DJ Dripsweat
DJ Dripsweat
DJ Dripsweat is a Milwaukee entertainer to reckon with. A premier performer with eclectic taste, she’s known for being genre-fluid and exceptionally intentional as she serves up something for everyone in the room. Dripsweat had creative ambitions from a young age and grew up drawing, dancing, and writing poetry. Her DJ name she came up with when she was around 10 as she’d watch the culture of hip hop on BET and MTV.
“There was always so much music running in my household,” she explained. “Through both parents I got a wide scope and really got to pay attention to what made people dance. In middle school and high school, I was on the dance team, and in high school I became the captain. I went to UWM for college and in my second year I got introduced to the music community in Milwaukee.”
After playing in a few bands, Dripsweat got into DJing through the Scratch Sessions, a free program hosted by DJ Bizzon that would teach youth the fundamentals of becoming successful DJs.
“He saw potential in me,” she said about Bizzon. “He invited me to do a gig with him at a place where the owner also saw potential in me. I gained a lot of experience very quickly and was able to pay off my controller, and since then I’ve been rocking.”
From Femfest to Summerfest
Her first proper gig was on Halloween 2016. Since then, Dripsweat has landed spots at major events ranging from Summerfest to Pridefest to Femfest. She doesn’t put herself in a box as far as what she plays; hip hop, R&B, house, indie rock, funk, and just about anything else you could dance to all falls in her wheelhouse. For example, one of her mixes is dedicated to Tame Impala enthusiasts while others are dedicated to strong, powerful Black women everywhere.
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“A lot of mixes from when I first started are actually live recordings from my shows,” she said. “That always varies with the audience and who shows up, so it’s a lot of what feels right at the moment. I seldom ever fully plan a set so I can stay attentive to the crowd. I wanted to be more specific, so I started making themed mixes, and earlier this year I dropped one of my radio shows from “Condensed.” I want them to mean something to people, whether it’s for them to explore other Black femmes in the music industry or for them to just jam along to.”
Dripsweat also produces, which for her goes hand-in-hand with DJing.
On her approach, she said, “Things just come to me a lot. I’ve been making a lot of mashup edits and blends; I have this note list going on of over a hundred different ideas right now (laughs). I can just hear a song over another song, and that really just comes with the way of how I hear music. I can separate the drums and keys and take in the musicality. I think that understanding patterns while I’m DJing helps my producing capabilities. Some of my favorite producers growing up are the greatest of all-time … Pharrell, Missy Elliott and Timbaland … Timbaland spoke to me in a way that was different because he always added his own personal voice and beatboxing abilities into the music. For me and my creation, that’s always how it comes out for me too.”
More recently, she has become a sound healing practitioner. “When I was introduced to the music scene in Milwaukee,” Dripsweat recalled, “I met a lot of musicians that really sparked my curiosity about what music is on an energetic level … on a physical level…from the wave hitting your ear and how it makes you feel. It's within my duty and responsibility to be a student of sound as a person who produces it. There’s experiments now where you can see how music affects plants in different ways. To me everything is music and always has been; there’s a pulse within the Earth and a pulse within your day-to-day dealings.”
After digging into sound healing around 2016, DJing would take over as her primary focus for a while. “Then in 2019 I had a traumatic event happen and I decided to really hone into a lot of different healing techniques,” Dripsweat said.
“Sound made the most sense to me … sound and plants, actually. I moved to a farm and started learning from a friend, and it was all very interesting to me that we have the chakra system like the musical note system … I just had to get my vibe right. I’ve grabbed some metal and crystal bowls and a set of tuning forks, which are relatively new so I haven’t gotten to use them much. I’ve done a couple sessions with a yoga community on the beach, which is really fun and really hot (laughs). But it looks like me sitting with the bowls and having an intuitive process, starting off lightly and slowly before we get into wherever the journey takes us. I’m still learning a lot and definitely have more experience to gain, but it feels really good, whether you’re there to gain insight you need or you’re just there to relax. Ultimately, relaxation is my goal because that’s when the body begins to heal and repair itself.”
As far as this summer goes, DJ Dripsweat has freshly returned from the farm and is diving back into a stacked schedule. First you can find her DJing at the Brewers’ Pride Night on June 8, then she’s hosting the “Sweat It Off” party at Company Brewing on June 24, and then she plays Summerfest the following day. She’ll also be DJing some Company Brewing brunches, at Summerfest again with Wes Tank on July and 2, at Michigan’s Blissfest July 8-10, and Kenosha’s Beach Front Arts Fest on July 31.
To learn more or to hear her mixes, edits and blends, visit DJ Dripsweat’s website and Soundcloud.
