WHO ARE YOU 

I'm Tofu Jack from Brooklyn, New York. I am a DJ, producer, songwriter, artist, fashion designer, and most recently, an engineer, inventor, dude, yeah, and I do a lot of things, but I think all of them kind of work together, you know, like you do one thing kind of feeds into the next one. 

C: You're Mr. do-it-all, Mr. do-it-all 

C: I was telling my friends what I was about to do on Saturday, I was like Oh, I'm gonna interview this guy named Tofu Jack. They're like Tofu Jack?  Is that his real name? So, tell us a little story about how you got your name and how that developed

I had a different artist name before that I'm probably never gonna say on record. I was born and raised a vegetarian so I've never had chicken ever. I've never had a burger ever. So I ate lots of tofu, you feel me. I also speak mostly fluent Japanese and at the time when I came up with the name I was like oh tofu was invented in Japan. It’s not, it’s definitely from China. 

(LAUGHING)

Yeah, I was coming up with names and going for like opposites. Cuz I'm skinny and like I mean I'm trying to work on it but I was smaller, and I was gonna be like fat Dan or some shit. Then I was like how about an adjective name and then yeah I thought of tofu and then I was like yeah love tofu that matches .I think at the beginning tofu was kinda an adjective and also a first name like everyone calls me.  For Jack, I feel like a jack of all trades you know the vibes. But hopefully one day tofu’s JACKED, you know we're gonna get swole eventually.

E: That's gonna be me this summer. Ima get in the gym.

C: Man, every time you say that shit. You been saying that for the past four years.

E: Oh, true, it reminds me of Samurai Jack, like that's what I thought it was, yeah 

I've heard people call me Kung Fu Jack, Samurai Jack, and Soul Food Jack. Like it, they kind of mess up the first first part, but they get the Jack right, you know?

E:  What's your favorite vegan food? 

This restaurant called Red Bamboo. My family has been going there for a while. They have so many really good dishes; the jerk seitan skewers are really good, and the mac and cheese is really good. The menu keeps rotating, but I'd like anything from that restaurant for sure 

C: We gotta go see what's that talking about 

HOW DID YOU GET INTO MUSIC?

C: You primarily do music. How did you get into music? Was it like growing up, it's like something that your family did that you grew up around, or was it kind of like your own accord

Yeah my dad was super duper into music. Y'all are in my childhood home right now but over here there used to be a huge music desk studio thing, with synthesizers and racks  and all that. So I grew up half in a studio, low-key and much to my mother's dismay because it was kind of messy all the time. I was always around it, and my dad in addition really liked music technology. I feel like he would buy some shit just to use it like once, he loved to have the new thing and learn about it. I started DJing at like maybe like 16, just like fucking around with the controller. My dad taught exercise classes like spin and bike exercise and he was like i’ll give you like $20 if you  do like a mix for me, so I would do mixes for him. I went to college and around that time I got a native instruments’ maschine which is like a beat machine that has  a computer program attached to it was like one of the first to do that. I started sampling and doing hip-hop and I thought I was hot shit. I thought I was super fire but I got an OG older cousin type situation and he was like “Yo these are dope but they're also ass, like they're really bad and they sound like you're underwater”  and I was like ouch you know. Something he told me I don't know why this stuck with me he was like “A penguin has to be able to move to it bro”, for whatever reason that made sense to me.

C: He must've loved the movie Happy Feet.

I went away to college, and I just kept grinding on making beats for a while. I got a homie named Fez, and we would jam together. I would just  play the sampler,  he would play drums. We would like  do parties and shows. It was hella dope. Then, I was in a rap group called Mokumbo  when I was in college. It was just me and three other friends. One was Don Smith who is still doing music. Yeah, that was like my introduction to rap. It was a communal experience where we spent a lot of time freestyling and having late-night studio sessions. Still, I'm not a rapper.

E: What were you doing in Wisconsin man?

C: He was there because of fencing.

I was there doing that, and we even ended up winning a championship. It was the Midwest, we would fence like Harvard and Yale and all these places, it's crazy.

E: Does it hurt?

It isn't sharp, but if you get hit with it, it definitely hurts. You still feel mortal danger a little bit when you do it. Still, it's more about timing and speed and kind of like psyching the other person out and juking them out, stuff like that. Anyways, I came out of college, stopped rapping, started DJing more. Ended up DJing a couple clubs and parties and showcases in New York.

E: If you want to dive a little bit deeper into fencing, what made you get into that?

