Scratching Master: Supreme La Rock and the Timeless Art of Reviving Music
Photos provided by Supreme La Rock and Marvin Patterson
By Emma Schwichtenberg
On a Christmas morning some years ago, a four-year-old Danny "Supreme La Rock" Clavesilla tore through wrapping paper to unveil a turntable. Decades later, that four-year-old has become an internationally known DJ, still scratching up vinyl records and producing music in a lane all his own.
His first turntable came with the usual assortment of children's music, which Supreme quickly disregarded in favor of his dad's record player and collection of ’60s and ’70s psychedelic vinyls instead.
“As a little kid, I wondered, ‘How does sound come out of plastic?’ They just spin in a circle and they're just so intriguing,” Supreme said. “My first allowance I asked to go to the record store.”
He officially started DJing in 1982, though he claims he wasn’t “doing it right.”
“I was just collecting records and you know as a B-boy — we were dancing to the records. I was DJing but I didn't know what I was doing,” Supreme said.
In 1983, he attended his first rap show and saw a DJ cutting up, scratching, juggling, and doing tricks with records — it was the moment he knew he wanted to take DJing seriously.
“I just started to grab whatever equipment was in our house and tried to teach myself,” Supreme said. “I was self-taught and I did it for years before I did it in public.”
He brought together his dad and brothers record players, mismatched as they were and not even meant for DJing, and began to scratch.
“I learned on those which I think actually helps because if you learn on something terrible, you're good when you get on something good,” Supreme said. “I know a lot of the DJs nowadays want to go out and buy the best equipment and start that way. I'm like ‘no, start on something terrible, it's better for you in the end.’”
Three years later, in ’85, he got his first paid gig.
“I totally bombed,” Supreme said. “It was awful.”
For most DJs, the key to a successful set is the ability to read and gauge the audience, understand what they're looking for, and know what they need to hear before the crowd even knows it themselves. It was a route that Supreme hadn’t quite traversed yet.
“Not only was I playing what they didn't want to hear, I'm scratching over it, which was probably super annoying to the crowd,” Supreme said. “At that point, I also learned, ‘Okay, I'm gonna have to learn this kind of DJing as well.’ DJing isn't one thing, there's a lot that comes along with it.”
Some 35 years later, DJing is second nature for Supreme.
“I don't prepare for a second now because my thing is you got to read the crowd and you don't know who's gonna be in the crowd,” Supreme said.
Supreme works with vinyl, as well as Serato, a DJ and music production software program. When he uses Serato, he can travel with close to 100,000 songs, freestyling throughout the night based on the crowd before him. With control vinyl, a tool employed by the Serato program, it's almost like playing records; in essence, it replicates the sound and sensation of experiencing your digital music collection through vinyl. You're just controlling the files on a computer. He doesn’t need to be as picky about what he's bringing with him—it's virtually at his fingertips already. Even so, it's not a surprise that a discophile like Supreme prefers vinyl during a set.
“With a record, you have to flip through them, you get to see them, they're all printed differently on the cover or the labels and especially 45s — they're usually only about two and a half minutes long,” Supreme said.
For a set with physical vinyl, Supreme brings in somewhere between three to six crates full of records to play and guess what’s going to work for the crowd.
“The records are pretty quick and you have to be on to the next one fast,” Supreme said. “It kind of gives you a slight anxiety, like ‘Oh, I gotta get the next thing before this ends,’ and it just makes it fun. It makes your evening flow.”
While Supreme is widely known for his love of vinyl collection, he's got some other tricks up his sleeve. In the ’90s, he and DJ Sureshot started a group called Sharpshooters, eventually going on to found their own label, Conception Records. As a label owner, Supreme expanded into the world of music production, producing for both major and indie labels, releasing albums, and touring.
“It's a natural evolution of DJing to go into producing because you're listening to all these records, and then you start to wonder, well, how were they made? What makes this record special?” Supreme said. “DJing is your way of playing your own music.”
His DJing achievements have garnered him several accolades, including the Seattle Mayor’s Award, Best DJ titles from Seattle Weekly and Seattle Bridal Magazine, and an appointment as a U.S. Diplomat with the mission of bridging cultural gaps through music.
The name Supreme wasn’t the name he entered the industry with; he used to be “Danny De Rock” until one afternoon at his house with DJ B-Mello. B-Mello, at the time, went by Barry Bass, a name he was in the process of changing.
“He said he was gonna change his name, and I don't know how he came up with B-Mello. It just flowed and he liked it. So I said, ‘Okay, I'm gonna change mine too,’” Supreme said. “I asked, ‘Well, what can I be?’ and a Supreme Pizza commercial came on and I was just like, I'm gonna be Supreme, because that's like the top of the line,” Supreme said.
He added “La Rock” as a tribute to the hip-hop culture of the time. “Rock” specifically was named for Coke La Rock, one of the first MCs in hip-hop culture.
Supreme’s sets can almost be considered a tribute in themselves, never sticking to one artist or one genre. Every set he scratches is a tribute to the art of music creation. It's a feeling so palpable that he can translate his current musical passion to the crowd before him. A profession as fluid as the music itself.
“What I love this week, I might love someone else next week. Whether it's old or new, it's just my mood and my feeling,” Supreme said.
When Converge spoke with Supreme, he was in the process of exploring gospel music. The music of Eliezer Mass Choir’s song "Where He Leads Me" takes a prominent spot in his recent sets.
“I dropped [Where He Leads Me] last weekend at peak hour in a nightclub and the crowd went nuts,” Supreme said. “I'm thinking, ‘Am I stupid? Who would ever think I could play a gospel record in a nightclub like that and the crowds gonna eat it up?’ But it's been working.”
One thing about a Supreme set: you're guaranteed to hear something different that revives the classics with a fresh twist.
Catch Supreme on KEXP or keep up with him on Instagram @supremelarock.
