’t regret it but it’s not something I’m rushing back to. Australia is crazy - they actually encourage you to eat their national animals. My kinda place.

Aren’t you actually going to be in Australia for a festival shortly?
Yes, I’m spending a few days here in Asia, then off to Good Vibrations, a traveling festival featuring Kanye, A-Trak, Kid Sister, Sinden and Rack of Heads. I’m super excited! By the way, I want some Rihanna to play tomorrow, got any remixes?

Sorry, I don’t, not on this computer.
This interview is over!

All good, have fun in Asia. I hope you eat a cat.
(Laughs) I’m so allergic.

Ok, no cats. So Rihanna, huh? How would you describe what you play anyway?
I’m best known for my Baltimore inspired club sound. I say inspired because I have what I think to be a unique take on the genre. When I started making club music I made it a point to gain inspiration from what was going on in Baltimore but by the same token, I didn’t want to emulate exactly what was going on then. I felt that I could add a bit of my influence, both in terms of how the songs were sequenced and through the content. When DJing, you’re playing to a crowd and trying to please and express your own sound at the same time… On average, I play a good half-dozen genres, mixed really fast and really hard..I find DJing to be more emotional and production more an exercise in perfectionism.

How close are you to finding that perfectionism?
I don’t think I’ll ever be anywhere close to perfect and I guess you’re always your own worst critic. You wouldn’t grow as a person with any other mindset. I guess saying it’s an exercise in perfectionism isn’t completely accurate. That sounds selfish, and although I do look at production that way, it’s been a while since I’ve treated music selfishly. A lot of times when I set out to remix or write something I have a target audience in mind. I write something I feel is needed instead of waking up and needing to write what I feel.

Don’t you feel that’s not being true to yourself as an artist?
Obviously it’s balanced with what you like, who you are musically and what you’ve experienced. So many factors come into play for me like being an old rave cat, a drum and bass guy and a hip hop DJ. That’s why I’m so excited about my new album (“12 Steps” on Plant Music). It will allow me to express myself much more intimately, to explore all those parts of myself. Up until now I’ve been specializing in gray market remixes for the dance floor.

So what can we expect from the album?
My most comprehensive piece of music to date. It’s a dozen tracks, hence the name “12 Steps.” It’s one hundred percent original club music, but gone in many different directions from comedy and electro to RnB and hip hop. It’s all loosely club music though, featuring many talented vocalists like Pitbull, Nina Sky, DJ Assault, Kid Sister, Pase and The Federation to name a few

Wow, that’s a range. This album must really be self-gratifying for you.
Yes. There are songs on there that are clearly cross over concepts and were very strategic, but there are also moody instrumentals unlike anything I’ve released. Sure, the blogs and my remixes were great tools for getting my name out there but I think it was time for me to prove to myself that I’m more than gray market remixes and more importantly, that [Bmore] is more than that.

Do you often face a “glass ceiling” mentality about your kind of music?
Yes, in the sense that there haven’t been huge MTV productions devoted to it and there aren’t multi-million dollar deals and videos. I don’t know though, I think that ceiling can be broken, the question is at what cost and how high do you want to go, because there are certainly downsides to having your genre become big business.

How high do you want to go?
High enough to escalate the genre and keep it moving in a positive direction. Not so high that it gets chewed up and spit out becoming last year’s flavor of the month.

That’s a concern for nearly all genres.
Well, I look at hip hop for example and I can’t help but think that it wasn’t really quite the same after it became a big business. The same could be said for a lot of modern rock. Miami bass also went through something like that, but a bit different in nature. It’s a fine line because you have to keep it moving and always encourage creativity.  Despite all that, I think without question I’d take the risk of selling out if it meant keeping the music alive. I patiently followed the genre as it remained underground for many years and creatively I felt it received a much-needed kick in the ass when Hollertronix, blogs and “Whiteification” came along.

What are your thoughts about how blogs fit into our music machine?
It’s similar to how I feel about Serato. It’s a huge tool that has changed the way we do business. As a result both make certain things easier so it’s now on us to step up our game. The playing field has been opened up. However, I think with blogs there also something to be said about quality control, and I think a lot of the music’s historical context gets lost in the rapid pace of blog culture. Kids can be international DJs and artists in six months now. That’s not bad by any means and it has kicked open the door creatively. We just need to make sure that this fast pace doesn’t catch up with us and in the meantime there is a context to what we do. Blogs do a great job of showing us what’s going on right now, but I feel that many could do a better job of giving a sense of where we’ve been. If blogs get too caught up in ripping through the soup de jour, I fear for their future.

CONTINUES