There is no way to succinctly describe the work DJ Haram has done across a vast scope of music in the last decade. After moving to Philadelphia in 2012, she began DJing with the Discwoman collective and made a name with a handful of buzzy mixes that melded East Coast club rhythms with haute experimental sounds across her ancestral diaspora. Delving into production with Moor Mother in the late 2010’s, who she performs as 700 Bliss with, she successfully made the transition from buzzy club circuit DJ to an in-demand experimental hip-hop producer and sound designer, especially within her extensive collaborations with Armand Hammer (billy woods, E L U C I D), New York City’s abstract experimentalists in chief.
The weight of her entire career thus far, as well as some personal dialectics, can be heard on Besides Myself, DJ Haram’s debut album released on Hyperdub in July. The niche explorations on Besides Myself are never forced, as DJ Haram approaches regional club, experimental sound design, sampledelic sound collage, and hard bass music with the wisdom of her 10,000 hours. It’s a total representation of DJ Haram’s first ten years and definitive proof that she’s developed her career into something that will persist for at least the next ten.
Following her appearance at WNYU for a special guest mix featuring Armand Hammer and Dania, DJ Haram sat down for a spanning conversation regarding her time in the music industry, her chief influences, and her wisdom for fledgling underground artists.
[The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.]
Of all the global communities and cities you’ve seen while touring, is there any particular audience, scene, or location that stood out to you as particularly unique or interesting?
Unique, not really. Interesting a lot. There’s a lot of variety out there, but I think you only get exposed to the unique parts of scenes and culture when you really invest and have the ability to get to know people, get to know where people who can’t afford a certain [lifestyle] actually go, even in New York. As far as answering your question a little bit more directly, I love New York, I love Cairo. Paris is growing on me. As far as places with interesting people going there to create, Beirut for sure. Even in New York, that’s why I have been gravitating more towards rave, renegades, and the rap scene, because I feel like the regular nightlife club scene I was part of 5-10 years ago is a bit more inaccessible. It’s more expensive to do that stuff and I feel like I don’t really get a chance to go to other places and get to know what’s cool in the underground. But I’m from around here, so East Coast stuff is pretty unique and interesting to me.
When I talk to people with roots along the East Coast, in Pittsburgh for example, they say the scene there is so good because there’s so much less of that pressure. I know you talk about your roots from different regions, like Jersey and Philly. Coming from those smaller, less industrial scenes, did you notice a significant difference in the attitude and posture when it comes to people participating in the underground?
I’m from North Jersey, so I grew up going to shows in Manhattan and Brooklyn when I was a teenager, up till my early 20’s. I moved to Philly after that, and while I was in Philly, I DJ’d in New York a lot, because once I moved to Philly is when I started DJing. I have always been around the trifecta a lot. I also started going to Baltimore once I was in Philly too. It’s harder in Jersey, Philly, and Baltimore because there’s less industry money. It’s also interesting talking to you, and I don’t really know much of your background, but people who go to universities engage culture more in New York in this way, whereas in Philly and Jersey, they have their own college culture, so no money gets redistributed when they have come through and take over spaces.
That said, New York has the best attitude and you can’t really divorce that from the fact that it has more resources. People in New York take themselves more seriously and they compare themselves, and are in the same city, as some of the greatest artists and musicians in the world on some of the biggest stages. New York has more drive, it’s just more fierce, in a good way. And also in a derogatory way.
One of the things I immediately noticed about New York is that, even with the smallest dripping tap of access and clout, people become a certain type of way, even when it comes to underground scenes that aren’t regularly exposed to that sort of access, resource, clout, or money. Working in these very desirable spaces and scenes, is it easy for you to sniff out folks who are there for that sort of access or clout?
I think I’m better than some, because I’ve had more experience, so there’s a couple things I know to look out for, but I definitely have the flaw of assuming that people have good intentions. There’s a really severe class divide in music, just like every other industry. But in music, people who are actually at the lowest points of the poverty cycle are fetishized in a way that other industries have barriers to not even let people that marginalized in. I feel like when you’re in the working class/underground, issues over resources are so ambiguous, because in the real music industry, they come with a real dollar amount.
I was just saying this to a friend the other day, but people in the underground are so concerned with clout, drama, and gossip, and getting to be in certain rooms. But a lot of people don’t even know how much money they make a year off music. They’re really valuing their work according to social proximity. Something that’s the very basis of planning for success amongst people who are serious when it comes to their “business” is knowing these numbers, and people don’t even know. What matters to them is how much fun they’re having, how many people follow them on Instagram, and that kind of thing. First of all, music businesses are not evening profiting, so looking out for people who want clout, I’m like okay, sure. But I’m looking out for the larger red flags,which are things like actual contracts, it’s bigger than that. I don’t collaborate with just anyone. I think someone who just wanted to collaborate with me for clout wouldn’t pay my fee. I feel like charging a certain amount is a barrier, because if you want to pay, sure, but that’s an investment for you now, so you better think it through. I’m also an experimental artists, so I’m kind of just like, mmm.
