DJ RED FOXX: "Everything I've done has been on a whim." |
“Everything I’ve done has been on a whim,” says DJ RED FOXX, the red-haired, cap-wearing Boston party whiz. “But SLUTTT, that shit’s been catching on faster than anything I’ve ever done.” Sluttt is Foxx’s electro project and social prank. “So three weeks ago, I’m thinking, what is in the mind of all these self-obsessed 17-year-old girls who take pictures of themselves in mirrors and post [MySpace] bulletins like ‘Ecstasy and Threesomes don’t mix?’ What if I just made music as one of these girls?” A few ganked Photobucket pics later (Photoshopped to death in animated Rainbow Gradian), Sluttt was born on MySpace. Soon the friend requests and remix offers were pouring in.Sluttt’s music is pure goofball candy, tangy electropop that doesn’t do much but tease you — but it’s all Foxx on the beats, and the voice you hear is indeed his, albeit transposed a half-dozen octaves. “It’s a conceptual project, and I can’t sing so I usually just kind of scream. The lyrics are mainly about demanding what you want and always getting it. I always post in all caps. I made up this idea that I hate emo kids and I always sign XOXO after everything. It’s based on a self-indulgent character, and the project itself is self-indulgent.”
The MySpace page tricked an English band called the Teenagers, who pursued Sluttt for a remix. “They eventually started asking me point blank, ‘Are you a guy or a girl?’, and I said, ‘No, I’m a 23-year-old man! Are you really teenagers?’ And they said they were all 23-year-olds too, so the cover was blown for both!” Thing is, the remix isn’t bad at all, which isn’t such a surprise. Under the guise of RED FOXXWORTH, Redd is also an electro/bass party animal MC who is bubbling up around the world. “My friends back in Virginia are always telling me stories about when they play my Foxxworth tracks. ‘Dude, people were taking their clothes off and having sex, we had to kick them out of the club!’ It’s odd, the pockets of fans that pop up. There’s this group in Boulder that’s really into my stuff, Numero in Montreal. The Fluokids blog out of Brighton and France. It was all off MySpace of course.”
Beneath the alter egos, Foxx, Foxxworth, and Sluttt is actually a guy named JULIAN WADSWORTH, one of the local brains from the cutting-edge PR company Modernista. Sprung from the soil of Norfolk and Virginia Beach in Virginia, he went to Emerson College, and he’s been DJing since he was 15, digging in thrift stores and cutting tracks on “Fruity Loops with a wack computer. It was 60 percent black where I grew up, so the things you’d find were the roots of the dirty South. It was electro and bass in the South before crunk. And we had hip-hop coming down from the North. But when Juvenile’s ‘Ha!’ came out, I was like ‘Who’s really having fun here?’ ”
DJing became Wadsworth’s passion and still is today. But his alter egos are harder to forget. “Like Red Foxxworth is a caricature of a hyperbole of Miami Bass, and Sluttt lowers inhibitions because I had to lower inhibitions myself to make it. Transgression — the abandoning of all inhibitions — that’s what I’m all about.”
DAN PALUSKA would probably agree with that sentiment. The singer in Emergenza semi-finalists the PRODUCT, Dan also DJs and produces techno as the SIX MILLION DOLLAR DAN in local artist collective UNLOCKEDGROOVE. And he has a second pseudonym as the DAN BENSON PROJECT, alongside Ben Recht (a/k/a Localfields). This month, they released a 12-inch single on SOLID, a new unlockedgroove sublabel created just for the punky dance project. The A-side is called “You’re So Lovely,” and it follow’s Paluska’s general lyrical theme: 1) have some drinks; 2) approach hot girl; 3) get dissed; 4) drink some more; and, 5) record a song about it. Oh, and 6) repeat. . . . This Tuesday sees the release of A New Dope, the hype full-length from Best Music Poll–winning DJ 7L and his MC ESOTERIC. Hip urban-style guide XLR8R praises its “hits out of nowhere with electro-fied beats . . . and savvy rhymes.” The original production is coming out on high-profile LA indie label Babygrande Records and being sold to stores by powerhouse indie distro Koch, so you know you should be able to find it. How does the saying go? Oh yeah, “Cop that shit.”
On the Web
Sluttt: //www.myspace.com/xslutttx
Email the author
David Day: circuits@squar3.com
