Steve Lueder, better known as DJ Slippe, hails from outside of Chicago where he joined a jazz band in high school as a way of ditching class which later developed into a passion for music. After a stint in the Air Force where developed his early mixing skills and some time at a broadcast trade school, he began his track towards being a producer. Currently, he is an investor in a nightclub, a DJ for the Arizona Diamondbacks, owner of a print business, tours occasionally, and is the game-day DJ for Arizona State athletics.
Song: Half Day
Transcription:
Steven Lueder [00:04]: My name is Steve Lueder, I'm the in-game DJ for ASU men's basketball and football. You can catch me at all the home games performing on the turntables, providing sound for the arena.
I grew up in Chicago Heights, it's a little south of Chicago, and the influences that were coming in were all over the place. There was the hip-hop thing where we would get West Coast, we would get East Coast, and then some of the South stuff coming in. Definitely a lot of the hip-hop artists that I gravitated towards were Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre and the West Coast stuff just because it painted this picture for me of palm trees and sunshine where I wasn't looking at much sunshine in Chicago. At the same time I was into rock bands like Korn, Pantera, Metallica, and even bands like Nirvana.
When I was in high school I got into jazz band so I could, to be honest, ditch class and go play with instruments, but it materialized into something I was really into. Fast forward to me turning eighteen, I went to a rave party and I saw a DJ and I was like "wow man that's awesome, this dude's up there doing his own thing, he's controlling the whole party." It was way different than the band dynamic I was used to so I traded a guitar in and bought some turntables and that's how I got started as a DJ.
The ASU thing happened for me through the Diamondbacks organization. Our mascot he plugged me in with Josh Richard, who is the head of the game entertainment over there at ASU, and he had me come do Mill Madness. Then he asked me to come to a game and I did a game then I didn't hear back for awhile, it was obviously the offseason. Then I got a call right around the time Sun Devil Stadium was doing the renovations and he said, "Hey we want to bring this night club, uptempo vibe to the arena and we like what you did, do you want to come down and rock out?" I did the first game and it was probably the coolest situation ever. The season went great, they offered me the basketball season and that just ended. The whole experience has been super cool with ASU, I'm having a blast.
Courtesy to Ryan Downing for the use of Deep Root Studios.
Reach the reporter at cchild1@asu.edu or follow @_cchild88 on Twitter.
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