Today we’d like to introduce you to Bee Martin.
Hi Bee, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
My creative path has been a long journey that has developed throughout my life. If I’m being really honest with myself like most creatives and most people destined to walk in their purpose, I would say that it all started when I was a kid. As my mother tells it, I was that little girl in karate class kicking my leg in the air and doing katas while looking in the mirror and twirling around. She quickly realized I was clearly meant for something other than what the rest of the family was into, which was martial arts. She ended up putting me in dance classes at the tender age of 6 years old. I took ballet, jazz, tap, and hip-hop. I was completely in my element, excelling in tap and hip-hop. During playtime with childhood friends, I was the one who would arrange for the neighborhood kids to take part in “plays” that I “directed”, which was just us mimicking some musical I had just watched. So, I’m a kid, and I’m dancing playing “theater” with friends while hip-hop, freestyle, and R&B were the dominating music genres played in my household and more importantly, all throughout the barrio I grew up in Oceanside. One of my earliest memories of DJing was hearing DJs scratch records in songs. I remember thinking to myself, “Hey, I can make that sound with my jacket zipper” and would drive my mom absolutely crazy, rapidly pulling my zipper up and down in different sound patterns. She would always yell at me and say “You’re gonna break your jacket!” For a while, I thought people were using zipper sounds in songs until I started watching YO! MTV Raps and saw a DJ on turntables manipulating the beat with two records. I realized it had nothing to do with zippers. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world.
As time went on, I continued dancing and picked up some other creative passions, played sports, and nurtured my interest in sciences along the way. I took up Band where I played the trumpet, took art classes, did Olympic Weightlifting, sports medicine, played softball, skateboarding, film photography, and for a short stint of time, I took drum lessons. My life was always centered around dance, music, sports, and sciences. All of which I’m still fond of and often still participate in to this day, but nothing stuck in my life like Hip-Hop music, and no other dance style besides tap & hip- hop held my interest especially when it came to B-girl’s and B-boy’s.
Fast forward to adulthood. I started diving deep into hip-hop. Not just commercial hip-hop, but underground hip-hop. Underground hip-hop sparkled in my mind, challenging me to think differently. It wasn’t like the gangsta rap I grew up on; underground hip-hop was closer to the Golden Age of Hip Hop. Keeping closer to the origin of conscious hip-hop with an alternative twist. Propelling me into the DJ world. I became more intrigued by the art of Turntablism and was made aware of battle DJs. I started to listen to DJ records and mixes from individual DJs and DJ crews, i.e. The Beat Junkies, The X-ecutioners, Invisibl Skratch Piklz, etc. These crews pumped out some of the dopest routines, filled with obscure yet extremely brilliant rhythmic beats made from vinyl records and the sharpest, cleanest, intricate scratches that stand the test of time, but they weren’t one-dimensional DJs. They were all well-rounded DJs who had hands in all avenues DJing had to offer. Lots of them were on radio TV shows, producing hip-hop records, and just overall responsible for paving the way radio and the way West Coast hip-hop was heading. The DJs I listened to were mixmasters and learned from mixmasters that came before them. They weren’t just playing songs from one record to the next. These DJs were flawlessly blending one record with another record creating a seamless musical journey. Something I realized I loved from a young age but didn’t truly value until I was older.
Eventually, my love for music through DJs led me to meet people from all walks of life. I ended up meeting someone who was heavily in love with Turntablism and was willing to teach me the ins and outs of turntables, how DJ equipment worked and eventually showed me how to scratch. I was shown the basics of how to manipulate sounds on a record, and back then, there weren’t a lot of easily accessible tutorials floating around on the internet. I was learning mostly by ear and watching DJ scratch DVDs to try to grasp the full idea of a scratch technique. Everything was trial and error. The moment I produced sound from a record by myself, it was love at first scratch. I was completely hooked. Unknowingly my life was now headed in a completely different direction than what I had set out to do.
