Rafael "Légo" Rodriguez

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LEGO: I don't like to be called "latin house DJ" because I don't just play latin house. I have stuff that's latin-influenced and maybe some percussion behind it, but not all my music is latin house. I have soul. It does have latin roots and a lot of horns - I think that's a reason why people think that it's latin house. I just play house, just house.

A lot of people are trying to pigeonhole me as a "latin house DJ/music producer." I'm doing some new stuff for NYSS (pronounced "nice"), a new label. It's stuff that people wouldn't expect from me, but some people who know me will say "Yeah it's got that Légo sound." It's going to be a little different. I have a release coming out over the summer.

5 MAGAZINE: Where did all the jackers go?

LEGO: It's weird. Some of them got older. A lot of them I guess got tired with the scene. The scene is so diluted because there's the wrong people doing the parties and they're not doing it right.

Some are also being picky. When they get older, a lot of people fall into the trap of being nostalgic. "This isn't what Frankie used to play at the Warehouse" or "This isn't what Légo used to play at Red Dog." You know, there's new music out there. I'll play classics from time to time but there's too much good music out there that needs to be exposed.

LEGO: Support. Buy real music, not illegally downloaded music. Request songs on the radio. That's the one thing that house in Chicago does not have is a radio presence.

We were getting it with Sonic Boom Q-101. They took it off the air due to the fact that it wasn't their regular music format and was actually outshining alternative rock. It was three years running. I was a resident house dj there. I was playing house! I wasn't catering to nobody. We would skyrocket during those hours when the show was on.

Then they had a music director come in and remove the show. Which goes to show that they were afraid that house music would outshine their regular format. We had the listeners and we had the numbers. We were getting world renown DJs. Little Louie Vega was submitting cds like once a month.

5 MAGAZINE: Where do you find your music?

LEGO: Everywhere. There are a lot of small labels that are just trying to get their stuff on. You might find a tune out there and that might help to get that label exposed, like Erasmus Faber's "Back to Love" on Soulfuric.

Understand there's new music out there. You can't hear the same thing every Monday. I've had comments like, "What is Légo playing? It seems different tonight." Because it's new music, and that's what I've always been known for - breaking new music.

But there are certain songs that people will receive the first time they hear it, or it may take four or five times before they actually feel the song, because it's different, it's not something they're used to hearing.

There's a lot of music that first came out there, and they would clear the dance floor, but eventually became dance floor hits.

Like "El Ritmo de Verdad". When I first played that song, it cleared the dance floor. But the heads knew, the real people who felt the music - they knew, they were like "Aw, this is the jam."

5 MAGAZINE: Any last words?

LEGO: Just continue to support music, DJs. Quit being cheap. Quit trying to get on the guest list. You got these big name djs playing no music that's good for the soul, and people are willing to pay $20, $30, $40 to see these fools. But then when you got all these djs in your own back yard, you're not willing to pay five bucks to see them? C'mon now... How do you expect this to survive? You're not supporting. It's five bucks. Even if it's ten bucks.

Everyone's complaining these days that there's nowhere to hear house music. It's because house music lovers are cheap. Quit being cheap, cough up the ten bucks, so you can have a place to go to on Saturday and Friday, and we don't have this suburban invasion. That's why they gotta cater to them. Club owners, all they care about is numbers. If you can have a night where you've got big numbers of people coming in and spending money at the bar, club owners can't argue with that.

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