DJ Kaori's bio

It’s a long way from spinning vinyl for friends in Kochi Prefecture to DJing private parties for P. Diddy and Michael Jordan in NYC, but that’s exactly the journey Kaori Ueda, aka hip-hop DJ Kaori, made when she left for New York a decade ago. Having established a career abroad, she now—like trance DJ Tsuyoshi and house DJ Satoshi Tomie before her—is looking to make herself known to a domestic audience.

A release for the Japanese market, DJ Kaori’s Def Jam Mix (Def Jam Japan) has just reached record store shelves, and the DJ has been busy supporting the album with a string of DJ engagements around Japan. But with plenty of homegrown DJs providing competition, she’ll have to prove herself once the New York cache starts to wear off.

Kaori’s journey began at age 16 when she bought turntables and taught herself the art of mixing vinyl. Moving to New York in 1992, she set up residence in the East Village and threw herself into the city’s vibrant club scene, eventually landing gigs at marquee venues like Limelight, Tunnel, Twilo and Sound Factory. Her mentor and current manager, Funkmaster Flex, recalls happening upon her in a club. “When I got in the club the vibe was incredible and the selections the DJ was playing were knocking me out. When I went over to see who was DJing, I had to do a double take.”

A lithe woman who dresses in slinky leather outfits, Kaori has had to contend with sexual (not to mention racial) stereotypes in order to establish herself in a male-dominated DJ world. But in the end, she says, “It doesn’t matter if you are a guy or a girl… The bottom line is that you have to make people have a good time.”

And this is something at which Kaori has excelled. She’s been taken on as the only woman in the Big Dawg Pitbulls crew, a select group of New York DJs, and has worked with DMX and Guru as well as opening on tour for Herbie Hancock. And being an attractive woman has also had its good points: Kaori has been invited to DJ private parties for Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson and a host of celebrities as well as opening parties for the films Blade and Foxy Brown. Her feminine presence is also guaranteed to get the ladies in the house out onto the dancefloor.

Meanwhile, DJ Kaori’s Def Jam Mix shows the DJ’s preference for the smoother elements in the Def Jam catalog, which she mines to good effect, with cuts from Ashanti, LL Cool J and Ja Rule among the 25 tracks on the album. Shunning the cut‘n’scratch athleticism of many “turntablists,” Kaori is the kind of DJ who sets the mood of the party, rather than one who becomes its spectacle. And now that she’s conquered NYC and graced the pages of the likes of The New York Times, recognition in her native Japan seems to be the final challenge.

credit: Def Jam Japan close