If I wasn’t working, taking dance class, or in academic classes, I was somewhere practicing scratching with my scratch partner and talking about all types of music. About a year into scratching, I was given the best gifts I had ever received in my life besides the gift my mother gave me, which was life itself. I was gifted a turntable and a Vestax mixer. I was given great pieces of equipment to start out with and I never take that gesture for granted. I loved my gifts and I still have that turntable and mixer to this day. I was set up for success and at the time I just wanted to be really dope at scratching. Of course, I admired creative mixing and routines, but I was immersed in scratching. I stuck to just scratching for about 3 years. I realized I started to plateau as far as learning new techniques or different scratch patterns. I was missing something, but I didn’t know what.
Being that I never stopped dancing, I met a great group of b-boys and b-girls in San Diego, of course we shared the common love of hip-hop, and only a few venues accommodated the music styling that allowed all of us to get down on the dance floor, but it wasn’t about the venue. It was about which DJ would be rocking the night and what music they would be playing for the night. DJs Charlie Rock, Kid Riz, Mane One, Mister Hek, Norm Rocwell, Cros One, and a few others we knew were always spinning good hip-hop that kept us on the floor all night. A friend of mine had started dating a nightclub DJ who worked a lot of Downtown clubs, so I also got to observe how the nightclub scene was different from the dance scene. I had been getting a small behind-the-scenes preview on how a working club DJ had to work the crowd, promote themselves, and handle themselves as a business.
Eventually, some DJ friends caught wind that I was what we call the DJ world, “A bedroom DJ” and that I loved to scratch. I always felt kind of intimidated after explaining that I only had one turntable. Some DJs would share their beginning stories with me and explain that some of the best DJs in the world started out with less and really made a point of giving me encouraging words and would always tell me to, “just think about it.” I started to think about it and think… and think for a long time. A lot of fear dug in, and it remained just one of those things I always thought about, but never actually put into action. In the scene being a woman who knew how to scratch and nerded out talking about equipment and music was rare. Both the DJ and dance scenes are male-dominated industries and boy was it intimidating.
I saw through IG that The Invisbl Skratch Piklz would be performing at the 2012 Freestyle Session. Freestyle Session (FSS), curated by DJ Cros One, was the crème de la crème of dance events. B-boy and B-girls from all over the world would travel to San Diego or LA, wherever they might have held FSS that year, to compete against one another. It was and still is one of the highest attended dance battles in the world that many dancers aspire to compete in. Seeing as all the dance homies were going be either competing or attending FSS and ISP would be performing it was a must. I just had to be there. Day of the event I had brought a copy of Phantazmagorea on Vinyl, an album by D-styles, in the hopes that I could get him to sign it. It was for someone close to my heart, so I held out hope that entire day. As the night was coming to an end I realized I got so wrapped up in the excitement of the day I didn’t have a chance to get the record signed. I had to leave the event a little early to take a friend to the train station, so I didn’t think too much about it. I had so much fun the entire day, that’s all that mattered at the time. We were out of the building, and I remember my friend saying, “Bummer you didn’t have a chance to get the record signed.” A moment after he said that as we were turning the corner of the building, we looked up and saw D-Styles standing right in front of us. I walked directly to D-Styles, thanked him for being such an inspiration, and asked him to sign the record. He gladly obliged and asked if I DJed, to which I replied, “No, I just scratch.” He smiled, signed the record, and told me to keep on scratching. Of course, I did after my newfound inspiration. It was exactly what I needed to keep pushing, and made me think more about learning to mix.
I just had one turntable, so learning to mix was gonna be a challenge. I practiced “mixing” by connecting my iPad to the line input on one side of my mixer and playing a record on the side I had my turntable on. This went on for a while. I knew some things about beat matching, but nothing was clicking. Luckily, I had been following D-styles and most of the Beat Junkies on IG. I saw that they had opened The Beat Junkie Institute of Sound (BJIOS), in Glendale, Ca. My intention was to go check it out, but between working two jobs, school, and at the time I was also training for a weightlifting competition, I decided to hold off for a bit. I had a lot on my plate. One day, D-Styles posted a promo for an event at BJIOS. BJIOS would be debuting their official women’s division, Ladies of Sound (LOS) with a women-led mixer curated by the co-founders of LOS, Maricel Sison and Sammi Garong, to promote women in the DJ industry. They brought in a panel of women DJs who would be spinning and leading a scratch session at the infamous Longtagon, a huge round table equipment with all sorts of turntables and mixers. I told myself if by chance I’m not scheduled to work that night then I definitely have to go. No excuses. Schedule came out a few days later for the week, and I was NOT scheduled to work. It was kismet. I made my way to BJIOS the following week.
