Audionaut

Frank151: You were born and raised in New York, correct?
Neil Armstrong: Yep. Born and raised in Flushing, Queens. I went to high school and grew up right near St. John’s University. I went to a very multicultural church. I was a church kid. I went to a church in Staten Island, went to high school in the Bronx, went to college in Manhattan. I grew up all over New York.

F151: I take it you’re Catholic?
NA: No. I’m one of the few, rare Protestant Filipinos. A lot of the Catholic gestures that they do—like when you see an elder you put their hand to your forehead—I never did that. I never did all the Catholic-type dances. Never did cotillion. Never went to one, never got invited to one [laughs].
F151: Were your parents born in the Philippines?
NA: Born in the Philippines, came over when they were like 25. They were able to come here because my grandfather was a Colonel in the army in World War II. I think it was…not super easy, but relatively easy for my family to get over here. And then my whole family ended up going to Columbia University. I mean literally my whole family. My grandmother went to Columbia, my mother, three of her two brothers, and then my father ended up going to Columbia for Law School. So they all came over in a very specific way—not sneaking in on the boat, not being sponsored.
F151: Your parents must have had really high expectations for you.
NA: Yeah, but not in the worst way. There’s this lady that they call the Tiger Mom right now, and she’s all like, “I don’t let the kids do anything. I don’t let them watch TV, I don’t let them do this, do that.” No, my family was never really like that. And I don’t even know if it’s ’cause I wasn’t a bad kid. I had a lot of good influences I guess. The church stuff. I went to—for lack of a better word—a liberal church. They actually had retreats where they were like, “We’re gonna invite people of other religions so that they can talk about their religions and their beliefs.” Literally Black, Pakistani, Filipino, and White. Everything was mixed. It was a very strange situation. And then I spent the majority of my time playing violin and piano and blah blah blah. I naturally kept out of trouble. Then when the hip-hop stuff came into play, as long as I did good in school, they didn’t say anything, and then when I grew up, they were like, “As long as you’re paying your mortgage we’re not gonna say a word.” And then next thing I’m DJing for Obama on national TV.
F151: How do they feel about hip-hop?
NA: Just like any person from a different era; I wouldn’t say they hate it, but I’m sure they have their opinion of it. I used to emulate certain things. Before I was bald I had long hair once, and I braided it, ’cause I was into De La Soul or whatever, and I was like, “I’m gonna get dreads!” [Laughs] You know, I was a kid! They’re like, “What are you doing? You’re Filipino, you’re Asian, why would you do that to your hair?” They weren’t the hippest parents in the world. I didn’t get my musical taste from my pops. He listened to Lawrence Welk; I have his old Lawrence Welk albums. Engelbert Humperdinck [laughs]. I don’t even know if you know who these people are! But he never stressed me out when I’d come into the car and play whatever.
F151: Do you know what part of the Philippines they came from?
NA: My father is from a place called Nueva Vizcaya and my mother is from a place called Abra, but my mother I think for the most part grew up as an Army kid, so she basically grew up the equivalent of growing up in Manhattan. She grew up somewhere in Manila or Quezon City. I’m not sure what’s what ’cause I’ve only been there like nine days out of my life. I think she had a middle-to-upper-class upbringing because of my grandfather. My father, on the other hand, actually grew up pretty opposite, all that stuff about “walking two miles to school.” I’ve been to the province where my father is from and it is the “corrugated metal roof, with about 15 people in a small room and chickens running around”-type of deal. They definitely instilled in me this idea of. “Always work hard, don’t take for granted what you have.” That was key in how I live my life. “I know this is how it is right now, but if I don’t do certain things to maintain it, it could easily be thrown away.” So when I was on tour with Jay[-Z], I wasn’t buying Escalades; I was saving up the money and buying cribs. That definitely comes from my father and my mother, how they grew up.


F151: You mentioned that you were in the Philippines for nine days out of your life. When was that trip?
NA: Maybe a little longer. When I was 21 years old, and actually when my DJ career kinda started, I took a trip to the Philippines. This was back in the summer of 1995. I remember bits and pieces, but basically they had me shuffling around all over the Philippines, from Manila to up in the province where my family was. I was all over the place. I just remember hanging out with my family and witnessing where my parents came from. You’ll hear stories all the time: people are poor. There are poor people here in America, in Queens, in New York, but it’s not the same. It’s not like how poor people are out in a third-world country. I forget the current PC term, but that’s what was going on over there. And then recently I went back after I toured with Jay, so I’d say late 2008…maybe early 2009, I was out in the Philippines for a little while. There’s something about music and Filipinos. The joke in Asia—or not the joke, but…they used to always say Filipinos are like the Black people of Asia. We love music, we love dancing. We’re good at it. From the Jabbawockeez to the dude who took over for Journey [Arnel Pineda], we’re good at it.
F151: Did you find that you had a following out in the Philippines?
NA: I’m not really sure if I would say it like that. There were definitely people there to see me spin, but it’s not like I was getting mobbed or anything like that [laughs]. I probably have more fans per capita in San Francisco, for example, because of my mixtapes, and I used to play there even before I was working with Jay and all that.
F151: You weren’t at Pacquiao status.
NA: Oh hell no [laughs]! But if you’re on stage over there in the Philippines, you get elevated very quickly and people just love you. It’s this weird thing over there; once you appear on a public stage, people really revere you.

