DJ Shadow Dubai turns writer with his upcoming autobiography. Titled LSD [Love. Sex. Drugs] Confessions by DJ Shadow, the book is slated to launch by the end of 2022. The Dubai based DJ is popular for his work with names such as Guru Randhawa, Badshah, Pitbull and many more. We chat with the artitse about his work. Excerpts from the interview:
What sparked the idea for writing your life story?
I used to write when I travelled in my early days as a DJ. I was 21 years old and traveling constantly to India from Dubai. I used to write a journal, not for any particular reason, just to document and spare time on flights. When covid hit, I found these journals and I decided to share it. It had a lot of interesting stories and experiences about the Indian nightlife and all that goes behind the scenes, so I decided that this should be shared with the country.
How was it writing an autobiography?
It’s definitely exciting to tell your life story but there are always good and bad sides to a story. It’s really important to show both of them to the world because I feel like this would really help youngsters taking up this profession to learn from my mistakes.
Give us a little sneak peek into it, what can we expect?
The autobiography covers one half of my life, from age 21 to 31 where I became DJ Shadow Dubai. From my personal life to my professional experiences, it has everything. It shows my rise and fall with the different collaborations. The best part is that an unpublished book has been bought by Gaurang Doshi and Rocky Khan for a visual adaptation which is very rare.
What's the web series 7 Sense about? And how was it to make music for it?
I met the producers of 7 Sense, Gaurang Doshi and Rocky Khan in July last year and they had this idea to take a Hindi web series global. This idea instantly resonated with me and all of us started planning and plotting different strategies as well as styles to take this forward. I was in the USA for a month, researching, meeting people and it was a very challenging aspect for me as well. To do so, we plan to have seven promotional songs for the webseries that are all different from each other. The first collaboration that will be out will be with Lil Pump and Yo Yo Honey Singh. It’s a party song with a blend of house, hip-hop and South American music influences. Honey Singh is seen in his element with this song and his fans are going to vibe with this one the most. The track is titled Casanova. The second collaboration features Rick Ross and Sidhu Moosewala but because of his unfortunate demise, we have to take a call on that. It is heavily inspired by Arabic music. The third song features Jason and Urvashi. It’s Urvashi’s singing debut and Jason is back again with a banger for India after Jalebi Baby. It’s a modern love pop song with a retro sound, something no one will expect from us.