(Photo courtesy of Piper Ferguson)The Los Angeles-based artist known as Destructo has become an influential tastemaker in the world of music, releasing his own songs, signing artists as part of the monumental Def Jam Recordings label and creating a massively successful concert brand in “HARD Fest.”
I met with Destructo on Wednesday at his hotel lobby in downtown Phoenix before he shook the Monarch Theatre with his groundbreaking mixture of rap lyrics over house beats.
He was walking with a cane and showed me a picture on his phone of an enormous gash on his leg, now sealed up with stitches.
“I got into a fight with a tiger,” he said.
This didn’t stop Destructo from commanding an aggressive set, hitting the audience with thumping house drops and abrasive lyrics that gave meaning to his namesake.
“On this tour, I finally figured out how to play my EP in a set that works and has energy,” he said. “It’s never the same each time.”
Destructo mixed tracks that carried a similar sound to his most recent release, “West Coast EP,” featuring up and coming rappers like YG and Ty Dolla $ign.
“My original plan was to make a couple of house tunes,” Destructo said. “But then I hooked up with YG and he hooked me up with Ty Dolla $ign and I was like, ‘I think I’m onto something here.’”
A video for the song with YG, “Party Up,” features the two artists drinking and surrounded by women in a wild tour bus party.
“It was really fun to make, but all the girls were like, ‘We’re going to make your wife really jealous,’” he said. “Before I was married, I used to have a lot of crazy parties and stuff, but I love my wife.”
Destructo also has two kids that have seen him perform and said they are very aware of who he is and the electronic dance music culture.
“They don’t know about 'Party Up,'” he said. “But they like everything from Skrillex to Led Zeppelin.”
On the business side of music, Destructo is the creator of “HARD Fest,” a surging electronic music festival that now has a partnership with promotional giants, Live Nation.
“I have a team of hundreds of people that help run the event,” he said. “All the department people know me and they know how I operate.”
He gained experience to book these successful festivals by performing as a DJ in clubs in 1993, when legendary producer Rick Rubin of Def Jam Recordings discovered him.
“I’d go to (Rubin’s) house at four in the morning, and we’d rock out and listen to cool techno stuff,” Destructo said. “He asked if I wanted to work with him and help him sign electronic artists.”
Today, electronic dance music has become a radio staple and a highly profitable genre in the music industry.
“Last year, I had a meeting with (Rubin) in Malibu and he was laughing,” Destructo said. “He said, ‘It took 20 years, but we were right.’”
For Destructo, it’s important to make music that comes from the heart and truly means something to its creator.
“Anyone that’s in music trying to figure out ways to only make money might get lucky and make it and God bless them,” he said. “Anything I’ve ever done, even my little EP or whatever, I just did it because it was cool, and I wanted to do it.”
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