DJ COMMUNITY

CALI SWAG DISTRICT

For Cali Swag District Good Old Fashioned Hard Work Paid Off

They're teaching folks how to Dougie and saying 'Told you so!'

By Ricardo Hazell

Cali Swag District

*Every person who is reading this piece has thought that they were the man (or woman) at least for one period of time in their respective lives. There was a time in which you were the bee’s knees, cat’s meow and all those ancient hipster phrases.

But nothing makes a brother or sister feel more antiquated than when there’s a hot new dance out that you don’t know about.

That’s where Cali Swag District comes in. These four young brothers are teaching people how to Dougie! Oh, you don’t know what the Dougie is? Well, the Dougie (yep, it’s named after Dougie Fresh) has been the dance to do all over the Dirty, Dirty, but especially so in Dallas, Texas. Now it’s getting nationwide acclaim thanks to these young brothers from Cali.

“We were all doing our things individually but we all happened to meet up at the studio on the same day and did the song because a friend of ours went to school in Texas and the dance was hot down there so he said we should make a song about it,” DJ C-Smoove explains to EURweb.com’s Lee Bailey. “We got together with Big Wy (formerly of Death Row Records), who is our visionary, and we said the three of us (Smoove, Yung and JayAre) can be rapping and M-Bone can do the dancing. From that time we just locked in and decided that would be the group, no more, no less.”

Cali Swag District, huh? Must say it does have a ring to it.

“The name obviously comes from the fact that we’re from California. We all have our own individual swag. We look different, we talk different and our district is our city, Inglewood. We all grew up in the same neighborhood, went to school together so basically you can say we’ve been friends for a long time,” said Yung.

“Teach Me How To Dougie” held strong at the Number 2 spot on the Billboard Heat seekers chart for 6 weeks before claiming the top spot in its seventh week. Getting mad airplay and mad love, the group’s YouTube video for the song has over 1.4 million hits. Yeah, we’ll say it for you, dang!

“It’s funny around this time last year, we’ve been going hard ever since,” said C-Smoove. “It’s crazy, I’m proud of myself and my group, we set out to accomplish something and we did it in a very short period of time. I think that’s what it was in the beginning, we wanted to accomplish it and towards the middle we started to believe and so it made us work even harder and we started pushing ourselves. It was like we gotta do this because we couldn’t see ourselves doing nothing else.”

As is often the case when someone is getting paid for their sweat, there are those that doubted it would ever happen and you would think Cali Swag District would follow suit and return that angst, but that’s not the case. However, they do feel they’ve vindicated themselves.

“It good to see the doubters just wash away,” JayAre told our Lee Bailey. “Even our own friends were saying that they thought it was a joke in the beginning and now they can see that this is real and it is really happening. And our families … Young’s family was like ‘You’ve been doing this for half your life and it hasn’t taken off yet’ and now his Mom is saying how proud she is and watching us on TV and screaming and yelling. It’s a great feeling to overcome all the doubts and the negative energy that people try to push towards you. It feels good to say ‘Told you so. I told you I was going to do it and I did!’ Now, all mouths are shut.”

If only it were that simple my young brother, if only it were that simple. See, getting on the top of the pile is only the beginning. Now they’re going to have to combat the haters double time and they come in forms you may least suspect. Are they up for the challenge? In the words of Biz Markie, “damn it feel good to see people up on it.”

“In no way shape or form are we trying to rub it in their face but it feels good to say we did it when you may not have believed that we could,” says C-Smoove. “The biggest doubters were our friends who felt that what we were doing wasn’t cool enough at the time. A lot of our friends didn’t have the work ethic that we did at the time. They didn’t see themselves putting all of their energy into doing one thing. But now look at them. They’re watching us do our thing and are sitting on the outside hoping and wishing. Some of them are like ‘I’m proud of you’ and some of them are still hating like ‘They ain’t gonna come out with another song, they’re gonna be one hit wonders’ and all types of stuff like that but we’re still grinding like it’s day one. So we’re still going to keep shutting mouths.”

We have to say, these young brothers were a pleasure to speak with and we kind of threw some of objectivity out the window. We really want to see them do good.

Their big test will be whether or not they can pull a second hit single out of the hat. The group’s debut studio album, “The Kickback”, is set for release on September 14, 2010. Good luck fellas! The doubters are revving their engines and exercising their hater muscles just for you. Get ready.

For MORE on Cali Swag District, visit their official website or their MySpace page.