| DJ Qbert | |
|---|---|
At the DMC World DJ Championships in Lyon, France, May 2006 |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Richard Quitevis |
| Born | October 7, 1969 |
| Genres | Hip hop |
| Occupations | Disc jockey |
| Website | http://www.djqbert.com |
Richard Quitevis, born October 7, 1969, in San Francisco, California, known by his stage name DJ Qbert or Qbert, is a Filipino-American Turntablist and composer.
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Growing up in San Francisco's Excelsior District on Moscow Street, he graduated from Luther Burbank Middle School and in 1987 from Balboa High School.[1][2] Qbert started playing with records at the age of 15, although he got his first Fisher-Price turntable as a toddler. He was influenced by the street performers and graffiti artists of the local hip hop community in the mid 1980s. It was at Balboa's school cafeteria that he went up against Mix Master Mike. The two are good friends.[3]
Qbert started his musical career in a group called FM20 with Mix Master Mike and DJ Apollo in 1990. In New York when playing a show, Crazy Legs saw them and invited them to join the Rock Steady Crew. They accepted the offer to join the crew. Going by the name Rock Steady DJs they then proceeded to take the 1992 Disco Mix Club World DJ Championships (DMC) world title.[4] Qbert was also one of the founding members of the band Invisibl Skratch Piklz. Although there were other turntablist crews before the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, the Skratch Piklz were the first to apply the band concept to turntablism, layering drums, basslines, and scratch solos on top of each other.
QBert, along with other Skratch Piklz, created a series of videos entitled Turntable TV. Now out of print, the first 5 episodes were released on VHS and contained demonstrations, showcases, skits, and other DJ related content.
QBert's solo efforts include 1994's Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Musik, and 1998's Wave Twisters. The latter album was created mainly with samplers and beat machines versus the turntable, and later turned into an animated feature of the same title. Wave Twisters (2001) the movie was somewhat unusual in that the animators and digital artists had to invent images and movements to the pre-recorded music, as opposed to the other way around.
More recently he has worked with Vestax to develop the QFO, an all-in-one scratching instrument. The QFO combines a turntable with a mixer's crossfader.[1] In 2006 he introduced the QBert turntable cartridge, a model put out by Ortofon.[2]
In 2009 Qbert launched the Qbert Skratch University, an online school and community for DJ's.
In a 2011 interview with the website WeBeVegan.org, Qbert stated that he is a vegan.[5]
His music was also featured in the video game Tony Hawk's Underground. He has also appeared himself in DJ Hero 2.