DJ Hank, 27, moved to Chicago from North Carolina in 2011 to become a bike messenger. He began producing footwork tracks within a year, after befriending members of the influential Teklife collective. In April, Louisville label Sophomore Lounge issued his first 12-inch, Traffic Control.
I fired up Google one day and started calling all the messenger companies I could find. In retrospect, that was probably crazy to be a bike-messenger manager in Chicago getting an e-mail like, “Yo, I’m this 18-year-old kid. I don’t even live there, but I want to come work for you guys.”
[For Traffic Control] I definitely wanted to do something that was less sample based—like, less straight remixes. There’s obviously still samples on the album; I used samples from cell phones, traffic sounds, and social-media videos. Those were the motifs I wanted to draw on for the album, ’cause it’s something that really reflected my life in a very personal and honest way. The song “Traffic Control,” with all the traffic sounds on it, that was a track that I had wanted to make for a couple years. I had a concept in my head just from being a bike messenger; it just took me a couple years to unlock what I needed to do on that one.
I just moved houses. I haven’t done music in two months ’cause all my stuff’s been in boxes—I just got all my music stuff set up, so I’m real excited. I was initially trying to go do some shows, but it’s been cool. Got a new house, and that’s something to be happy for. v
