On the new Skrillex album, Fuck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol But Ur Not!!, which the iconic EDM producer surprise released earlier this week, fans might’ve noticed the absurdist producer tags sprinkled throughout: Drops delivered by what sounds like a radio host reciting lines like: “Shadow Wizard Skrillex Gang,” or “This drop has been seized by Atlantic Records,” that punctuate different moments on the album, not unlike iconic rap mixtapes from the blog era or, more recently, Swamp Izzo’s contributions on Playboi Carti’s Music. An homage to mixtape culture from the early 2000s, Montreal-based producer DJ Smokey found the voice responsible for classic rap producer tags from that era to add just the right amount of levity and internet-brained absurdism to Skrillex’s project.
A prolific figure in his own right, DJ Smokey came up in the early SoundCloud days, uploading Memphis rap-inspired beats before eventually getting placements on projects from artists like Yung Lean and Lil Peep. A few years back, one of Smokey’s tags, “Legalize nuclear bombs,” went viral on TikTok, introducing a new generation to his style. “A lot of young kids probably haven’t heard of Trapaholics and Evil Empire and DJ Drama, and the old mixtape scene, but that’s a big homage to that,” he says over Zoom a few days after Skrillex’s album dropped. “One of the funnest things about listening to mixtapes back in the day was the crazy out-of-pocket tags that are clipping 10 times louder than the song. I’ve always been in love with that stuff.”
Dj Smokey grew up in Ontario and was classically trained at piano as a kid, but eventually ditched that for FL Studio, in par thanks to him hearing a Soulja Boy song that mentioned the popular production software. He spoke to Rolling Stone about working with Skrillex, his history in the underground, and the many possible meanings of “EDM.”
How are you feeling after the record dropped?
Great. It’s awesome. Just really excited about it. I think the people have responded positively, so I’m happy with it.
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What was that like for you working with someone who’s that iconic?
Epic dude. Skrillex is the GOAT. He’s as big as you can get in electronic music. So I mean, I’m just grateful, honestly.
Had he heard of you?
I don’t know how deep he went. I think he definitely knew who I was, but my buddy Varg became involved with Skrillex and started helping with the concept of the album and executive producing. Varg was a guy who I was already working with for a while, and he’s like, “Yo, you got to get Smokey involved, So Varg pulled me in. I think Skrillex has done a bit more digging on me. I don’t know what his knowledge was about me, but it seemed like he knew a bit.
Did you get to meet him in this process?
I went to LA a month ago or so, and I spent three days with him in the studio, just totally locked in the studio, didn’t do anything in LA but go there pretty much. So yeah, we’ve met, hung out, and he’s an awesome guy.
What was the energy like in the studio?
Great. He’s just down for letting you do what you do. So he gave me some tasks, and he’s like, “Just go crazy.” So that’s how it went. He didn’t make it too hard. It was just like, have fun, but here are some things I want. And then any ideas you come up with. And then he gave me my own studio where I was right beside him because he has his own studio too, so I’d just run in the other room and be like, “Hey, you like this?” and he’d be like “Yes, I like that.” or “No, I don’t like that” type shit.
What goes into hosting an album?
Well, obviously, the tags are the most important thing and it’s just making it more entertaining to listen to. And I helped a lot with mixing stuff, but adding fun sounds and just making it more entertaining. The biggest part is obviously the DJ tags, and for most songs, it would be remixing the song a bit and doing stuff like that. But for Skrillex, he had it mixed how he wanted to have it mixed, so I didn’t do too much on that end. It was mostly just making crazy tags and making it more fun to listen to.
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Is it a guy actually reciting the lines?
Yeah, they do radio drops. I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ll just say the guy that I use now has done a lot of old iconic tags.
Has there ever been a line that you gave them to recite where they were a little bit thrown off by how crazy it was?
Oh man. They’ll say anything. Yeah, I’ve never actually had a problem. It’s crazy.
I’ve been familiar with your work for a while, and I feel like you’ve always had a knack for those really funny, just esoteric and weird tags. Where do those come from for you? Is that just stuff that pops into your head?
I mean, it’s just like if I think of something that sounds rad, I’ll be like, I’m going to get that. I don’t know, it’s evolved over the years. I’ve been doing this for a while, getting the tags and the drops and stuff. In the early days, it just started with, “You’re listening to DJ Smokey,” but then it evolved over time.
Are there any in particular on this record that you thought were really funny?
Well, I like the Shadow Wizard Skrillex Gang one. Because the Shadow Wizard Money Gang is a thing that we already had, and it’s like this collective in Montreal, these guys I work with, they’re called Shadow Wizard Money Gang. And that drop already blew up on TikTok multiple times. It was trending on Twitter at one point. Number one, trending on Twitter. It became this whole thing. So the fact that he used that one was really awesome to me. And there’s a bunch, like “I heard that snare took him two years to make.” Skrillex is just notorious for his insane sound design and is probably the type of guy to spend two years making a snare sound how he wants it to sound.