My dad was like, "If you're black and trying to go to college with a basketball degree, good luck." He was like fencers, not too many of those, and we knew a guy, Peter Westbrook, who had this program called Peter Westbrook Foundation. He's a bronze medal Olympian in fencing. He was like a black fencer through the 80s and 90s, at a time when fencing was a judged sport, not a clear-cut one, with someone deciding the points. So it's easy for them to say someone else got the point even if they didn't. He was a pioneer, being one of the first black people to win a bronze medal in that, in a really long time, or if ever, if I'm not mistaken.

He had a program and I had been going since I was like 12 or 14. Sometimes I didn't want to go but my dad was like “yeah you're gonna go because you can definitely get a scholarship off of this.” He was right, I got a scholarship through Posse which is like a different program but it was definitely heavily weighted by like “he does fencing that's crazy put him in.”

I think the biggest thing that fencing taught me was like if I do something and I know I am wrong I know to say touché. The term comes from fencing, and in fencing you say touché but it's just like the idea of knowing and admitting when you're wrong in something and giving someone respect. Since fencing is a judging based sport, sometimes judges are going to make the wrong call. Touché is giving someone the point when you know they deserve it, even if the judge gave it to you.

E: That’s a good thing to learn especially when you compare it to the creative field. A lot of things are super objective, especially when it comes to music, painting, all the different types of forms of art that are super visual. 

Yeah, pick up fencing, bro.

E: We gotta, that's new tech.

C: You mentioned you're a DJ, right, and like in these current times, the public perception of a DJ is not so hot.

Not quite.

C: How do you feel about that? It's turned into kind of a negative thing. It's turned into a situation where everybody just does it, and it takes away from the art behind mixing music.

I think it used to be more of an exclusive thing because you need like the equipment, you needed the physical vinyl of the music, you needed to know the people, you needed to know the spots. There was so many more things attached to it and I think now it's like you need a laptop and a dream. You actually don't need a controller, you can DJ off your laptop from some free software and download the music for free from YouTube or some shit. I think that's opened up a lot of people being able to do it. I think it's a beautiful craft, it's dope. But there's also a lot of people who don't have the talent, or the skill, or even music taste, but they are fine as shit. SO it's like fuck it, put them up there. Everyone's gonna have a good time looking at them anyways. You know like that's enough, or they're super popular.  There's a lot of those DJs where they can't quite DJ but everybody knows them so they pull up to the party and instantly they're famous.

I don't know if I'm mad at it per se because I don't think it takes away from people who are already good and really passionate about it. One of my homies, DJ Sun, is like the most passionate person I've ever met with DJing and club music and nobody's taking his gigs. He's done it his whole life, like for the people that are super passionate. I think it's like people that play guitar, there's people who are legendary and hella good at it. They’re gonna spend all their time getting better and you know dedicate their lives to it. But there’s also people who are gonna pick it up to have fun and I think DJing is very similar.  You can learn DJing and DJ for your friend’s little party.

 I do think it's just taken away from the money though, It's a little harder to get paid for it. Now, everybody wants to DJ, so everybody will do it for free. So, I'm not always getting paid, which, you know, my pockets are sad. There’s more people available, I think I did a thing with Brandon. It was a last-minute show at Rebecca's he booked like 10 people in like two hours prior to the event. That couldn't have happened had everybody not been a DJ, but at the same time it's like I mean we ain't get paid for that but it was fun, you know. I think if you're really doing it for the love  you'll stick through it.

E: So would you go to someone's set just because they're bad?

Just because they're bad? Like to not see them do well?

C: No, like fine.

Ohhhh probably not cause what imma look at you DJ and then like you gonna get off and leave?  Or I'm gonna be like oh that was such a good set like everyone else just said to you and then what? Still, I can see like if you're a brand, like you're fucking Skims or Sephora or something like that. Like if you want your DJ of your event to look a certain way, I am sure you could find some model DJ hybrid shorty. I wouldn’t go, however pull up to mine cuz I’m fine don’t get it twisted.

C: You mentioned how, like, it's DJing being more accessible. Can you just talk about the skill set it takes to be a DJ? What do you think are these important things that make it like a great DJ or a good DJ

I think it's about knowledge of the environment, context and the population of who you're DJing for/ I think that's like probably number one I think after that is like mixing and being able to smoothly transition things and I think the last thing which can sometimes be the most important thing is your ego. If you get up there and you're like I want to play Michael Jackson all night that's what I want to hear fuck what everybody else thinks like for sure, you know,that's you. Someone booked you, like that's your thing but I think the point of the DJ is to bring the community together and create a night a moment with everybody enjoying it. You could put somebody on to new stuff and like there are moments where I think people are there to hear your creative thing and if that's the thing for sure. But sometimes it's like you know bro read the room, shorty's not trying to twerk to dubstep right now. 

E: What's your favorite genre to spin?

 Love me some house, some baile funk, some jersey, some ampiano, love me some trap music, some hip-hop. I love hearing a song reinterpreted in a way that it wasn't intended. That's definitely one of my favorite things, not a genre, but probably what I would say. 

