Meter

Issue date: 4/7/08 Section: Arts & Culture

Charles "DJ Wheezy" Burnett is living his dreams of deejaying.(Kenneth Cummings)

Everyday people see someone doing something that looks fun and creative and think, "I can do that." Not many people actually go out and do it, though.

Charles Burnett did. His goal was to become a deejay.

"If you are attempting to get your name out there and out there quickly," said Burnett, a senior business major from Memphis. "I am a walking testimony."

Last November, Burnett said he decided he
wanted to become a deejay and mix music after he saw his mentors Antonio "Big Boy AJ" Benton and Cordarius "Crisis" Freeman working.

He said he was already a fan of making mixes for other people, so he decided he may as well get paid for it.

After getting the $1500 he needed for start-up, he started purchasing the equipment he needed.

Burnett learned how to hook up the equipment from DJ Crisis and learned more about the music from Big Boy AJ.

But the skills had to be self-taught.

"You wont learn how to mix until you do it on your own," Burnett said.

DJ Wheezy's first gig was in January, assisting Big Boy AJ at BarCar before classes were back in session.

"For the little time I worked with him," said Benton, a senior speech communications major from Atlanta, "he was cool and eager to learn."

Burnett admits he did mess up, but had fun during the process and was anxious to strike out on his own. His first solo gig was for Fisk University.

"He was so easy to work with," said Angel Thomas, Fisk University's freshman class president and a music business major from Nashville.

As a matter of fact, Burnett has come to be known as "The Freshman's DJ" at Fisk because he has worked at most of the freshman events. The class' officers said this was because of his reasonable prices.

Burnett admitted that entrepreneurship has presented challenges, the biggest of them being time management.

Burnett said he often refers other deejays to jobs when he is unable to work at events.

"The biggest problem has been time management," said Burnett. "Sometimes it's really hard to say no to people. There's not a lot of hip hop deejays in Nashville."

He also said he has found many benefits to his newest venture--he gets paid for doing something he loves.

"I charge $50 an hour which comes to about $200 an event," he said. "But when I'm needed for multiple events special arrangements can be made."

Continued...

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