Interview Thinking outside the box with DJ Hijinx

A bar situated in a hotel lobby is generally associated with bad lighting, cheap booze, and skeezy human-to-human activity. But the Holiday Inn at 58th and I-25 offers a surreal surprise: Teddy’s Nightclub. While the longtime Denver establishment falls prey to some of those stereotypes (especially with its inappropriate neon lighting and creepy floor-to-ceiling wood paneling) the music tells a different story. Resident mix-master Kyle Montoya, a.k.a. DJ Hijinx, mans the Mac-driven digital ones and twos every Friday and Saturday night at Teddy’s, playing everything from Hurricane Chris to Zapp & Roger to Black Eyed Peas—and he does it well. So well, in fact, that the club reports an average of more than a thousand people grinding on its glossy floors on a regular Friday evening. The art and craft of blending T-Pain into Kool And The Gang is Hijinx’s specialty. The Denver native and old-school advocate recently spoke to The A.V. Club about his gangsta-rap crowd and the moms who love them.

The A.V. Club: You’ve had a residency at Teddy’s Nightclub on Friday and Saturday nights for more than two years. What's your crowd like?

Kyle Montoya: There’s a very big difference in the crowd. On Friday nights, I play hip-hop—but not what Denver would usually consider hip-hop. Other than a track by someone easily recognizable like Lil Wayne, I will play songs by guys like Lil Boosie, Lil Flip, and Lil Will. It’s a darker side of rap. For instance, I’ll play a song like “My Dougie,” which you would never hear on KS 107.5, but it’s a song that everyone knows and dances their ass off to at Teddy’s.

Saturdays it’s pretty much the same crowd—only they bring their mothers. [Laughs.] I try to keep the vulgarity out of my song choices, while adding a dance element, and playing about 70 percent old-school music. On this night, I will go from The Ohio Players to Jagged Edge to ending the night with Lil Wayne.

AVC: You’ve played Girl Talk to a packed dance floor before. Do you get a good response introducing non-traditional artists to your particular audience?

KM: I would love for Teddy’s to be into Girl Talk, but there are only a few people who really enjoy him in that setting. My crowd might appreciate a mash-up, for instance his combination of Elton John and Biggie [Girl Talk’s “Smash Your Head”], but they don’t like hearing just a hook or a verse. I came from the mash-up style, so I appreciate Girl Talk’s production skills—but an older crowd on a Saturday night just wants to hear the whole song. [Laughs.] I took those two tracks (Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” and Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy”) and created an extended version to satisfy the audience.

AVC: When you talk about “old-school,” what does that mean to you as a DJ? Over the last 20-plus years, sampling has injected so much music history into the contemporary, often without the audience realizing someone like, say, Biz Markie, is a real artist, not just a sample.

KM: When I first started playing old-school at Teddy’s, I focused on hip-hop. But old-school incorporates funk, Motown, R&B, '80s beats like Debbie Deb, and even music from the early '90s. There’s no real cap on the old-school label. I want the audience to hear the old-school origin of the new-school sound—for instance, I will take an original song, like Mary Jane Girls’ “All Night Long” and blend it into LL Cool J’s “Around The Way Girl,” the song that samples it. I’m playing music that came out before I was born, and most of it I picked up from old-school rap legend Candyman.

AVC: Candyman? As in “Knockin' Boots” Candyman?

KM: Yeah! I DJed for him last summer. We did some gigs together, and started a project called “The Hip-Hop Workshop," with Candyman mentoring up-and-coming artists. He approached me at Teddy’s actually, and said he liked what I was doing. That night, he did a live performance in front of the crowd, and we started working together from there. With old-school especially, Candyman taught me that people want it where they want it—if you’re going to mess with or remix something, do it in the later half of the song. But that’s just his old-school mentality; I’m talking about the ADD generation and Girl Talk. Why listen to one song when you can listen to 25 in the span of one track? [Laughs.]