C: Let me ask you this: can white people spin Afro beats? Is that ethical?

Oh good question, um I mean you know white people do whatever they kind of want honestly. But culturally speaking if you know the culture and you know the music and you want to play it bro go ahead. Just don't walk into a room of all black people and be like oh fuck like I don't know what to do like black people like ampiano let me put that on.

THE GDJ?

 I said earlier that I've been a DJ for a long time. I think the art form has not had a large innovation in many years. It's kind of been like we got USBs, we got CDJs and that's it.  I wasn't intentionally trying to shift anything but once I really thought about it and also physically had it in my hands I was like oh this could actually change things. I go to NYU for this program called ITP. It's like an interactive art media degree program but what I call it is artsy MIT like we're in there doing engineering things, coding things, doing computer things, but like making it artistic. We make it pop. You know we're not trying to make apps necessarily or like functional things, it's like what is the artistic perspective of what you're doing and like the impact of it.  Before I got into ITP I was using a wireless DJ controller and I shot this video for my homie Isaiah Mustafa and I’s first song. I had the controller in it because I made the beat and I was like dancing with the controller first I had it on my shoulder like a boombox and then my arm got fucking tired then I was like I now I'm gonna hold it upside down. I was like playing with a volume fader like it was a guitar and I was like oh this this kind of cool like I've never seen anyone hold a DJ controller like this.

 We haven't had wireless controllers or portable or like all-in-one controllers even be able to do that and I was like oh cool I'm about to be at ITP they have 3d printers I'll like print a case for it. I got there and I was like ah this printer's too small but it'll come whatever and then I had physical computing which gave me the idea to build it like a guitar. I said earlier my dad was really into music technology a year before I got to ITP, he had a stroke and that was hella hard on the family and everything. There was nothing I could do about the situation but what I can do is try to better the life of myself and my family. So I really just like poured myself into building that DJ controller like I was up till like 4 in the morning most nights waking up again at like 8 or 9 to get to class like grinding my fucking ass off. 

It’s changed my life so far you know and I think what it can do for DJs is like, a lot of times DJs will perform and the crowd doesn't know what they're doing 9 times out of 10. They don't know what the buttons and knobs are, nor can they actually see them. Whereas a guitar on stage even if I don't know how to play guitar I understand enough like okay he held that down his hand is moving I hear the sound like I got it. DJ’s are pushing buttons that don't affect the sound and then eventually you hear a change and like they're kind of like touching the knobs and like they're hot and then they put their hands up and everyone has a good time.  I think that's great and I'm not knocking it but if the controls were facing the audience there's a little more of an audio visual interaction and it’s communicated to the audience. Further versions of the GDJ will have like wireless compatibility so like I don't have to physically be standing at the computer and then I'm gonna work on ways where like you don't even have to fucking look at the computer so then it's like you could actually move around the stage. I think DJs are the new rock stars in a lot of ways and to really do that we need the proper equipment that makes a performance.

C: How does it actually work, so like I'm looking at.

E: That's the sauce, bro. That's the secret sauce.

C: Oh, true!

E: You asked Mr. Krabs for the formula.

There's an Arduino chip that controls all of the functions. These first four buttons are the stems like drums, bass, instrument, and voice. But if you push any of the buttons by themselves, they don't do anything, but if you hold a button down and then strum the strum bar at the same time then it sends the signal to activate. The top button  switches between deck a and deck b. So when I was DJing it'd be like okay I queued up the next song, and the drums are off, so now I have to switch to the other deck, take the drums off, then switch back to the first deck. Like it was a lot to do in the middle of the mix.So the second version of the GDJ has two rows of buttons so you can essentially like hold chords and do two commands at the same time and I don't have to like have my hands everywhere. It was very essential that the first version had all the stuff you could possibly need if you have like bare bones to DJ, but the second one has like everything you need and some more  like it's got looping,it's got effects, it's got like different stuff, yeah it's just got more so yeah the newer iterations will be a little smaller I think about this size is pretty good but I just need to make everything a little more compact like I have big hands so I can do this but if someone had little hands it'd be kind hard, they’d be struggling. It came out good, hopefully it's in a museum one day. I have had a lot of DJs ask for their own, but I only have two and they took months to make. My intention is by the time this program is done I have like a manufacturable easily replicable version that I could just like essentially hit a button and it's way easier to make it in one or two days as opposed to like one or two months. I think it has great performance capabilities and makes DJing a lot more fun.

GETTING PAID AS AN ARTIST?

