Fedde le Grand Interview

Deck hero to the masses

What makes FEDDE LE GRAND so disgustingly popular? Let's hear it from the man himself...

Fedde le Grand became a household name on the dance music scene almost overnight with the huge summer success of his single 'Put Your Hands up for Detroit' in mid-2006. Since then, it seems the man can do no wrong. base.ad caught up with the most requested DJ in the world at the moment, to find out the secret to his infectious hit-making producer skills and how his life has changed over the last year-and-a-half.

For Fedde, his interest in music started very early and the DJing was initially a side job to raise extra cash whilst at school: "I did this little club in Utrecht and it kind of grew from there to a bigger club and a bigger club and I got offered to play all over Holland – it kinda grew until the 'Detroit...' record came along and then it totally blew up." Oh yes, don't we all know that. It seems so far that the quality music Fedde continually manages to produce has sparked an unflailing interest from music fans the world over.

Much of the press has tried to brand Fedde as belonging to one particular genre but he disagrees with a lot of these claims and thinks that this loopholing is for ease of description. He makes it clear, as he somewhat fractiously offers: "You always try and fight against people that wanna box you in. I mean music is just an expression about how you think or feel about certain things, I think it's really bad to try and label someone. I like to just be me and nothing else. I'm not some label or some style". This hints at the possible reason his music has been getting so many of you excited – because it is just infectiously catchy dance music which translates well to both the airwaves and club environments and cannot be confined to any one genre.

Considering Fedde has received so much positive recognition recently, it seems he still has his head firmly on his shoulders and is ever pleasantly surprised by the new successes as they pop along almost like clockwork with each new release. Speaking about 'Put Your Hands up for Detroit', he excitedly exclaims: "I actually never expected it to be a hit and I never expected it to cross over. In terms of 'The Creeps' I expected it a little bit more because it's a vocal track so it's a bit more radio friendly. I mean you never really know – every time you finish a track it's like your kind of newborn child so you think it's great but you never know what other people are gonna say; it's always a bit scary."

The fact that every tune he smacks out is like a ten carat diamond in terms of sales and popularity doesn't explain why Fedde found it so hard to begin with, eventually deciding to set up his own label, Flamingo Records in order to be able to release his material. "We [Fedde and partner Funkerman] started the label because nobody liked these hits. That's the funny thing!...We believed in our product. With the 'Detroit...' record, nobody, at least the labels we sent it to, liked it, so we just put it on our own label and from that point it started to grow and get picked up by other labels until it finally hit the clubs everywhere." We'd love to see the faces of those silly A&R men who turned down the track, they must be kicking themselves in the balls now.

With the realisation that they were onto something and the fact that they have their own label to release material on, Fedde is hopeful that it will continue to enable him to remain completely and utterly artistically uninhibited: "We wanna have the freedom to do what we want and not have to fight with A&R's about what they think is good. A lot of them don't listen to the music, they just listen to your track to see if they can make money off it." This rings apparent in the varied tracks he has released so far. From the floorfiller electro house anthem 'The Creeps' featuring Camille Jones, to the more hip hop soulful vibe of current release 'Let me Think About it' featuring Ida Corr – there isn't much common ground at all.

With a new album set to be finished in January next year and the launch of his own Flamingo clubnight, it doesn't look like Fedde's pure enthusiasm and creativity is about to fizzle out anytime soon either. As he puts it: "At the beginning I felt a little bit pressured but the love for the thing I do got me here so I just try not to change, not to think about what other people think. I just try and make the music that I think is good, it's worked so far so I think it's the right thing to do."

Words: Naomi Misquita-Rice