F151: You mentioned you first went to the Philippines in the summer of ’95. You were new to the DJ scene at that time?NA: I wasn’t Neil Armstrong yet. I became Neil Armstrong when I took that trip out to Asia. That’s when I linked up with Q-Bert and Shortkut out in Taiwan, when they were out there making the Vestax mixer. When I came back to the States people had heard I was the dude who interviewed Q-Bert and I was hanging out with them, that’s how I ended up linking up with the 5th Platoon members and the X-Men. At the time I was writing for a magazine called The Guillotine. I would just approach people like, “I’m writing about hip-hop in Asia.” When I came back to the States I ran into the X-Men at Fat Beats and I was like, “I just did this piece about Q-Bert. Can I write about you guys?” Starting with the writing thing, it turned into them teaching me how to DJ.


F151: New York is inarguably the birthplace of hip-hop. Did you enjoy your surroundings when you were growing up here?
NA: I was always one of these snotty New Yorkers who was like, “Yeah, I’m from New York. That’s right!” [Laughs] Of course! I definitely didn’t live a crazy life, like I told you. I never snuck into train yards and did graff or hung out on a street corner smoking. I was a good kid. But I had this crazy balance. I grew up minutes away from Jamaica Ave., and then of course just being able to jump on the subway, you don’t think about it—I probably wouldn’t do it now just ’cause I’m older and I know better—but when I was younger I’d take the subway at three in the morning, ’cause I didn’t have a car.
F151: It was a different New York back then. It was much rougher at that time.
NA: Oh yes, definitely [laughs]. New York is soft compared to how it used to be. I always loved the Lower East Side—especially the original Lower East Side. It’s changed a lot, obviously, but there was something about New York that was always gritty. Whatever. It’s clichéd, but it was real. You could walk around, the dude that became Mos Def would be performing with KRS-ONE, and you could run into Method Man. I remember going into Tower Records and seeing Q-Tip there. This is a long time ago when I was still just a superfan. Nowhere else in the world would it be like that. And then there’s stuff that would happen during the year: the Rocksteady Reunion stuff, you could go out on a Wednesday night and see a show with the Pharcyde and Supernatural and friggin’ Biggie Smalls performed.
F151: I heard you saw him and Tupac open for Pharcyde.
NA: Yes. Exactly. Stuff like that. That was New York. And that’s the only place where it would happen.

F151: As far as being Filipino in New York, was it something that defined you and you took lot of pride in, or did you identify more as a New Yorker?
NA: Me personally, I was more on my New York thing. I grew up in a different era when there was less awareness. I was like, “I perform in front of people all the time, whatever color they are. They already see I’m a Filipino. What else do you need me to do?” The kids I was around always embraced me that way. They didn’t really see me as “this Filipino kid”; they were more like, “If you wanna hear the latest pirate radio show, Neil probably stayed up all night recording it. He’s the dude you need to get the tape from.” Or later on, “Neil’s probably gonna be going to Rocksteady. Hit up Neil.” It was never like, “We hang out with this Filipino kid.” It was other things that brought me to where I am. There were a lot of artists later on who pigeonholed themselves ’cause they would only work with other Asian organizations, and they would never spread their wings. If you do that, it’s like preaching to the choir. “We already know what’s up, let other people see what we can do. Don’t worry about those guys, hopefully they’ll have your back no matter what.” That’s how I ended up being able to work with people like Jay, and all the adidas stuff I’ve done.

F151: I heard that you have a degree in Chemical Engineering.
NA: [Laughs] Yeah, I do.
F151: Do you see any crossover between that and DJing?
NA: I mean, if you wanna get all philosophical...yeah.
F151: Is it something that has day-to-day applications in your life?
NA: Chemical Engineering? [Laughs] I mean I had a horrible time in college. I did it. I was lucky—I got a scholarship. But Chemical Engineering is a very, very difficult discipline so I hated it with a passion. It was horrible. But basically, what a chemical engineer does is they take situations in life, for example working with materials, and they do something useful with it. So they’re the people who will go and take the process and make gasoline. “Let’s refine this, so that we don’t pollute the ocean, so that we get the most power.” That’s the definition of an engineer in general. We make useful things out of whatever. As far as music goes, as far as my mixtape making goes, all I’m doing is something similar. I take music, I add my twist on it, and I try to make something better.

F151: You mentioned that DJed for Obama. Talk a little bit about that.
NA: Part of the things that I did with Jay…at some point we were doing fundraiser concerts. We did one in Cleveland, we did one in Miami, I think we did one in Detroit. And then when Obama got elected, Jay got invited to perform at the inauguration, the Neighborhood Ball. I was of course there on the turntables. I had the interesting role of opening the song scratching Obama’s voice. As far as I know, in the history of hip-hop, in the history of the United States, in the history of whatever, I am the first representative on the ones and twos who has ever performed for the inauguration of a president.
F151: That’s a nice badge! You toured with Jay-Z for a year or two?
NA: For two years: 2008 and 2009 and technically into the beginning of 2010, but I stopped touring last November. I was supposed to go again on tour in March but I ended up not going. Young Guru took over.
F151: Was that experience pretty non-stop, or was it intermittent throughout the two years?
NA: Intermittent, but I had to be on-call, which really sucked. I couldn’t really plan anything. There was one show they told me at like 10 AM that I needed to be at rehearsal at 1 PM. They’ll do stuff like that, and it sucks. I just needed to wait around. And on their side it’s like, “If you don’t do it, there are 100 DJs behind you who will. Take it or leave it.”

F151: What have you got going on now?
NA: Post Jay, I started working hardcore with adidas. I did a bunch of ads for them. Nothing’s definite yet, so I don’t wanna let the cat out of the bag, but I might be doing something in their new ad campaign on a larger level, which should be really cool on my part. It’ll involve possibly one of my other passions. I used to be a marathon runner, and then I got hurt. So I’m gonna be doing something involving a return to this running thing that I used to be into. A part of me is always gonna enjoy rocking parties and doing all that. And then making mixtapes. I’m trying to go back to doing that, ’cause I know most of my friends remember me doing all that, and I haven’t in a while.