transform

April 2018
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“Growing up in the 90s, I was inspired by Stretch
and Bobbito. They had their show from 1 a.m. to 5
a.m. During high school, in Richmond, I used to
listen to a show called Underground Tremors on
Power 92 from 1 AM to 2 AM. There’s a freedom to
being on that late at night. That’s the type of feeling
I’m trying to give; if you stay up late enough you
might run into something amazing,” Henry explains
as to why he loves the time slot. Being a DJ isn’t his
only strong suit. Transforming from a blogger to a
beat writer for RVA Mag, he covers the cultural
underbelly of Richmond and has written a multitude
of incredible stories.
As a self-proclaimed “obsessed hip-hop fan” DJ
Mentos first approached the musical genre as a fan.
His DJ inspirations include legends like DJ Premier,
RZA, and Dr. Dre, but one of his biggest musical
inspirations was his father. His father was a musician
and an avid vinyl collector, so that creative spirit
inevitably floated down to him through his natural
DJ talent and craving for eclectic vinyl. That same
record collection from his father was one of the first
things that sparked his creative process and yearning
for mixing, and sampling.
“As a young person, I wasn’t really into jazz, but, as
I got older and learned where all these great hip-hop
songs got their beats; I realized that a lot of those
samples were a part of my dad’s record collection,”
Mentos says about his interest in music. After he
graduated from Randolph Macon College and
moved on up, to the Big Apple, he began to dip his
toes into DJing seriously. “Once you start making
beats, you’re actively looking for obscure samples.
All the James Brown records have been sampled and
all the Stevie Wonder stuff has too. Everything great
has already been used. For me, I always wanted to
try and find samples that are off the radar. I can’t
play piano or guitar or anything like that. Sampling
After connecting with stable Richmond journalist,
and hip-hop historian Marc Cheatham, they
discussed a possible podcast within Cheatham’s,
The Cheats Movement. As one of the masterminds
behind the aforementioned podcast, he began to
expand throughout the scene and make substantial
connections rooted in the cap city. One of the people
that he was introduced to through The Cheats
Movement podcast was New York-bred, Richmondstaple
producer DJ Mentos.
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DJ Mentos