Elektro Exclusive Interview with Doorly + Nokia Lumia 900 Live in Times Square

Just moments before, Nokia and Nicki Minaj brought Times Square to a standstill on Saturday, April 7th, to celebrate two great launches, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded and Nokia Lumia 900, Elektro sat down with DJ Doorly for an exclusive chat about remixing for the pop star.

Using the latest CGI technology the team behind the massive Hollywood blockbuster, i-Robot, created one of the world's largest LED displays. Nokia took control of nine of the square's famous electronic screens to make the ultimate music video.

Check out what Doorly had to say about the remix, his favorite city and a little mishap in Poland... then enjoy the video!

Elektro: How was it working with Nicki Minaj?
Doorly: Brilliant. I’m such a big fan of her from way back when she was just featured as a rapper on other people's tracks. She’s an incredible singer. You couldn’t do a bad job of a remix with that kind of quality artist. It’s just great to be involved with someone like Nicki.

About this event, what brought you to Times Square to do this? The Nokia guys brought me here. They asked me to remix “Starships” for Nicki. We’ve done it all from the visuals, to the dancers, everything is built around the track. The track was built for specifically around everything that is happening tonight, so it’s great to be here. The whole thing is going to be incredible.

Tell us about your live DJ set.  I’m just trying to bring in as much live energy to it as possible, so I bring three or four CDJs and two or three samplers, depending on how much room I have on the DJ bus. I just bring as much stuff as possible with me, and my sets are about 10 tables, so I do a lot of scratching and remixing live. I want it to feel like a big, energetic party rather than just me standing there with my headphones playing music. I like people to walk away and think 'Oh yeah, that’s a bit different.'

What is your favorite city in the United States to party out or to DJ? I do like Los Angeles. I spend as much time there as possible, because you have the city thing or go to the beach in Santa Monica, so I really enjoy LA. I got a lot of friends there. Gig-wise, I really like playing in Texas because people there just go nuts,  they just love to party. Texans are so much fun.

What was your most embarrassing performance? One time I was playing in Poland. It was quite early in my career, but I used to play in Poland quite a lot. Polish people have these huge shot glasses, and they drink them for breakfast and stuff, so I didn’t really pace myself. When you say, 'No thanks, I’m alright,' they say, 'No, you have to drink this.' So I kept drinking till I didn’t know what was going on, and at one point the crowd was cheering, and I was leaning over the crowd and I threw up on the crowd. It was awful. I got kicked out the club, never asked to come back. Actually, they really tried to book me again, and I was like “Are you serious?” It was awful, really embarrassing. I woke up in the morning with the bottle of the vodka on the side table. That wasn’t my finest hour, but it’s a good anecdote for interviews.

What DJ would you like to party with most? ’ll tell you who’s fun to party with, Scream. He’s always a lot of fun to party with.

In the near future, if you wanted to hop on stage with somebody, whom would you want to hop on stage with? In New York City? I would like to get Dr. Dre to start DJing. Maybe do a back-to-back session with Dr. Dre with me remixing his beats and scratching his stuff,while he’s playing live. That would be a pretty cool party.

Field Reporting by Kevin Natoli.