DJ Loco Dice keeps his feet firmly on the dance floor
DJ Loco Dice has retained his integrity, and prefers the dance floor to the VIP lounge, he tells Oliver Clasper
- one of the underground dance music community's most acclaimed artists - begins in the German city of Dusseldorf in 1974. Yassine Ben Achour, who was born in the city to Tunisian parents, was first drawn to music by the bravura of hip hop, not the thrust of house or techno. By the mid-1990s, Ben Achour had emerged from the chrysalis of an awkward adolescence, and hip-hop was the sound of his generation.
The sound's "golden era" was in full swing, and before he knew it he had forged a career as a support MC and DJ to big international acts - including Snoop Dogg, Usher, and Coolio. But by his own admission, he wasn't any good. "I was a terrible rapper, but I was successful," he says.
Despite YouTube's treasure trove of nostalgic videos, it's hard to find evidence of Loco Dice's previous incarnation. Whether this is deliberate is hard to tell, but it adds to the man's mystique. What does exist is Loco Dice as the international club and festival DJ. In every clip, he resonates a kind of brooding intensity; behind that lies the bristling energy of a man who loves his trade.
The video clips indicate Loco Dice prefers to party with the regular people, not get stuck in the vacuity of the VIP lounge. His reply is resolute: "Wow, all the time. You'll always find me on the dance floor. Always. You know what it is, it's like after all the years you become successful and you forget the dance floor. You don't feel comfortable, period. All you know is standing backstage with your drink in your hand. All the people I call friends, I get to know them not behind the dance floor but on the dance floor, after my set."
It's rare that an artist who has forged a career in one genre makes the transition so easily to another. While house and hip hop share some of their roots in disco, DJs rarely cross between the two. But Loco Dice did.
"When hip hop became boring I needed something else," he explains, echoing what Q-Tip of New York group A Tribe Called Quest said about "the death of hip hop" at the dawn of the millennium.
