Raised between the cornfields of rural Illinois and the housing projects of Clementine in Memphis, Tennessee, DJ Spanish Fly began DJing in the mid-1980s, building up a devoted following on the cassette tapes he made and sold by hand. It was Spanish Fly who picked up on The Showboys’s 1986 single “Drag Rap”, a record that had gone largely unnoticed in New York, and championed its thunderous breakdown until it was inescapable in Memphis clubs. That loop – now known as the Triggerman beat – became one of the most sampled breaks in hip-hop history, forming the rhythmic backbone of entire genres. Spanish Fly’s own tracks helped originate the dance and song traditions of Buck Jumping and Gangsta Walking, the styles he named and codified, and which later evolved into modern Jookin’. Rarely credited in the mainstream retellings of Southern hip-hop, Spanish Fly is one of the genre’s true architects – the man whose 808s, slowed-down grooves and church-rooted showmanship laid the blueprint for crunk, trap and everything that followed.

Matteo Pini You came to Memphis as “a country boy from rural Illinois”. What was that transition like?

DJ Spanish Fly I was born and raised in Memphis, and then at the age of six, we moved to Illinois. We did country stuff: fishing, gardening; raising corn, beans, tomatoes. I was a Boy Scout and a junior fireman. Racism wasn’t a big issue there: everyone seemed to get along. My stepfather was the pastor of the biggest church in town, so I was in church almost every day. Moving back to Memphis when I was a teenager meant we moved into street life. We were in government housing in a low-income neighbourhood, and people were very poor, working paycheck to paycheck if they worked at all. You’d see pimps, prostitutes, winos, drug dealers, all the dark things. It was a total 180 from how I was raised.

MP When did music become something you were engaged with in Memphis?

DJSF Immediately; I was always into music. The church captivated me: the drums, the bass guitars, the tambourines, the big bass speakers, the amplifiers, the microphones. The music was in me, but back in Memphis, I didn’t have those things anymore. I started DJing, collecting pieces off the curb. People throw stuff away, and I would take it home and play with it.

MP Was there already an organised scene in Memphis?

DJSF Memphis had a sound, but not the one I went on to create: disco, blues, country, bluegrass, gospel. I picked up on disco and Kraftwerk and we had New York to lean on.

The club and the church are sister and brother: the church has a pastor; the club has a DJ ... The church has communion; the club has beer

MP You got your start at the legendary Memphis establishment Club No Name. How did that happen?

DJSF I was DJing in my neighbourhood, and I was the best at it, scratching and mixing on other people’s equipment. My guys said, “Man, you’re the baddest! There’s this place called Club No Name doing a rap contest and a DJ contest, and you should enter the DJ contest.” Another one of my guys was doing the rap contest, but two days before, he got incarcerated. I entered the DJ contest and won it with my routines and scratching. I had a rap that went along with my routine, so I entered the rap contest too and won that as well. The owners said, “Man, you ought to stick around; they like you here. We can find something for you to do.” They had SP-1200s [a sampler pivotal to Golden Age hip-hop], 808s and 909s, proper professional stuff. It was like candy to me. I was like, “I gotta stick around just for this equipment, dog.”

One of the DJs stopped working there, and the others wanted me to be an exact replacement for him. I took them up on the offer, but I did it my way. Instead of the house and techno music he played I laid down explicit stuff you couldn’t hear on the radio. I made cassettes and gave them away at the club and sold a few. I wanted to be like the guys with the professional records: Soulsonic Force, Kurtis Blow or the Bar-Kays.

I decided to make a song and ease it in at the beginning of a mixtape. I bought a cassette deck with my DJing money: all the club equipment stayed at the club, and I made my own little loop track at home. For “Smoking Onion”, I sampled a Beastie Boys record and ended up with a perfectly cut loop with nothing but 808s and snares, for about five minutes. I layered bass, then synths, then vocals and scratches. With every pass, I lost quality. I didn’t know I was creating this “lo-fi sound” they talk about now. People loved “Smoking Onion” so I made another. I made a song called “Gangsta Walk”, and then another called “Get Buck”. Everyone was saying, “Fly, you need to make a best-of! You’re making so many songs we love.” So I did, and that’s where it started. I felt like an artist. My tracks and instrumentals talk to each other when I’m creating. Sometimes I tear up when I’m creating because I can feel them talk to each other.

MP You were the first to use the Triggerman beat, sampled from “Drag Rap” by the Showboys. You can hear it in “Smoking Onion”, and it went on to have an enormous impact on Southern hip-hop, particularly on New Orleans bounce. Beyoncé, Lil Wayne, Drake and Cardi B have all used it. Did you have any idea how influential it would become?

DJSF I had no idea! The Showboys talk to me regularly, and they always thank me for discovering that record. Profile Records [one of the early hip-hop labels] had shelved it: when it came out it didn’t do numbers, it was going to go on the back burner, and then suddenly they were getting calls from Memphis saying, “Come do a show.” They were like, “Damn, that record? It ain’t doing nothing!” But I put it on a cassette because I liked the snare, the 808 breakdown and the whistle, and started playing it in the club every chance I got. People started getting buck to it [a fast-footwork dance style from Memphis], and it became my go-to song. I played it until it was programmed in people’s heads: this is the song we get buck off of.

MP The BPMs coming out of other cities were much faster than what you were making. How did audiences react to this chuggier rhythm?