Walking into a building full of women DJs was so empowering. Watching the panelist spin while we all mingled was so different from anything I had experienced with DJs at the time. Listening to the top leading women in the game, DJ Shortee, Annalyze, Mona Lisa, Bella Fiasco, DJ Javin, Deejay Step 1, was eye-opening. While their origin stories, DJ styles, and goals weren’t exactly the same, the drive, determination, skill level, and commitment to achieving their goals was. I was in awe. During the mixer there were some raffle tickets being sold, so I copped a few. I had a good feeling about the night, so I just ran with it. I ended up winning twice! The first winning ticket got me a LOS sweatsuit; The second winning ticket got me a gift certificate for BJIOS. I had the opportunity to use it for merch or use it towards classes at BJIOS. There was this dope Beat Junkie shirt I had been eyeing, but when I inquired about pricing for the Intro to DJing class and speaking with Sherille, a BJIOS employee and LOS representative, it would have been silly of me to pass up the opportunity. I signed up that night ready to report for class that following Wednesday, committing to a 6-week course. Which meant for 6 weeks, I would have to make the commute from Oceanside to Glenadale. I didn’t mind the commute. I love long drives.
During Intro class, so many things finally clicked. I realized there were so many correlations between DJing and dancing when it came to counting music and scratching. After completing Intro to DJing, I was hungry for more and I wanted to keep the momentum going. The next step was DJ Foundation. I committed to an entire year plus of DJ education. Foundation was more in-depth DJing. We started out on vinyl, then slowly progressed to learning Serato. We dove into all genres of music, basic scratch techniques, working doubles, and other beginner turntable techniques. The curriculum was great, and to make sure we were performing to our highest potential we were tested to complete each level in foundation. Those tests were no joke. I was practicing more than ever before. I successfully graduated Foundation and felt confident enough to start asking my fellow DJs in SD and LA if I could do opening sets for some parties they were doing. Of course, I went into the next level of tablism at BJIOS, Structure. Taking on another year of higher DJ education. Structure was more intricate, intense, and way more fast-paced than Foundation. This was the sink or swim class. Training wheels off. Fully committed to DJing, I graduated Structure with flying colors. Between Foundation and Structure people started to pay more attention to my skill and most importantly my commitment to the craft. Still, always a student. Never not learning something when it comes to progressing in the creative DJ journey.
I started being asked to gig more in SD and LA. I also started going to a lot more parties. Getting to know more DJs and networking heavy. Even during the shutdown. I never stopped networking and learned so much more about the DJ business and business as a creative during lockdown. Networking switched from meeting DJs in person to meeting DJs online on Twitch. I still met DJs in person, but the majority of my newer relationships were made through Twitch and through streaming with LOS, The Boombap Kids, BJIOS, and a few other homies Twitch channels. Shutdown is what gave me a big push and fast-tracked a lot of my progress post-shutdown. It was what a lot of us DJs and creatives needed to gain some perspective on what we really wanted to do and how we wanted to move forward. For the entire world being shut down, I really was doing the most and keeping myself as busy as possible with creative projects centered around music and future event-planning endeavors.
