DJ ASSAULT

Strictly booty

By DAVE WEDGE

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Detroit's DJ Assault is often viewed as the godfather of ghettotech but don't tell that to him.

"I never supported that name for my music. It was always just booty music to me," Assault aka Craig De Shan Adams aka Craig Diamonds said on the phone from his Detroit lair. "The ghetto tracks were all stuff for the clubs that weren't in the best part of the city. That's where the ghetto name came from. I guess people talked to some magazines and whatever. It's really kind of silly."

Regardless of what it's called, Assault's high-energy style, which mixes elements of Detroit and Chicago techno, Miami booty bass and the sex rhymes of acts like 2 Live Crew and Too $hort, lands him in about 100 different DJ booths across the globe each year. His scattershot schedule brings him to the Thunderdome IX bash at Cambridge's Greek American Political Club Friday before he heads to LA for a New Year's Eve party with DJ Soul and then to legendary London club Fabric and France next month. 

"I got DJs running for cover. They scared of me again," he says in his signature lazy drawl. "There's no telling what I might play. I just kind of play off the moment. I just go with what I feel." 

Assault grew up in Detroit, learned how to mix on a "garbage" pair of turntables and then went to Clark Atlanta University where he spun at parties and clubs. He fell in love with DJ'ing listening to radio shows in Detroit, which back then played local up-and-coming artists as opposed to the over-exposed flotsam desecrating the airwaves today.

"It was just different back in the day. It was fun," he said. "Everything is so commercial now. They only play the major label style stuff. Detroit used to have its own music. Now Detroit doesn't have its own identity."

To combat the mainstream machine, Assault, 34, has launched his own imprint, Jefferson Ave., which he uses to sporadically release 12-inches and download-only albums. His latest project is the XXX rap romp Trax to Make Ur Panties Wet, which features the deliciously deviant "Panties and Bras." The porn rhymes would make Peter North proud yet sometimes Assault gets a little bugged out that people can't see beyond his artist persona.

"I've never been a person to try and act all Hollywood-style just cause I've been all these places and have money and drive nice cars. I've always been down to earth," he explained. "When people meet you, it's hard to get away from the image of what they hear on the record versus being a regular person. They think you've gotta have a million girls running around. But you can't be a performer 24/7. I can't always be Assault."

But once he's in the booth, Craig is gone and Assault is there-no matter if you call it ghettotech, booty music or his latest description, "accelerated funk."

"I have fun in what I do," he says. "As long as the girls are getting naked we'll have a good time."

THUNDERDOME IX

DJ ASSAULT WITH MISTAKER, DJ DIE YOUNG AND MORGAN LOUIS

FRIDAY, 12.14

GREEK AMERICAN POLITICAL CLUB

288 GREEN ST., CAMBRIDGE

617.354.8178

10PM/21+/$8

DJASSAULT.COM

MYSPACE.COM/ONEMANLEAVES