We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tyrese Rogers a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tyrese, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?

It all started back in 2019. During that time I was just like the average student college student at Coastal Carolina University not really knowing what my future held. I had a small DDJ-RB I bought right before I went to college, but never with the intentions of actually using it to DJ parties, only to use it on my down time because I just love music. So on this random day, I was just sitting in my dorm room bored and I started to play around with my little DJ controller. Soon after one of my suite mates knocked on my door and was amazed by what he heard. He honestly just didn’t think I was the one creating the mix he heard through the walls. I doubt it was any good, but at that time college kids weren’t just DJ’ing in their dorm rooms so I guess that’s it. Anyway, he was so surprised that I could DJ that he came up with the idea of him, myself and a few other friends should throw a “house party” in the few upcoming weeks. I was against it at first because again I never had aspirations of being a DJ. After a short back and forth the conversation ended with me saying no. Days later I receive a picture of a flyer from that same suite mate and it was the party flyer. At the bottom he had my name as the DJ. At first I refuted it saying I still didn’t want to do it, but he told me that it’s already out there. I didn’t want to let him down and leave him hanging so I did it. To my surprise it was an absolute success! From that point on I developed a name for myself on campus and around the state as an excellent DJ.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Tyrese Rogers a.k.a DJ ReallyRichReese a 23 year old DJ from Orangeburg, South Carolina. Growing up, my dad used to always play a lot of music for my brother and I because he is also a DJ. One of the main albums that stood out to me was “2001” instrumental album by Dr. Dre. It’s something about those beats that really resonated with me and made me fall in love with the many different elements to a song. As time progressed and my love for music continued to grow, I slowly started to just play around on my dads DJ equipment that he had around the house. From there I bought my own little cheap DJ controller and went off to college with the intentions to just continue playing around with music because it is something that I just loved to do on my own time. Fast forward to a few months later and I was DJ’ing college parties every weekend. What separates me from other DJ’s is my ability to DJ for a variety of different audiences with different genres of music. I take pride in expanding my knowledge in music and the art of DJ’ing to continue to create unique experiences for audiences I am blessed to DJ for. Many people have told me that another thing that makes me different from other people is the fact that I am always 30 minutes to 1 hour early for every event. This is extremely important to me because not only does it allow me ample time to get my equipment setup and do sound checks, it also allows whomever is hosting the event to relax and not stress about if their musical entertainment will be there or not. One last thing I feel like separates me from other DJ’s is my work ethic. It’s one thing to go the extra mile for a reward, but it is another thing to the extra mile for opportunities. There have been many times in my DJ career so far that I had a gig 700+ miles away (and not every time it meant big profits), but I still made a way to get there to have a chance to grow my brand and build connections. To me connections are first and then money is second. Which is weird because my DJ name is ReallyRichReese, but its true “its not what you know, its who you know”.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

There’s a common misconception that non-creatives think DJ’s are just “playing music”. Hearing people say this sometimes really boggles my mind because there is a huge difference between playing songs one after another and curating a vibe for a 4 hour timespan. DJ’ing is telling a story. It’s connecting to your audiences emotions through music and taking them on a musical journey. It’s mixing those timeless records together to create a sense of time-travel for your audience. Or it could be curating an emotional rollercoaster for your audience where you get them really hype and then someway somehow bring them with you to an emotional side, then back hype again…thats DJ’ing. This misconception is slowly leading to DJ’s being undervalued and not respected enough for the job that they do at these events.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

One story I can share that shows my resilience would have to be the one time I was out of town doing an event for 2 days. So the night before I did an event and everything went great. I woke up the next morning and my computer would not turn on and we had a show to do that same night. I tried everything possible to get it to turn on, but it was completely gone. So now the only option I have left is to go buy a new computer. Problem is at the time money was not very abundant so that $1,000 out of the blue purchase definitely hurt. You have to think about it that one purchase makes the entire trip a loss even after payment for the shows since at the time my booking prices were lower. So I bought a new computer and had to set it back up from scratch. Downloading Serato and all the music I possibly could for the event took all day, but in the end I got it done. I was able to DJ the event that night and everything was great. Regardless of the financial loss I had to take, it was a must I still was there on time to do my job. I just learned from this situation that I had to charge more for out of town events in case of emergencies and also that I need to keep everything backed up on an external hard drive.

Contact Info:

• Website: reallyrichent.net
• Instagram: reallyrichreese
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyAQes0KRK7MygQQS5bFiHA

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