When the outside world started opening back up, I hit the ground running. I made connections with some amazing people and extremely talented DJs and creatives. I’ve DJed in really dope places with amazing people, have created events, podcasts, live streams, and even got to work on an independent film as a DJ consultant. My life consists of music and other creative adventures. I can wholeheartedly say I am right where I’m supposed to be in life, and I love it here.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The road to my DJ and creative journey has definitely had its challenges and continues to have its challenges. Navigating this male-dominated industry where people make assumptions or instantly try to put in some sort of category or box as a DJ who happens to be a woman is still a hard barrier to break through. Sometimes DJs can have huge egos. I’ve been completely dismissed before by DJs simply because I’m a woman and because I’m still a newbie in the hierarchy of DJs. That’s always a little rough to handle, but it led me to work a lot on my confidence. Trusting myself and trusting the process can be the biggest struggle sometimes. I’ve spent a lot of time putting my head down, doing the work, putting in countless hours of practice, and learning more than I ever anticipated. Not just in DJing alone but in sound engineering, marketing, production, event curating, and a bit in graphic design. There are times where I have to remind myself that I didn’t do all that work just to stop now. I rely heavily on my inner circle and a few fellow DJs who have shown me real love and complete confidence. Their support means a great deal to me. They really are the best people, and I couldn’t ask for more genuine people in my corner.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’ve been fortunate to DJ many events as of the past few years between both SD and LA. One being my favorite event in San Diego, Soul Sunday, held at Quartyard curated by Blake Dye and his SMPL Collective team. If I’m not spinning for them, then I am definitely in attendance. I hold a residency with DJ Norm Rocwell at Blue Foot Bar in North Park called Crush’N You held every first Friday of the month. Love/Hate, a collaboration party with Cuffin and Hickies and Dry Humps events, and Over Easy, both held at Park & Rec in North Park. In LA, I’ve got to rock some really great events; I’ve done Soul Source, NAMM convention with Ladies of Sound, and BJIOS. A Family Affair Festival held by the GR818’ers, an amazing dance community that focuses on keeping the elements of Hip-Hop progressing with youth programs, and I hold a residency down with my friend, Sherielle, aka Dr. Samson at Bar Franca for our Love Language night we curate for LOS. I’ve even been fortunate enough to DJ in San Francisco for a great party called Bae Slaps curated by Knowpaslaps.
While I’m mostly known for DJing, right now, I would have to say the event I am most proud of is Articulated Combat. Articulated Combat, created by a talented digital creator friend of mine, Evan Spaulding, is a live, in-person monthly discussion. We discuss hot topics and controversial subjects within our community. The focus for Articulated Combat is allowing our BIPOC community to discuss differences in anything from music, lifestyles, relationships, politics, and traumas in a safe space. Helping the community to heal and navigate this ever-changing world we all live in together. I feel very fortunate to be on this creative team for so many reasons.
My second proudest event would have to be my participation in Roses from the Concrete. This event was held by Artivist Entertainment in collaboration with Grand Performances in honor of Brandon Lopez, cousin of Councilman Jonathan Hernandez, who was killed by Santa Ana Police. This killing took place not too long after the George Floyd tragedy. Not only did I get to be part of a wonderful remembrance for Brandon’s life by sharing the stage with my one of my mentors, Rhettmatic of The Beat Junkies and Grammy nominee Aloe Blacc, but through my talent, love for community, passion for fighting injustice, and love of music I got to help my BIPOC community to stand in power. United in the fight of an unjust system.
I also find great joy when I get the chance to dip into my creative directing bag. I’ve curated live-stream events for Ladies of Sound. I curated and produced Dope By Association, a podcast centered around the dope DJs and various creatives I’ve met. I’ve successfully released several episodes of Dope By Association on Twitch. As of right now, I’m currently revamping the podcast, but things are slowly coming together with that particular project. A fellow DJ friend by the name of J-Rythm lined me up to work as a DJ consultant and a hand double for an independent film coming out soon. That was a lot of fun working on set. I’ve got to do a lot since being in this space. I’ve been very fortunate and incredibly grateful for all the opportunities that have come my way, and I can’t wait to see where I take all of this.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
The one thing I would like to share is this. Even if you have to go at it alone, just go for it. I’ve met so many amazing people through this journey, but I spend a great deal of time alone. I really wouldn’t have gotten this far if I wasn’t brave enough to go to certain events all by myself. You never know who you’ll meet along the way. If the passion, good intent, the dedication to the work, and the mindset is there and it’s firmly placed in your heart and soul, your people and opportunities will show up for you. PROMISE! The universe is always listening. Take nothing for granted and cherish the people you love while they are still here. Life is too short to worry about people who don’t appreciate you or who can’t see your vision or take you for granted. Especially when times get hard. Create and live with intention always.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @yobeethedj
- Facebook: https://www.twitch.tv/yobeethedj
- Other: https://www.mixcloud.com/yo_bee/
Image Credits
Chris Bathan
Christian Chacon
Ray Quib
Chris Cameron
Maricel Sison