Working amongst artists who are fundamentally working-class people, talking in tangent with things like the Boiler Room boycott and denying access in places that possibly have more resources, what is that active conversation or monologue to you, to say no to certain things, even if it’s three months rent or something like that?
I think to sustain your career in the underground, you need a pretty diverse array of places to get income. The artists that succeed get serious with that, even if that includes stuff that’s not creative, whether that’s a whole ‘nother job working at a cafe, doing freelance in another area, or doing different kinds of deal in music. I think the Boiler Room stuff was definitely…it’s still ongoing and it’s still fuck Boiler Room, but the problem with Boiler Room is that they are reflective and responsible for fucking up the game. It’s because of me reflecting and being like, I don’t want to be reliant on these terrible gigs to get by as a DJ. That’s the reason I started shifting my business and how I plan my studio time into being more of a producer. I’ve always wanted to produce more, but…I can make a couple thousand bucks in a weekend if I really hustle the DJ thing and play a couple gigs per night. If you want to be in nightlife that hard, just being seen and being around, you can get booked like that. But no, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to play these terrible gigs. It’s not worth it. I would rather play a little bit of a slower game, collect all my revenue from production, and different kinds of stuff. I signed a published deal this year, I’ve been working on a couple other full-length projects, and that’s how I’ve been doing it. I really definitely encourage all artists to just be real about how much money you need to survive and how you can realistically spend your time making sure you get that. I think people then make passive decisions, like someone offers them a crazy check, and they’re like “I had no other plans anyways, so now I’m invested in Boiler Room, because they’re fixing my problems.”
I know a lot of people who work full-time elsewhere. There’s this weird contradiction in the creative space and places like New York, where it’s expensive and people work upper-middle-class jobs, but then still do music, because they live in New York City with a certain upper-middle-class lifestyle they want to uphold. It gets a little weird there. I do encourage people to keep creative labor that means something to them as their mainstay and figure that out.
Thinking about how someone like billy woods has built something like Backwoodz across the last 20 years, then being able to spread that love across the board: in the positions you find yourself in, does it come to you as a priority to ensure that artists you really believe in are able to drink from the same well?
Of course it’s important to me. I think one of the most important things to me right now is sharing knowledge and perspective with artists who actually want to say it. I don’t know how much youre actually saying and how much I’m assuming, but coming from a leftist and anti-capitalist point of view, I don’t believe that an artist’s role in society is one of individualist success, and that’s the way the business works and looks now. Even if you’re not an anti-capitalist, but you are from a working class background and you become successful in music, you come into this issue of everybody being like, “How’d you get that? How’d you get there? What’d you do?”
This is a little bit what I was saying earlier about people who want to afford an upper-middle-class lifestyle but still be an artist. If you get it, if you know how to hustle, if you’re really dedicated to it, and you really believe in it and yourself, you’re gonna figure shit out. I guess if you’re also a good musician, you’re gonna figure shit out. Some people use their creativity in ways that aren’t them having every single opportunity that everyone around them gets. I would fuck with anybody who can meet me where I’m at and create a mutually beneficial collaboration. I don’t do very much now as far as educating, I don’t have a label where I can easily uplift other artists, I’m still trying to figure my shit out. I’ve experienced people being a bit more extractive, because they see there’s something special going on here and ask, “How can I get on that? Can you show my beats to Arrmand Hammer? Can you make me a free album because we’re both from the SWANA region, or because we’re both women,” blah blah blah.
That said, I have two full-length projects with women coming out soon, and that’s really important to me, especially as related to Backwoodz. They need to have more female rappers in the folds on that label. I don’t feel obligated, but as I work with them more and more, I’m like, “Here’s who I like to work with, here’s who I think is fire, here’s someone who raps more from my perspective than a man.” I don’t really have shit to redistribute yet, in a formal way, besides knowledge.
I wanna zoom out a bit and talk about your really fucking excellent record. One of my favorite central themes on the album is voyeurism. Voyeur seems like much more of an attractive idea in dance and electronic than any other genre. I think immediately of M.I.A. and Diplo really going out of their way to bite Brazilian, South American, East Asian, and Middle Eastern ideas at such a quick pace. I very frankly like those records, but that sort of approach has proven to quickly vapid. Where do you think that import mentality comes from, and what do you make of borrowing in the context of its original sounds.
