Triksta by Nik Cohn

Author:Nik Cohn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448103553
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2019-02-20T16:00:00+00:00

DJ Duck was street royalty. He had been working block parties since the early nineties and, with MC Shorty, was responsible for one of the all-time bounce classics, “Where My Ole Lady At?” His speciality was the remix, taking national hits and making them New Orleans. If the studio equipment he used was basic at best, the roughness of the sound fitted his hard-driving, no-prisoners style. I’d especially liked his take on the Ying Yang Twins’ “Whistle While You Twerk,” and had requested his presence at the Sweat Box to meet Andy Wickham. Thin to the point of emaciation, he looked, as someone once said of the legendary hustler Titanic Thompson, like the advance man for a famine, with a gentle, tremulous smile and beautiful long hands that kept flexing of their own volition, as if reaching for sounds just beyond his grasp.

Though Duck had recently released a remix album on Take Fo’, he hadn’t created any original tracks in a while and Earl Mackie was skeptical when I wanted to try him with Choppa. I believed he was worth pursuing and made a pilgrimage to the Ninth Ward, where he still lived with his parents.

The Ninth, sometimes called Psycho Ward, is as deep New Orleans as you can find. Duck’s home was hard by the Industrial Canal, a few blocks away from the Desire project, and a heavy whiff of chemical waste hung in the air. The house itself was a brick ranch-style with a small garden, immaculately kept. When I rang his bell, Duck’s mother answered. A dignified church lady in a floral dress, she said that Duck was out running an error, but I should come in and wait. We sat in the front room and she served me a soda. The room was a religious shrine. Paintings of black Madonnas and black Jesuses covered the walls, plaster statues of black saints clustered on the floor. “We try to keep it nice,” said Mother Duck. That wasn’t easy, no. When she and her husband moved in, thirty years ago, the neighborhood was God-fearing. It was like living in a village; people grew their own vegetables; everybody shared. The next-door neighbors, wonderful people, were white. Lots of folks were white back then, it wasn’t a problem. Those people had moved away long since. Anyone who was able had moved away. Now there was nothing left, just wickedness and crime, and God was mocked, said Mother Duck, but He would not be mocked forever, no, God always had the last word.

At this point, Duck showed up with his confrere, another Will, and we retired to his studio, a tiny box maybe eight feet square. Just as his mother’s walls were given over to the Lord, every inch of the studio walls was consecrated to twelve-inch vinyl: devil’s music at the heart of sanctity.

Duck was in a celebratory mood. He worked days at a sewage plant and had just received a promotion. It felt good to be appreciated, he said. A lot of people had doubted him.

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