FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

DJ Carisma: the Voice of Young California

One of the biggest DJs on the West Coast steps out on her own.

DJ Carisma does not spin in a bikini. “I’m a good DJ whether I’m a guy or a girl,” she says, grinning. “I like that people tweet, ‘What?! Carisma’s a girl?!’”

That she is. A week before she gave birth, in fact, she played for 10,000 teenagers at Disneyland Grad Nite. She worked the whole nine months—not that she ever mentioned she was pregnant to promoters and booking agents beforehand.

“It’s a man’s world. A man’s industry,” Carisma says. She doesn’t say so explicitly, but it’s implied: a woman working in hip hop already has enough strikes against her. The last thing she needs is to give them another reason to throw her out of the club.

Advertisement

Then again, DJ Carisma has proved she not only can hang with, but also influence the fellas. Since breaking the New Boyz’ jittery hit “You’re a Jerk” in 2009, she’s become the only female DJ on Power 106, Los Angeles’ biggest hip-hop radio station, as well as your favorite new rapper’s favorite DJ. If there’s a party that’s poppin’ in L.A. tonight, she’ll be on deck.

She also has “broken” (i.e., been the first DJ to champion and introduce a song to a wide audience) so many bubblegum-sticky West Coast records over the past few years—“Toot It and Boot It,” “Cat Daddy,” “Teach Me How to Dougie,” “Gas Pedal”—that she and DJ Amen from KMEL in San Francisco formed Young California, a West Coast DJ crew that now breaks records as a unit.

“All the West Coast artists that are winning right now, I had a part in bringing them to the radio,” she says. That is not an exaggeration.

However, today the turntables have, well, turned. “Anyway,” the first single off her upcoming album, tentatively titled DJ Carisma Presents, has just had its world premiere on Power 106. It made Carisma cry.

Now, she’s slumped happily in the Young California headquarters, a small studio in a mustard-colored commercial Burbank building that also houses a plumbing business, insurance office and psychic center. The walls are papered with colorful candy wrapper-like record covers—Xscape, Total, Lil Kim. Carisma’s hair is pulled into a taut ponytail and she’s dressed in shredded acid washed jeans and sneakers. Her chunky gold watch and a sparkly necklace that reads “EML” (singer TeeFLii’s label; she was an early supporter) are the only things that separate her from the high schoolers she often entertains.

Advertisement

“She just asked me how old I am!” Carisma says to her publicist, laughing. Her PR replies that she’s 25. “Twenty-five! Twenty-five, baby,“ Carisma hoots, still laughing.

Born Cathleen Robertson in Santa Ana, Carisma grew up in a household blaring every style of music but hip hop. Her father was into “Harley Davidson rock” and her mother, though Hispanic, was a Hawaiian dancer and only listened to Hawaiian and Christian music. Being naturally outgoing, Carisma began hosting her mother’s events when she was 8 years old, setting up the speakers and then introducing the dancers.

Even so, Carisma was drawn to R&B and hip hop, and the first cassette she ever purchased was Da Brat’s Funkdafied. “That’s how I really fell in love with hip hop. I used to make mixtapes off Power 106 and The Beat,” she says. “I remember being a little girl with the radio by my bed just waiting for Kevin Nash to come on every night so I could hear ‘Butta Love’ or Keith Sweat’s ‘Twisted.’”

In high school, she played music for football and basketball games, which led her to enroll in a nine-month radio broadcasting program at Minnesota’s Brown Institute. But when she graduated, she decided she didn’t want to be a personality. She wanted to be a DJ. Moving back home and using the money she’d saved working at an Athlete’s Foot in the Mall of America, she bought a used turntable. As a bonus, the guy tossed in a crate of vinyl records, and she started practicing.

Advertisement

Church and youth events were her main gigs, but they built her buzz in Orange County and allowed her to play the arena dance battles popularized by David LaChappelle’s 2005 documentary Rize.. Compton rapper Yo-Yo also gave her a shot, hiring Carisma as her DJ from 2006 to 2008. But she still wasn’t spinning on air anywhere.

Her opportunity came through a spot on a now-defunct funk station’s street team. Her workaholism made her seem superhuman, and her gregariousness made her popular, so she caught the attention of Power 106’s street team. When the funk station switched formats, Power absorbed their street team. She was on the ground floor, but at least she’d gotten in the building.

And then the jerk movement began kicking its skinny jean shrink-wrapped legs. In late 2008, jerkin’ began to twitch in high schools across L.A. Teenage producer J-Hawk’s skittery beats, Skittle-colored jeans, updated versions of ‘80s dance craze the Roger Rabbit and raunchy raps like YG’s “Pussy Killer” characterized the movement. The scene’s definitive song, the New Boyz’ “You’re a Jerk,” spread virally at the top of 2009. Carisma, who constantly was playing all-ages events, caught it first.

“I do a lot of stuff for teens. I really pay attention to what they’re listening to,” she says. “I was doing high school events from the Valley all the way down to Orange County, and they kept requesting this song, ‘You’re a Jerk.’ I finally asked one kid and I went home and downloaded it.”

Advertisement

She loved the sound, reached out to the New Boyz on Myspace and broke the record. Power 106’s music director, Emmanuel “E-Man” Coquia and and longtime DJ Felli Fel couldn’t deny her ear. They offered her the Saturday midnight to 2 a.m. shift. She’s not the first female DJ on the station, she points out. A woman with the moniker DJ Short-E was “huge” in the 1990s, she says. But she’s the first since.

The name “Carisma” was chosen by God, she says—“It popped in my head and I looked it up in the dictionary. It was like, ‘a God-given gift through music to influence or charm people,’ and I was like, “Whoaaaaaa”—but her signature drop, the singsongy “CaRISmaaaaaaaaa” was gifted to her by a girl who worked on her street team.

“‘CaRISmaaaaaaaaa!’ I hate that drop!” says Felli Fel. “It just drills in your head. But that’s good, that’s how you know it’s the right drop.”

He’ll have to get used to hearing it. With DJ Carisma Presents, due in late September, Carisma hopes to be the first female to have the reach of DJ Khaled, a radio personality/DJ with a handful of records, his own label and a couple executive titles to his name.

“No female has ever attempted it,” she says, stretching. “[But] I’ve always been a little leader. A lot of people told me I was gonna get nowhere sticking up for these street kids.”

In addition to filling two weekly time windows at Power 106, acting as Honey Cocaine’s official DJ, being booked for parties or shows almost every night and mixing “at least 10 times a week,” Carisma juggles a husband and CC, her three-year-old. Still, she’s hungry for more airtime at Power, preferably a five-day-a-week slot. The “My 1st Song” mentality seems to be in play: She still feels like she’s paying her dues.

Advertisement

Regardless, she’s an affront to the theory that women, especially women in the hip-hop industry, can’t have it—family, career, the respect of her peers plus self-respect—all. Well, all but sleep.

Rebecca Haithcoat lives in Los Angeles and met Soulja Boy one time. She's on Twitter - @rhaithcoat

--

tk

tk

tk