You know DJ White Shadow, even if you think you don’t. The producer has toured internationally with Lady Gaga and is the mastermind behind her pop smash Born This Way. Through it all, he remains humble as ever. When he stopped by Joel Madden’s Artist Friendly podcast this week for a two-hour conversation, it’s clear that he never strayed from his roots. There are still traces of the kid who used to sneak out of his house to attend techno shows and his avid love of hip-hop (He even wrote in his high school yearbook that he was gonna make it as a “giant rapper”). Their discussion is enlightening — and one of the most extensive episodes of Artist Friendly yet.
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Before you listen to the new episode, we rounded up takeaways from their conversation. Check them out below.
His moniker was a gift
DJ White Shadow got into his craft because he “wanted to go to parties but didn’t want to talk to anybody.” As he progressed in his career, he was often the only white kid in the club. In those days, DJs weren’t the center of the room — there were crammed into a corner, yet he still turned heads. “When people walked by me, I’d be banging hip-hop, and it’d be a double take because [I was] a pencil-necked geek,” he recalls. Soon, the promoter started calling him White Shadow (named after the ’70s TV series where a white basketball coach teaches at an impoverished school). The name caught on and ended up on flyers — and has remained ever since.
He cherishes his relationship with Lady Gaga
DJ White Shadow is the mastermind producer behind her second album, and pop blockbuster, Born This Way, as well as its follow-up ARTPOP. The pair go way back, to days when they were slinging CDs and could go into a pool hall together unnoticed. But as they’ve risen in fame, they remain humble. “I can tell you that to this day, she has remained a completely incredible person — just a wonderful human being,” he stresses. “I love her very much. Through that 10-15 years, I’ve seen an incredible amount of challenges. You’re surrounded by people nonstop, but it’s the loneliest thing in the entire world sometimes.”
Success looks different
During the episode, DJ White Shadow shares his level-headed perspective on success. “If the actual act of making music for other people is the success, then the whole time you’re riding that rail to keep working at it, you’re successful the whole time,” he explains. “So, you don’t need to sell a million records to be successful.” Ultimately, if you’re being thoughtful, you are successful in a sense. “Everybody’s path is a different path,” he elaborates. “It’s kooky that you either become the Weeknd or you didn’t do it right.”
Going to therapy changed his life
Figuring out how to grow mentally was one of the biggest challenges of his life. “I knew something was wrong, and I wanted to go [to therapy], but I fought it for like two years,” DJ White Shadow admits to Madden. Eventually, he found that he was reacting to situations in a certain way and needed to find a fix. “After bashing my head against the wall like a stubborn asshole, I sat down to figure out how to not do that anymore,” he explains. “It’s not one thing. It’s a combination of 800 things.”
He’s aging gracefully
DJ White Shadow says that being here is still “a miracle.” “When you’re 50, you still feel like you’re 20 years old,” he points out. “You just have more knowledge to make better decisions. You get things done easier.” Ultimately, he insists that “it’s never too late to start bettering yourself.” While he didn’t start doing the work until he was 40 years old, he’s still reaping the benefits in his day-to-day. “Succeeding through failure is the only way,” he says. “People don’t just keep handing you victories.”