So I DJ, I produce, I rap, and I write. I think songwriting is like if you're gonna get paid from it in 2025 like well it's gotta blow up and you got to be like one of the main people writing it. Most songs have like eight people credited cuz you got the dude who's sitting on the couch and said nothing but he was in the room so he changed the vibe you know, he’s got to be credited. Or like the manager that came in for two seconds made a change to it too , he also gotta be credited. Between producing and being a DJ I made the most bread because producing like they're gonna buy the beat or at least you're gonna get some sort of royalties off it. For the Disney thing specifically I was working with an artist who got the project and then came to me to produce it so I think I got some royalties on it but it was mainly like an upfront thing because they needed it soon. I think a lot of people these days are just trying to pay you with some sort of clout which is valuable. You know I think it depends where you're at in your career and like who it is and if it connects to your brand and whatnot. I think I've definitely got the most money from DJing, that being said DJing doesn't pay as much as it used to. I also haven't tried to get booked like that. Every DJ gig I've ever got has been from word of mouth like someone came to one of my sets then invited me to do another. I do want to make an actual push to like send mixes out to clubs and bars, but I honestly haven't really had to. I'm very fortunate for that, but it is hard to make it as a DJ.

FASHION?

I think being a fashion designer is like the first thing a lot of people meet me as cuz it's a visual thing, an outfit is a good conversation starter. I started doing clothes when I was in Hawaii. I was seeing someone who made clothes but had no sewing machine and I got them a machine for their birthday. At a certain point I was like could you show me how to use it and they showed me one lesson like this is how you thread it this is how you sew two pieces of fabric together and it just opened my mind. I went to the thrift shop, bought  hella Hawaiian shirts, cut them in half and then reattached the two sides of different ones together and I did that like 20 times and then I went to the beach and I sold them and I put them online and I sold them and I paid rent that way. I was like oh shit like this is way faster than fucking making music. I like the recognition from fashion because it’s in front of me, it’s instant. Choosing to use thrifted clothes was a way to use the waste that clothing creates and minimize it so I wanted all my shit to be upcycled. My brand is called Yumekami which means God of dreams in Japanese. It's a tribute to whatever deity gives us creative ideas. The logo is like two lightning bolts, kind of like one pointing up and down. I call them "enlightening bolts”. I think it's symbolic of “as above, so below”  also like there's a connection between the divine universe and yourself. Fashion’s been great, I did a New York Fashion Week show and made the visuals for it and got all the models and just seeing all the clothing that I've made on physical bodies walking like collectively together it was so beautiful. I think I haven't really been focused on selling clothes as much as just pushing myself to see what I can make and just being fly for myself you know.  It's got me into so many more rooms.

C: What's next for you, Tofu?

I've been working out every day working out every day for the past 17 days. I'll take one break and I keep going like all calisthenics stuff and like running and I feel really great so that's what's next for me physically, you know tofu jacked on the way. But in terms of my art and my music I want to put out more digital content for the GDJ. I've kind of just posted what other people film of me but I want to be more forward with what I want to do.  I've been rapping more you know like I kind of took a large step back from that like being in grad school and doing clothes and other stuff it was just such a long road to make it as a rapper and I'm like I'm good at other things and people are sometimes only good at rapping like let's work on our own shit and I can always come back to it. I also think focusing on being a rapper as a black person in America if you rap first and then you do anything else you will always be a rapper who did something it's never gonna be more to some people.  You know like fucking Tyler like he's so much more than rapper you know but he's gonna get labeled as rapper first you know. So what's next? More shows, more content, more GDJ versions, more clothing for sure. I think there's a lot of potential and I'm excited to see what happens next. 

C: Any shoutouts?

Shout out Brandon for connecting us shout out Nami for connecting me. To my mom's for having me my dad for you know going through it family first obviously. Shout out the deity you know whatever deity y'all want to put there that one you feel me, shout out new people that I met recently that have shown me support for the GDJ and all the stuff I do. It's given me so much inspiration and drive and motivation to continue. I think I've done a lot of stuff and I thought everything was genius, but this is the first time other people are saying it to me. It's like it's really dope so anyone that has expressed to me that they fuck with what I'm doing and they want me to keep going and see more like shout out you because it really means a lot.

SEEING THE GDJ IN ACTION LIVE IS ONE OF THE MOST FUN EXPERIENCES WE HAVE HAD AT A DJ SET… TRUST US WHEN WE SAY TOFU IS UP NEXT. BIG THANK YOU TO TOFU FOR SPEAKING WITH US, AND LETTING US INTO HIS NICE ASS APARTMENT.

SUBJECT/BRAND : TOFU JACK @tofu.jack

PHOTOGRAPHER : LARRY PUMAREJO @yung.larry

MODEL : TOFU JACK @tofu.jack

EDITOR : E&C* @acediastudios

TEXT : E&C* @acediastudios