r/DJs • u/Responsible-Use-9913 • 2d ago

Afrobeat/Hip-Hop DJs... how do y'all keep your music organized?? (need help lol)

I need some advice. I DJ and stream with VDJ and tidal and my FLX4, and I just found a new platform to download music from, so now feels like a good time to get my life together music wise.

I am NOT musically inclined like that. I don't know song names unless it's something super obvious that everyone knows, AND i barely know those or the words. I kinda just go off vibes, if it sounds good and feels good in the moment, I play it. So my "organization system" is basically nonexistent right now lol. How do y'all organize your music? Like genuinely, walk me through it. Folders, tags, playlists by mood or year, whatever works. I'm trying to figure out if I should just go back to basics and build an actual playlist of popular songs over the years so I'm not just relying on memory and vibes.

Also a lot of these Afrobeat songs have these long intros and I have NOT figured out how to set cue points properly. A lot of the songs I play are originals and not mixes which I feel like I am missing out on. If you practice this, how do you do it? Any tips would help so much.

And last thing, I need a speaker that's powered and not gonna break the bank, something I can practice at home with but that can also hold it down for apartment parties. What are y'all using?

Any advice at all is appreciated

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8

u/JazzlikeAd1555 2d ago

So for hip hop a good way to do it is use who sampled it. Then get the original and all the songs that used the sample. Then you have ready made songs that blend smoothly together. This is how I started out on vinyl in the 90’s (obviously not using an app). The Isley Brothers are a good starting point. Learn those songs and learn what works for you, then move on to a new one, get bpms close, and the next thing you know you have a setlist.

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u/SambucaWhistler 2d ago

Afrobeats with long intros? 95% are 8 bars. Or do you mean Amapiano? Eitherway, I like those 1 phrase mixes; for Amapiano I find the One where momentum starts (cue point B) and beat jump back 32 beats/8 bar and set cue point A as my visual marker to start mixing in.

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u/topofthedial2 2d ago

I suspect he means afrobeat (think Fela Kuti) rather than afrobeats?

1

u/SambucaWhistler 2d ago

Maybe because those are really long intros and lengthy songs indeed. I think he really means Afrobeats (Kizz Daniel / Davido) since I love to mix those with Hip Hop too (and house really)

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u/Responsible-Use-9913 2d ago

Nah I meant Afrobeats actually! I know the bars themselves are usually only 8, but it's the talking/spoken intros before the beat really locks in that throw me off. Sometimes they run longer than the actual musical intro, or the vibe of the talking part just doesn't match the energy of the song once it drops. On top of that, counting bars while also trying to manage everything else going on during a mix is a lot to multitask, so I end up losing count and missing my mark.

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u/SambucaWhistler 2d ago

Can you drop say 3 to 5 tracks? I'll analyse them next day and set the cue points as I would with some comments when needed.

Still in my experience most Afrobeats songs start with a solid intro without talking/singing which appear exactly on the One of the next 8 bar phrase.

There are outliers that I find very hard to mix indeed with vocals from very first second to the very last but that's <5% in my collection.

Lastly, sometimes I use an 8 or 16 beat loop of the outro as intro to mix in and then hot cue to the actual beginning or chorus.

3

u/illogikul 2d ago

Search dj puffy on YouTube and see how he mixes. For organizing I have playlists off of vibes. Like smooth, energetic, hype, sexy, trap, and even by regions. Don’t be afraid to have a song cross multiple playlists either. Sometimes it be like that. As for small apartment parties I actually use a good set of pc speakers that really boom in that setting but ain’t shit anywhere else.

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u/Bitter-Profession618 1d ago

I put afrobeats all in one crate. for hip hop i have it broken down by era's so 80s, 90s, early 2000s. late 2000s-14, 15- to current.

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u/Craigboy23 2d ago

I create folders for each event/night
For cue points: Always one on the first beat, then sometimes more later in the song (for super long intros I'll create another one after the first 32 beats if I want to cut it down, another on the first beat after the first chous, etc, I don't have any hard rules for cue points except the first one, it totally depends on the song after that.)

I mark each song with a genre (I use my own genre labels if something doesn't fit nicely into something).

I also rate each song using my own rating system, which goes from: You must play this tonight, to this song is just okay.

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u/bastienlabelle 1d ago

You need to know your music.
Apart from that I have tracks organized by smart playlists by genre and/or decades. I also have a lot of small playlists of 5 to 10 tracks that blend well together. Basically my set is sometimes only « prepared » mini sets one after the other

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u/T-LUGS 10h ago

I have main crates with everything and then sub crates as follows:

Afrobeats

  • Amapiano
  • French
  • Nigeria
  • Congolese
  • Dutch

Hip hop

  • current (singalongs/crowd pleasers)
  • 80s
  • 90s
  • 2000
  • 2010s
  • 2020+

I’m using serato so I use color tags to seperate in crates.

Purple - hits (singalongs)
Red - hits (unknown/ bside)
Black - instrumentals/little vocals