DJ Trauma Toasts His Historic Run At Radio City With Dave Chappelle [Interview]

Legendary scribe Jerry Barrow sits down with  DJ Trauma to talk about career, traveling the globe with Estelle and deejaying for Dave Chappelle.

Seated in a private dining room at New York City’s Megu restaurant, DJ Trauma is finally taking a moment to pause. The New York native and Atlanta transplant is putting a quiet and intimate exclamation point on his 16-show run at Radio City Music Hall with Dave Chappelle. For the past four years the mix master born Tayari McIntosh has been warming up audiences for the iconic comedian and curating his own vibes on the air at Atlanta’s V-103. As his guests—which include Chappelle and singer Estelle—munch and mingle, Trauma washes down bites of Duck Gyoza and sweet potato ravioli with a Hennessy cocktail as he reflects in awe at the last four weeks in his hometown. It’s a celebration, bitches.

“We’ve been here since the 31st of July, 25 days and 16 shows. And even on our off days we did parties at The House of Vans. We went hardbody everyday. I think the earliest I went to sleep since I’ve been here is 3 am. When you’re doing history you’re like, ‘Why am I going to sleep?’ I’m gonna extend it for as long as possible. It’s rare that you do stuff and you know going in that it’s going to be historic.”

Chappelle’s second stint at Radio City paired him with the biggest names in music and was indeed a high point for fans of music and comedy, with Chance The Rapper and Lil Wayne among the boldfaced names that took the stage. But Trauma insists that the most exciting moment of the run wasn’t even planned.

“We did an impromptu jam session the day before. Me, Stretch Armstrong. Dave’s publicist’s [Carla Sims] husband [Frédéric Yonnet] used to play with Stevie Wonder and Prince. He’s an ill harmonica player and he just called people to come through. John Mayer had a show in D.C. that night and flew up to New York. The venue was super small and Dave was hosting. Renée Neufville from Zhané pops up, Bilal gets on, then John Mayer breaks out his guitar and starts rockin’ out. He was in a zone, too. The band was so dope and we didn’t even know them. This was on a day off one night. The fact they didn’t know each other and came together so well was dope.”

When Trauma was a student at Bronx High School of Science in the ‘90s he probably didn’t see this in his future. He saved up for his first set of turntables working for his dad on the weekends and teaching tennis for the Police Athletic League. Back then he was going by T-Squared because of a hand-me-down drafting tool given to him by his pops, but when he enrolled at Clark Atlanta University he leveled up his name in more ways than one.

“I didn’t have a record collection that could do a whole party with. But in college, my boy DJ Mars lived two floors down and he had records and another one of our friends from D.C. had records and we’d pool them to do parties. You couldn’t just download songs you wanted, you had to go in record stores and dig. I used to throw these parties and people would drink and dance ‘til they passed out. The trauma truck would come. And I wanted a ‘T’ because my name is Tayari, so I said that’s it right there.”

Trauma’s talents would take him to record label promotions as a college rep, Atlanta’s radio airwaves and touring the globe with artists like Ciara. But in 2013 a chance reunion with his friend from junior high, Corey Smyth of Blacksmith Management, landed him a gig playing for Chappelle at The Tabernacle in Atlanta.

“Since Atlanta is my town I took them out afterward, hit some impromptu parties and became cool. I stayed in touch and Dave had a bad show in Connecticut a few weeks later. It was on the news and stuff. I hit them the next day and his tour manager, Sina Sadighi, asked if I could come to a show in Pittsburgh. I was like, ‘Yup.’ I called my boss at the radio station and said I gotta take off for the weekend. Big shout to Reggie Rouse because he coulda been like ‘No.’ I’d toured with Ciara so doing big arenas was nothing for me. It was 20,000 people and I smashed it. The head of Live Nation Comedy, Geof Wills, was like, ‘Man, you had the crowd exactly how we needed them.’ Having me warm them up made all the difference. Dave was like, ‘We should use you all the time.’ And I was like absolutely.”

So how does he move the crowd? It depends on the need. For Chappelle’s shows, Trauma can mix it up with hip-hop, Motown sounds and break beats, turning up the energy right before the comedian takes the stage.

“I try to find songs that will work with everybody. No matter what, when you hear “Party Up” by DMX, you rockin’. I don’t care if you white, black, Asian or Indian, you rockin’. My set now is DMX, House Of Pain and I’ve been playing “Killin Me Softly”. I just try to have fun.”

But when you’re DJing a birthday party or a baby shower for music royalty like Jay-Z and Beyoncé, do you play their hits?

“Eh, not really,” he says. “They already had to record it and have to perform it all the time. The only thing I did play was a New Orleans version of ‘Love On Top,’ which is one of my favorite Beyoncé songs. In New Orleans, they remake every song with an N.O. beat. It was one of those DJ mash-up joints and it goes hard.”

Following in the footsteps of every DJ from Kid Capri to DJ Khaled, Trauma is preparing to release an EP of his own music called, Where In The World Is DJ Trauma. The title is taken from a humble brag hashtag he’s adopted on Instagram to document his movements across the globe.

“[It started] from this girl I was dating. She put it on my IG asking that question. I was being funny so I hashtagged it. Then people kept using it and coming up to me. ‘What are you doing in Kazakhstan?’ You know how you do something and it just sticks? I kept it.”

The first single from the EP is “Take Me High,” which he co-produced with Grammy Award winning production team Needlz and Donut. Featuring wispy vocals from singer The Dan, the song resurfaces the Stan Getz guitars J Dilla used in The Pharcyde’s “Runnin’” and marries them to EDM drum fills to create an escapist paean.

“I want my music to be about letting go. It’ll be an international vibe but still hip-hop. I want to be able to hear it anywhere I go in the world,” he says. As the night winds down the plates are being cleared but good times are still on the menu. Glasses are raised in a toast to Trauma and plans are made to move to the next venue where Talib Kweli is DJing. Sleep is still overrated.

“In these times of political turmoil, I want my vibe to be feel good. You can be mad but sometimes you have to have a good time.”

Jerry Barrow is the founder of NODFACTOR and a veteran journalist with stints at The Source, Scratch Magazine and The Urban Daily. Follow his work (and ours!) on Twitter @JLBarrow.