DJSF That was the rhythm that they could get buck off of. They weren’t used to this trancey, dark, bass-heavy music, but they kept me around at Club No Name because I sent the sales sky high. It all came from the church, really. The club and the church are sister and brother: the church has a pastor; the club has a DJ. The church has ushers; the club has security. The church has trustees; the club has managers. The church has communion; the club has beer.

MP You were an early supporter of 2 Live Crew, pioneers of Miami bass and Southern hip-hop.

DJSF 2 Live Crew and I were the same. When I first started, we thought rap was a trend that would die within three years. I had a radio show every Saturday night at midnight on Majic 101 FM, the only rap and hip-hop station in Memphis at the time. Club No Name held 1,000 people, but if you couldn’t get in because it was too crowded, or you were underage, you could listen to that show. They threw me off air for playing 2 Live Crew’s “Throw The D”; I thought I had the radio version, but it was actually the X-rated one. My music was stepping on a lot of disco and R&B toes, and the station didn’t like it. It was an excuse to get rid of me.

MP At the time, commercial music was slick and earnest: adult contemporary ballads, Luther Vandross, the dregs of disco, easy-listening R&B. How was the broader response to your new sound?

DJSF It was hard to accept because it was such a change. There weren’t any fans at first: they caught on through the guys getting buck in the club, and the girls who came to get buck with the guys, and it grew from there. Now there are a million-plus fans, but when I first started, they didn’t want that music played. It was the type of music you played when your mom wasn’t listening, because otherwise you might get a whooping.

MP So many of your song titles are based around dancing, Bucking and Jookin’, for example.

DJSF The dance was called Bucking first, like getting bucked off a horse. It also came from dodging the security guard in line, moving like you were on skates; the skating rink was a big thing in our time, too. I made “Get Buck”, then we fixed the dance up and called it Gangsta Walking, and I made “Gangsta Walk”. These days the kids are Jookin’, but it’s the same principle.

MP Shortly after Memphis rap group Three 6 Mafia won an Oscar for “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”, they flew you out to Los Angeles to record a verse on “First 48”, an ode to their forebears. How did it feel to be recognised as a true originator?

DJSF It made me feel really, really good. I thought I was left out for a while. They flew me out to the mansion they were staying in, right next to David Copperfield’s. The driver picked me up and said the guys were performing at a WWE match, but Juicy J busted through the door within 20 minutes, saying, “We heard you was here and came back immediately.” They took me out to the poolside, and you could see straight over LA – the cars in the hills, the mountains. They said, “Fly, if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have none of this. You are the official DJ for Three 6 Mafia.” We talk every other day now. I’m a humble guy doing this for fun. I’m grateful it brings in a little revenue now, but I did it all for free, and I’d still do it for free. I appreciate everything: I appreciate my fans, this interview, the younger generation.

It was the type of music you played when your mom wasn’t listening, because otherwise you might get a whooping

MP In 2006, you received the Pioneer of Memphis Hip Hop Award from the United Memphis Artist Association. Southern music history – even platforms like VH1’s Hip Hop Honors – has been criticised for leaving Memphis out almost entirely. Why do you think that is?

DJSF It’s always been underground. My first deal was with untitled (recs) this year. I got tons of songs from the 1980s and 1990s that nobody’s even heard that are gonna be released. Underground means what it says. I ignored the proper ways, the rules and regulations: I wasn’t trying to do it legal and legit like everybody else. It’s just me, a one-man game: I manufacture, print, record, distribute. Needing anybody’s help is a no-no. Now I’ve got a management team, a booking agent and a label behind me. It’s all fresh to me, but it’s something that had to grow first.

MP Distributing for free probably gave your music more reach than it would have had otherwise. There’s less of a barrier between the people and the music.

DJSF Absolutely. That’s what makes it special now; it’s been hidden all these damn years. If it wasn’t for the internet, you probably wouldn’t have heard it. You might have heard other songs that sounded similar, but they weren’t the blueprint.

MP You’re still DJing, 40 years on. What keeps you energised?

DJSF Before I was anything, I was a DJ. My mom bought me a little orange suitcase that you’d think was just a suitcase. But unbuckle it, and there’s the white platter, the speaker, the white cord you plug into the wall and voilà – a turntable. I used to take it to the kitchen and play my mom’s little 45s and gospel records to my sisters and brothers. Sometimes I’d reverse it, just to hear it going backwards. I’m not saying I invented scratching, but I wanted to know how this damn piece of plastic was playing these sounds. What the hell was going on?

My stepfather was blind, and I was his guide when he did revivals state-to-state. I loved going to the radio station where he did a 30-minute radio sermon on air every Sunday morning. I’d set up his microphone for him and stay until he finished. I remember peering into Studio A, the control room. They had the DJ microphone, vintage turntables, albums sitting up in their jackets, the 45s, the 78s, the eight-tracks, and headphones. I was wowed.

There was always this fat white guy there, named Danny Mac, with a long beard, hippie hair and blue overalls. He’d see me as a little child with my eyes glued to that room, and he let me in. I said, “Man, one day I want to be a DJ.” That’s what sparked it in me. I was dancing too: I wanted to be a b-boy. I still DJ on Beale Street and Millington, outside Memphis. I’m a great DJ in any genre of music because it’s about entertaining. My scorecard is the dance floor, so if nobody’s dancing, I’m not scoring well. I keep changing the song until I find out what they like. DJing is forever, man; I never want to stop. .

All images courtesy DJ Spanish Fly