What is your name and DJ name?
My name is Dylan, and my DJ name is also Dylan.
What is the name of your show and when is it on?
The HipHopapotamus Show, and it’s on Sundays from 9 to 10.
Please describe your show. What is its format?
I noticed that there was a minimal amount of hiphop in the area, in general, so I decided to focus mostly on hiphop, but I deviate to soul, and neo-soul, and funk and r&b.
What drew you to participate in KMRD?
Kate and Adrian told me to do it and I thought it was a good idea.
I used to DJ in Denver a little bit, but I was helping behind the scenes – it was like a podcast/DJ thing, and I was doing the online editing stuff while the video was going out. That was mostly like a radio talk show about hiphop in the area – it was community radio there. I have experience with sound boards, and I like music a lot.
What is the appeal of doing a radio show? How does it fit into the rest of your life?
The appeal for me, specifically for hiphop, is that a lot of hiphop on the radio is overplayed, like one or two songs from the newest artist, and they don’t play a lot of the underground stuff or DJ instrumentals or anything like that. That also is what drew me to KMRD – is that it’s freeform, you can do whatever you want. The appeal is to play underrated music.
I actually was not listening to music that much until I started doing the show, and then I started finding more music. I do professional cleaning on the side, too, and you listen to music while you’re cleaning a lot. Before I was just playing whatever, like old stuff I listened to, but I found a lot of new music since I’ve started doing this, so that’s exciting.
What difference has being a DJ made in your life?
How DJing has changed my life is introducing me to more music – and more people, on the station, and their taste. More music in general.
What are your hopes for your show?
I hope that I can get it together each week – before the hour of. That would be nice. My other hope is to eventually get (partner) Xochitl to collaborate with me. For a while I thought it would be cool if we did hiphop history, because I’m just always playing music but I never really talk about what I play. Some of it you don’t really need to talk about – like the classic stuff and instrumental stuff – but talking about where they got the influence from…
I hope that people who don’t listen to hiphop might start to.
What are your hopes for the station?
That it never dies!