These are the transcripts from an interview conducted with DJ and Pittsburgh native, Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk. Although he explains that he is not in fact a DJ, Girl Talk knows how to get that booty to shake right thurr, plus, he also makes you think. After six years of making music, with three albums to show for it, Gregg Gillis has taken control of the Pittsburgh music scene with his dirty, bouncy, and seductively truthful/possibly illegal sampling and sound presentation. Ooh baby, I like it raw.and by raw, I mean Girl Talk.
MVRemix: So Ive heard through the grapevine that youve taken over the Pittsburgh music scene. I hear you rule and everyone is beneath you.
Girl Talk: [Laughs] I dont know if its quite that big. Ive been doing the same thing for awhile now, but it seems like its spreading all over the place. I played a couple shows and its basically the same there, like a small cult following.
MVRemix: Did you read your Pitchfork review?
Girl Talk: Yeah, I did actually. Everything kind of exploded after that. Ive been doing this for over six years, different forms with different types of pop music and making new pop music. Once that hit, we got a new audience and I was all of a sudden that newly hyped artist.
MVRemix: Ok, heres a three part question. (1) What is a DJ? (2) Why dont you consider yourself a DJ? (3) How do you keep it real?
Girl Talk: [Laughs due to point 3] I would have to say that a DJ is someone who mixes music and puts other peoples songs together in various formats from radio to clubs and Id say you can consider me a DJ and thats fine, but I dont consider myself a DJ. I consider Im making my original recontextualized songs out of other peoples samples, even though it retains familiar elements. And I can say that I keep it real because I put a Hall and Oates song on all of my records.
MVRemix: So you sample from other peoples samples?
Girl Talk: No, well, at times I sample songs that sample other peoples stuff but not exclusively. However people want to classify my DJ work is cool with me. I mean there are always latent and familiar elements in my song, and every song makes a beat and then the voice is on top of the beat, and I combine enough different elements that people can be like, oh thats a Girl Talk song, and not that its just a mix of A and B.
MVRemix: Right. Ok, finish this sentence. Pop music is a lot like Jesus because they both________.
Girl Talk: Rule the world.
MVRemix: I want you to walk me through an average day of Gregg Gillis/Girl Talk but I want you to mix and match reality with fiction in such a casual way that I dont really know what the real day is versus the fantasy day. Kind of like a rap video.
Girl Talk: Ill have to take it for a typical Friday then. I wake up and I put on some casual business gear and then go to a 9 to 5 and sit in an office cubicle all day long, check on my Myspace account. Get out around 5, go home and make some music for an hour or so, and then meet up with my girlfriend. We would probably then get on some motorcycles and ride to the club and hang out at the club in the VIP box and probably hang out with some Steelers. After the club we would all go to Heinz field and slam down some beers.
MVRemix: Damn alright [I am legitimately impressed]. Alright, lets get serious. Your label is called Illegal Art and you use numerous samples from a billion different sources. On Pitchfork, they wrote, Due to its overwhelming number of unlicensed sources, Night Ripper is practically begging for court drama. If you were put on the stand, what would your defense sound like?
Girl Talk: Well, we would be going with the Fair Use law where you can use unlicensed material under certain circumstances. There are four crucial points, I havent gotten them memorized but basically its, are you effecting actual or perpetual sales of original source material, and clearly were doing this on a far more underground level, where obviously no one is going to pick up my record instead of anyone that I sampled. And if anything, the music in no way is debasing it, were promoting the artist as a celebration of all the music Ive sampled on the albums. And were not hurting anyone with the music, were not hurting sales. And I dont know if it would hold up, court wise, but should it hold up, absolutely. I just make music that people can really enjoy, and Im not stealing anything by re-contextualizing pop music.
MVRemix: What do you think the best decade of pop music in the last 100 years was?
Girl Talk: I would have to go with right now. But for my personal favorite I would have to go with the 90s, a lot because of nostalgic reasons. Im a 90s child. It was probably my favorite era for hip hop, with Dr. Dre and Biggie [Smalls], plus, there was that alternative music like Nirvana and Sonic Youth. And I really like the indie rock of that era.
MVRemix: Has Pittsburgh helped you develop?
Girl Talk: I think its cool just because if I was in an environment like New York or L.A. I would be way more stressed out. Maybe other people are doing what Im doing, but for the most part in Pittsburgh, you can do what you want with music without worrying about trampling on other peoples turf or doing anything similar with someone else, you know, worrying that youre not the first person to do this thing ever.
MVRemix: I hear youre bigger than Modey Lemon now.
Girl Talk: [Laughs] I dont think thats true, I actually go back to high school days with them, theyre pretty good friends. I think they still rule Pittsburgh, technically.
MVRemix: Lets talk about Night Ripper. On average, how many samples per track do you use, and do you ever reach a point where youve put so many samples onto one track into one track that you just sit back and think, oh man, there are so many songs on this one track, I just cant take it?
Girl Talk: [Laughs] Average samples per song is really difficult to estimate because of different song lengths and such, because the thing is, there is a difference between blatant samples used and what I would consider more original samples that are taking a kick drum from source A and a snare from source B. So there are so many samples that are completely unrecognizable on the album as well. Typically, on an average minute, I would say there are maybe 5 to 15 songs on average. And I personally dont feel overwhelmed making an album because there is walking a fine line between making something that is a really intense mix just from a constructive level, putting it together as an impressive piece of work on an editing and artistic level and making something that you can just listen to and wild-out to with friends.
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