Julian Leal is a 21-year-old college student majoring in business at Columbia College in the South Loop, but he’s better known by his stage name: DJ Drip. In his Instagram bio, he calls himself “The Midwest’s Youngest + Hottest DJ”—and depending on who counts as a DJ and how you measure hotness, that might even be true.
“I’m from northwest Indiana. From East Chicago, Indiana,” Leal says. “That’s actually a city—I was born and raised there.” His hometown has a population of roughly 28,000, and he reps it proudly when he talks about his humble beginnings, which aren’t too far in the past. He says he started DJing his freshman year of high school. “My best friend threw a party for his birthday, and he was like, ‘We need someone to play music,’” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Well, I got these little speakers in my room. I could use these and just use my phone.’” Instead of his phone, he ended up using a desktop computer, switching back and forth between songs playing in YouTube tabs to get the crowd hyped.
During the two years since his graduation from high school in 2018, Leal has created lots of opportunities for himself with his talents as a DJ. But coming into 2020, he still wanted to do something else to propel his career—and that’s what guided his decision to enroll at Columbia that fall. “I was DJing all these clubs. I was DJing every single 18-plus nightclub in the city at the time, I had residencies. I’m doing the biggest warehouse parties in Chicago, the biggest house parties in Indiana. But it was like, ‘OK, how can I take this to the next level?’”
