DJ OF THE WEEK 6.11.12: TONY MORAN

It’s been a long weekend; the PR Parade swept through town leaving behind a lot of Puerto Ricans the worse for wear. Though we need the rest, we simply can’t stop now, especially when you consider this weeks featured DJ, Tony Moran a DJ, producer, and remixer who if you just consider what he accomplished by the time he was in his mid 20’s you might begin to feel a lil lazy if you even thinking of stopping for a breather.

Moran grew up poor but he didn’t let that stop him from pursuing his dreams of one nite rocking the crowd from behind the decks. He learned early on that DJs had power and he wanted that power for himself in order to lift himself out of his surroundings so, from an early age he worked non-stop to make his dreams come true. While a top student at a private electrical engineering high school he began making a name for himself by DJing local gigs in his hometown of Brooklyn, he also taught himself how to edit music on reel-to-reel tape players, a skill that would come in very handy and lead to very big changes in his life in just a short time. He did most of this while holding down full time jobs by the way.

In college, Tony Moran would meet Albert Cabrera and the two creative minds hit it off and formed the Latin Rascals. The two would take popular cuts and literally splice and cut them into new energy infused bangers that they would play at their gigs. It wasn’t long before the pair caught the attention of the program director of one of New York’s biggest radio stations WKTU who asked them to bring their particular skill to the radio. Soon enough they were radio DJs bringing their special edits to more than just Brooklyn. Tony Moran was just 19.

Sure enough, the radio gig lead to even more work and I’m sure neither of them could have imagined where. Hearing how they could create basically new tracks out of existing material, the legendary producer and remixer Arthur Baker offered them the opportunity to work on the soundtrack to the soon to be Hip Hop cult classic Beat Street. Moran had arrived.

Of course, there was no time to rest and with Freestyle all the rage at the time, Moran and Cabrera would use the studio after working on their big name projects with Baker to remix some of the genres biggest acts such as The Cover Girls, TKA, Lisette Melendez, and more. They also released a few successful and memorable Freestyle tracks of their own. The hits started to proliferate and soon the duo were remixing cuts for some of the artists whose records they had been playing at the local gigs just a few years earlier.

Despite his work as an artist, Moran writes and sings himself and has featured his vocals on numerous projects over the years, Moran says he’d rather be behind the scenes. It’s also where he has seen the most success. Over the years Moran has remixed and worked with some of the biggest names in the biz, and that’s not just talk. Michael Jackson and his sister Janet, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Cher, Donna Summer, Deborah Cox, Mariah Carey, Diana Ross, Madonna, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Rihanna, Mary J Blige, Jennifer Lopez, even The Beach Boys and the London Symphony Orchestra have all contracted Moran for his golden touch. As recently as 2007, Moran hit the Billboard’s number one spot twice, once for his work on ‘Walk Away’ featuring Kristine W. and the other with ‘Keep Your Body Working’ featuring Martha Wash adding to his numerous chart toppers over the last two decades. Moran has also worked on a couple more movies since, most notably the soundtracks for Circuit and The Mask. Let’s not leave out that Moran has won two GRAMMY’s for his efforts.

These days, the lil’ kid from Brooklyn is based out of Miami, and after a fourteen year absence from behind the turntables he has pickd up where he left off and is once again hard at work already gigging all over the world and rocking crowds. He might make it look easy but, Tony Moran puts in the work and that is why he’s our DJ of the Week.