Q&A: DJ Sneak

Everyone is worried what everyone else thinks… More so now than ever, do you reckon?

Definitely. It's a fashion show now. It's a movie show. It's a TV show. From pop to house music, it's all about how you look. People with talent are overlooked because they don't look right. It makes me angry. Ten years ago, apparently house music was over and my career was over. I took to MySpace – it was that long ago – and wrote a blog about how everything was shit but house would survive. And it has. I've learned to stick to my guns and do what I do. People who know Sneak know what they're getting, and I won't let them down. Fuck everyone else.

Fuck back-to-back sets, judging by your recent public criticisms!

Fuck them. One hundred per cent. I'm sick of seeing two half-assed DJs put together for the sake of it. They're not creating anything new, they're just playing big records off laptops. No digging. No creativity. I could give them a box of my best records and they wouldn't know what to do with them. They're just flipping the FX so it looks like they're doing something. Let me tell you about my first back-to-back.

Shoot…

Doc Martin at Cream in 1997. One of the greatest DJs in the world; he popped my back-to-back cherry. He challenged me. You complement each other, and challenge each other to play better shit. You're raising the bar on every tune. I do it with Derrick Carter and Mark Farina. I even did it with Ricardo Villalobos five years ago. We went next level. We knew each other's music, we met half way and let each other go. It was special. Now it just seems like the weirdest combinations. It's contrived.

You must have done some serious B2Bs with Todd Terry…

Oh Todd! That dude should be… what do you call it?

Knighted?

Exactly! Knighted by the fricking Queen of England. Sir Todd Terry. He's the business. I looked up to him buying and selling his records at the store. Then I'm in the studio with him watching him get down and do it? Amazing! No ghost-writers. He's doing what he wants to do.