Moonrise Festival Artist Profile: DJ Snake

Since Moonrise Festival is coming up in a few weeks, we here at Glow decided to go ahead and look into a few of the stars that we’ll be hosting next month at Pimlico. Last week, we reviewed Carnage. This week? DJ Snake.

If you were to go up to someone that went to UMF 2014 and ask them who had one of the more memorable sets of the weekend, there’s a very good chance that they’d tell you DJ Snake, and with good reason too. Determined to make an impact at his first time ever playing a top-tier festival, he kicked things off with a bang with a extremely fitting track, none other than Knife Party’s “Destroy Them With Lazers.” Moving through his Miami debut, he included several non-EDM staples, such as Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, Drake’s “Trophies”, and House of Pain’s “Jump Around.” But the highlight of his 60-minute musical journey was at the very end of his set, when he played Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” Yes, you read that right.  So, we know one thing, that DJ Snake clearly isn’t afraid to push the envelope when it comes to live sets. The thing about this guy is, there’s more to him than that.

DJ Snake, whose government name is William Grigahcine, comes from the nitty-gritty streets of “La Ville-Lumière“, or what we non-French speakers know as Paris, France. After working for a few years in a Parisian record store and rubbing elbows with some of Europe’s top hip-hop DJ’s, he was tapped by one of the biggest names in music to help her out with a few tracks on her upcoming album. The album’s name? “Born This Way.” The artist? Lady Gaga. Huge, right? DJ Snake ended up nabbing a Grammy nomination for his work on Gaga’s CD, and was still relatively unknown to the mainstream music scene, up until a little track named “Bird Machine” was released by Diplo’s Mad Decent imprint.

The minimalist bird-chirp-sampled track catapulted DJ Snake’s way to bigger and better things, such as a very fruitful 2013 USA tour, which he picked out as his most significant accomplishment of the year, stating to Acclaim Magazine that he “was pleasantly surprised by all the love my fans showed me when I performed for them.” Coming fresh off the cusp of his tour, he then released the beast of a track that has reached airwaves worldwide, the infamous collaboration with Lil’ Jon whose name has recently become less of a track ID, and more like a way of life, the one and only “Turn Down for What.”

The DJ Snake train didn’t run out of steam after that release, it only grew stronger and stronger leading into 2014, coinciding with yet another mega-hit, this time in the form of a collaboration with his “boy from day one” Dillon Francis, which has grown to become the world’s latest twerk anthem, appropriately titled “Get Low.”

So how exactly can we describe this jack-of-all-trades, and his music? When asked by Rolling Stone about how he felt about “Turn Down For What” being played at the French Open, he was ecstatic, claiming “I laugh about it because when I was young, a guy like me wouldn’t be accepted in a place like that. These places were persona non grata for my people and now we run the whole joint! The epitome of bourgeoisie disrupted and taken control of by the hood. Magnifique.” Come to think about it, that last line is a damn good way to sum up his style of music.

We can’t wait to get a piece of Parisian Vision next month at Moonrise, if you haven’t done so yet, grab your tickets here!

Words by: Daniel Chamorro