DJ and producer Gregg Gillis, better known as Girl Talk, took the world by storm in the early 2000s with his unique remixed mashup songs. Along the way, he developed a love for creating sample-based beats, and over the last decade, he’s become a notable hip-hop producer. In April, he released “Full Court Press,” a collaborative album with Wiz Khalifa, Big K.R.I.T. and Smoke DZA. Girl Talk will perform his legendary live show at the Buckhead Theatre tomorrow, Dec. 16, and the artist joined “City Lights” senior producer Kim Drobes via Zoom to talk more about his music and the experience he’s bringing to Atlanta.
Interview highlights:
Addressing legal questions raised regarding Girl Talk’s sample-based music:
“Doing the music we do… it’s a bunch of un-cleared samples, and me and the label that puts it out — it’s a label called Illegal Art that specializes in sample-based music — we’ve always thought that the music should qualify under ‘fair use’ in United States copyright,” explained Gillis. “It has to hit certain standards, whether… it doesn’t rival sales for the thing you’re sampling, if it doesn’t take away from that or if you’re doing it for artistic or educational purposes or parody. There are a bunch of different reasons why it could qualify under ‘fair use,’ so we always believed that it should.”
He added, “It’s an interesting case because with an album like ‘Night Ripper,’ ‘Feed the Animals’ or ‘All Day,’ those albums from the late 2000s [that] it would just be financially, for us, impossible to put out. I can’t really put a figure on how much it would cost to clear all those samples, even if you wanted to. So then it kind of raises the question of should this music not exist at all? Should it be illegal for it to exist? And we always thought that it shouldn’t.”
How the star collaborators on “Full Court Press” came together:
“I’m from Pittsburgh and Wiz Khalifa is also from Pittsburgh. So we met maybe 2006, probably around 15 years ago and we both met before either of our projects really took off,” said Gillis. “The Girl Talk thing kind of took off a little before he did. So there were a couple years there where I had some shows that I was helping him on, one in Pittsburgh and one in Brooklyn… Then all of a sudden, in 2010 he skyrocketed with ‘Black and Yellow’ and kind of turned into a pop person, just fully pop culture, everyone knowing who he is. But we stayed in contact, just kind of running into each other at festivals or at the airport, and he was always cool.”
“We started planning on doing some music together. Maybe in 2017 we started getting the studio together, and around the same time I was also working with Big K.R.I.T. and Smoke DZA all independently, just all artists that I’m a fan of… So I started getting each of them on each other’s songs,” Gillis recounted. “The way I’m always putting together music, I’m kind of trying to trim anything that’s unnecessary, just really stick to what I’m loving and as I was listening to that music together, we had a lot of different stuff and I kind of liked it. It worked together.”
“We spent three days with all of us together in a room and it was just really fun. Out of the past 10 years of me kind of doing production work with other people, this was one of the best sessions I’ve ever been a part of just in terms of the vibe and… since they all go back with each other, just kind of catching up and it was just fun. It didn’t feel like work or anything and the music came together pretty effortlessly in the studio. And then after that, I had some time to go home and they all gave me full reign to do whatever I wanted with it, which was great. because I take the material kind of like I do with the mashup mixes and all of that sort of stuff and piece it apart and cut it up.”
The Girl Talk live show, famous for audience dance parties on stage:
“I never really officially know exactly when the people on stage dancing started,” said Gillis. “Way before things got big, I would play at house parties occasionally, just play in the middle of the floor where you’re surrounded by people. And then there was an era where I had some DIY choreographed dance things happening with some friends on stage. And then at some point, people started getting on stage and I don’t really remember how it became well known. Photos got out and then it just became the thing at every show that people would jump up there. So for a while I had a rule that we would just only play venues that would allow no barricade, so it would just be… a free-for-all and that was fun until it just grew to the point where it was too chaotic.” Gillis added, “We still try to tap into a similar energy, and just go 100% from start to finish.”
Girl Talk takes the stage at Buckhead Theatre on Dec. 16. Tickets and more information are available here.