I think humans have a tendency to this weak, unchecked type of supremacy. Take someone like Diplo, why doesn’t Diplo represent where he’s from and where he’s going through? What does he really care about in the world and what does he want to say is his culture? Why does he go out and borrow from other people’s culture? Well, number one, I would say it’s because he is some kind of pedophile sex pest and I don’t think he wants to talk about that in his music, because that’s derogatory, no matter how you spin it. I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing or something about humans, but people think what’s personal to them is sacred. It’s much easier to go and sample something from somewhere else where I have a very simple and dumb two-dimensional comprehension of what it is, so thus it’s easier for me to process and create some kind of product with it. Tourism is an industry through which regular people consume cultures they’re not from. Think about the way people get all creative when they’re traveling. They’re taking pictures of the Empire State Building and Chinatown, but do they go and take self-portraits in their home kitchens, where they have their arguments with their mom? No, they don’t. That’s just what people do. It takes a society and an artist that values truth, rawness, vulnerability, self-improvement, and societal improvement to value and create art that is not extractive, but is more intimate and liberatory.
It’s funny, it’s come up a lot in interviews and I should have read a book so I could give some good quotes about it, but there’s been a lot of CIA and other corporate and government co-option of culture to set the groundwork for Diplo. It’s funny everyone is complaining about AI, and let’s take a step back. The problem is that everyone accepts products that are very similar to AI slop anyways. You’re telling me Taylor Swift is that important to you because she doesn’t run on protocol? She runs on her personal airplane? That’s a person who wants slop anyways.
I think by working in hip-hop and club music, traditions of music that are predominantly American and African-American is already engaging in cultures that I’m not from ancestrally, so I don’t really have any interest in doing musical tourism outside of things that at least I experienced or that I can ancestorally trace, or go there and work with people, which is something I do on tour. But that’s just me.
It was really exciting to hear you announce the album, because it’s so rare, in electronic dance music, to hear a really strong, fully formed top-to-botom record. The full-length album is such an interesting monolith. You come from so many different backgrounds and formats that require so many different languages. Was there something particularly different or difficult about translating all of those mediums into the 40-minute structure of the debut album?
Especially because it’s my debut album, and I’ve been around a while, it’s not like I’m like, “let me give a try at this music thing,” and make an album within my first year or two of being a musician. I’ve been doing this for over ten years, and I know how the music industry interacts with something like an album, especially a debut. It’s a really big deal. Outside of the commercial, quantitative side of how the industry and press treats it, as an artist, there’s an intent in trying to intentionally build a legacy or tell a story, or do something with your life’s work. The first one is the first one. I had a lot of trouble because I felt like even if every other full-length project I do for the rest of my career is me delving into some niche, it felt like the first one I really needed to take this opportunity. I’ve been at it for so long but people seem not to understand how it’s possible for me to exist at this many intersections, to be in this many different rooms and conversations, and still have my own aesthetic. I really want people to get that I do dance shit, I do experimental shit, I do hip-hop shit, I’m a writer, I have this band called 700 Bliss. I’m from the Middle East and I interact with a lot of artists from the region. I wanted that all to come across, and I also wanted it to come across as a political manifesto that had a message that wanted to sway people.I wanted to move people to the so-called left with it, on top of all that. It was really hard, and I feel like I don’t have to do it again, so I’m glad it’s over
With a tour upcoming in Europe, how does it feel to have put your stamp on it, hit the road on press, do the 9-to-5, how do you feel now that you’re in the long tail of it?
It feels like it’s dragging out, my friend.
I play one video game at a time. I’m new to video games and I’m not very good. I started playing video games with Animal Crossing in 2020. Sometimes I notice when I’m getting to the end, with something like Zelda where there actually is an end, I’ll just drag it out, and that’s what it feels like for my album. It’s time to move onto a new game and familiarize myself with new characters, challenges, and missions, but it’s just dragging out. But it’s only been a month.
I think the most exciting part, for me, is doing tour, because that’s a whole other side of making music that’s honestly pretty optional. Not everybody gets to go to different contents and be like, “Oh, so that’s what you took from my music?” See what’s going on here and how they related to it, that’s super interesting. I’ve been able to take space away from DJing enough that I’m really trying to wrap my head around what a good solo live set is, because most of my live experience is with 700 Bliss. I’m excited to try to do my best in that format. It’s still pretty new for me. I did my first live show run last year and now I’m doing this one this year. I’m about to announce the US and Australia next year. That feels like fun because I haven’t done it. I’m not necessarily a very performative person, so I’m really trying to go in with musical, theatrical building. Just having fun with all the sounds.