Was there ever a point where you worried he might be bummed on some of the jokes?
No, he’s got a good sense of humor, and there’s definitely some stuff I’ve come up with that went too far, but he never was mad about it.
After you finished work on this project, what was Skrillex’s reaction? Did you get a sense of how he felt about your contributions?
He loved it. So the album’s one big mix, right? It just flows as one big song like a live mix. So they gave me a very rough version and I did that, and I sent him some parts back. I was just like, “This is what I think I’m going to do.” And he was like, “I fucking love this.” I think the first thing I sent him was the first snippet: “This drop has been seized by Atlantic Records.” And he was like, “Holy shit” He fucking loved it. So yeah, the album kept evolving over time, so I kept getting new versions and kept having to update it. But yeah, he liked it from the start.
Thinking about your own stuff, you’ve been working for over 10 years. You’re prolific in the underground scene.
So I’ve been around for a while, and I’ve been through a lot of scenes, and I’ve seen the landscape of the underground change many times. So yeah, it’s cool. Since we come from different worlds, it’s an interesting thing.
I remember on TikTok, probably two or three years ago, when “Legalize Nuclear Bombs” was going crazy.
Yeah, I took a break, a hiatus for two years before that. But then I came back in 2022 with the whole nuke thing, which my two buddies from Montreal came up with. They would just say it, they’d be like, that’s Nuked. And I was like, that’s a really fire concept. Let me use that. And they allowed me to, so the Nuke thing is what started the re-emergence of DJ Smokey.
Once it started to pick up on TikTok, what was it like for you to notice that?
I don’t know. People started DMing me. Yo, this thing’s all over TikTok. And it was surprising and exciting, but I don’t know, I don’t even have a TikTok, so it was kind of weird. I don’t even use that app. It is funny to see so many stupid videos using it.
It seems like you have a good sense of meme humor, but you’re not on TikTok?
No, I don’t use it. I think I tried to make an account, and I was like, this isn’t for me. I miss Vine.
Can you describe your trajectory going back from the early 2010s to now?
Well, it started with me just uploading on YouTube with no actual intention of anything happening. I just really liked a couple of artists. I really liked ASAP Rocky, his first album that came out or whatever mixtape that came out in 2011. I really liked Space Ghost Purrp. I really liked this guy, Lil Ugly Mane. I really liked Memphis Rap and also Max B, Gucci Mane, DJ Screw. All the mixtape era stuff. So that stuff had this reemergence around 2011, and I just started making my own version of Memphis Beats and putting them on YouTube, and just naturally started getting a hundred views, 200 views. Then people started using SoundCloud, and I found a bunch of artists through there. The first artists I worked with were Raider Klan artists. It just made sense. Everyone was doing that style at that time—all types of homages to nineties rap, but it was really a big emphasis on the Memphis stuff. And then SoundCloud started popping off, and I started working with more people like Young Lean. I worked with tons of people over the years, and I just stuck to it. I worked with Lil Peep, I worked with Lil Tracy. I got a placement on the ASAP Mob album and produced for Juicy J, and I kept dropping my own music over my own instrumental mixtapes. And as the SoundCloud music progressed and the different scenes came about, I was always there tapping in.
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Do you have any new music that’s in the works?
Yes, yes I do. I would love to talk about that. So, Varg and I have a project coming, and we’re calling it EDM, but it stands for, we have a bunch of acronyms for it, but it’s like evil dance, music, evil, dark music, electronic death music, exotic drug manufacturers. We have all these acronyms. But the main thing is EDM, and we’re just going crazy. We’ve already released a couple of songs together, and people really like them. You might see Skrillex on that project. Hint hint. But that’s the main thing I’m pushing next, just me and Varg’s music, because it’s really good. And we toured a lot. We did a lot of shows with it last year, and people, I would do shows only playing our music, and people loved it. So the shows all went crazy. I think we’re just trying to bring our influences into electronic music. So Varg’s comes from the electronic world, but a different part of it than I would say Skrillex does. And then I come from just the underground in a totally different area of music. So, bringing our influences to it and trying to do our own version of it is kind of what we’re doing. And we’re just trying to make EDM super swag and rapper coded.
Any shout-outs?
I just want to give a shout-out to the Shadow Wizards. They’re a big part of what I do now. they’re like a collective in Montreal and the whole Shadow Wizard Money Gang. That was a thing that really, the legalized Nukes kind of a pop things off, but then it was the Shadow Wizard Money gang thing that blew out of the water and I wouldn’t have got Skrillex without it or anything. So there’s this kid named Louka Tessier that’s from Montreal, but he came up with the term Shadow Wizard Money Gang. And then it’s a collective of four or five kids and they `just do art and music and stuff, but they’re very involved with what I do too. We brainstorm together on a lot of things and they live close to me and I’m with them all the time. They’re just like someone to look out for, but also I just want to give my shout out because they’re a big part of just the re-emergence of Smokey and all this stuff.
