With his spiky mohawk, cluttered canvas of tattooed skin and punk rock music pedigree stretching back to childhood, Travis Barker isn't exactly pleading to be taken earnestly as a hip-hop head. A previous drummer for the multi-platinum-selling power pop trio Blink-182 who also has done turns behind the kit for rock outfits including the Aquabats, +44 and Box Car Racer, he boasts faultless Warped Tour credentials and critical props as i of modern rock's most exciting, exacting percussion players.
But a laughable thing happened when Barker posted a video of himself on YouTube final September drumming thunderously in time with Southern rapper Soulja Boy's smash make single "Crank That (Soulja Boy)." Almost immediately, it began to spread virally among hip-hop heads. Fast-forward a class: The clip has been streamed a whopping 17.5 jillion times, and no one is more surprised than Barker, world Health Organization says he put it online as a means to a much simpler end.
"You might have heard some of my remixes but never known it was me," he said one blindingly hot good afternoon at his North Hollywood recording studio. "I thought, 'If I want my remixes to be popular, if I want people to even know I'm doing them, maybe I should habit YouTube.' I never thought we'd have as many views as we did. I was tripping!"
And merely like that, the greyhound-thin Fontana aboriginal has become one of the to the highest degree sought-after musicians in rap music, having disposed his patented rock "remix" once-overs to a constellation of tap and R&B luminaries' songs. Among them, Barker's label-sanctioned remixes of Rihanna's "Umbrella," Busta Rhymes' "Don't Touch Me (Throw Da Water on 'Em)," the Game's "Dope Boys," Flo Rida's "Low" and Wale's "G Told Me."
"He's the dopest drummer alive," said Compton gangsta knocker the Game, summoning hip-hop's highest praise. "He does it so effortlessly. Travis is addicted to it. He loves good euphony but hardly happens to be a punk rocker."
Moreover, Barker seems to be drifting even further from the stone flock by teaming up with in demand, genre-hopping turntablist DJ AM to cast a devil-may-care rock-hip-hop hybrid known as TRV$DJAM (you can download its new mixtape, "Fix Your Face," for resign at www.trvsdjam.com).
The duo -- a kind of beat-driven version of the revolver rock collective Camp Freddy that already has hosted such high profile guest stars as Paul Wall and Warren G -- testament perform its third of three sold-out shows at West Hollywood's Roxy Theatre tonight earlier going on to dish out as planetary house band for the MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 7.
Three years ago, in the final countdown to Blink-182's acrimonious breakup, Barker reached out to DJ AM to cooperate after comely inspired by the performance of a hip-hop DJ and a percussionist in New York. The L.A.-based disc jockey was ab initio skeptical.
"I was kind of apprehensive at first," DJ AM aforementioned. "I was thinking, 'Less is more.' Me juggling two records at the same time can be a lot for people to handle. Drums on top could have been besides much."
He continued: "I hadn't heard his remixes and didn't know how awesome a drummer Travis is. But we got together, I threw on James Brown's 'Funky Drummer,' unitary of the most sampled beats in hip-hop, and 'I Know You Got Soul' by Bobby Byrd. His face would just open up; he would match the beat perfectly. I thought, 'Damn, this is merriment.' It's like a skeleton you get to put the clothes on. And one time the wearing apparel are on, you yank out the spine."
Although both Barker and DJ AM already have solo transcription contracts with Interscope Records, the two, who too have performed together a handful of times at the club LAX in Las Vegas, plan to record an album together and enlistment as TRV$DJAM.
A longtime tap music devotee with a huge tattoo of a boombox on his abdominal cavity, Barker endured the rock press' slings and arrows for professing his making love of hip-hop in mag interviews during his seven-year tenure with Blink-182. He says he veered off from pop-punk after decorous frustrated with rock music's time-consuming transcription process.
"It's awing when you're in a band, merely what normally happens is you put down down the drums start, then the bass, and then guitar, so vocals. Damn, that's like a six-month to a year march," the drummer said. "With hip-hop, you can make a birdcall in a day. To make beat generation, for me, is genuinely natural. So that's what I naturally migrated towards."
Barker's embrace by hip-hop comes at a moment when rock frontmen such as Coldplay�s Chris Martin and Adam Levine of Maroon 5 ar being tapped by the likes of Jay-Z and Kanye West to record book rap tracks.
But the drummer's rising within the genre is largely predicated on his close participation with hip-hop dating back to 2004, when Barker contributed beats to a remix of Southern doorknocker Bubba Sparxxx's "Back in the Mud."
From there, Barker's reggae-rap-punk side project the Transplants lED him to do a collaboration with Texan gangsta rapper Bun B, followed by sway remixes for hip-hop all-stars including T.I., the Black Eyed Peas and Rich Boy in 2006.
Lately, Barker has been hard at work producing and recording his solo album, a guest-packed project he says will feature film contributions from Damian Marley and Willie Nelson only also volition include between six and eight rock remixes, due in record stores former next year.
A feverish multi-tasker world Health Organization owns and operates the street clothes line Famous Stars and Straps, he has to be more selective these days around which tunes he'll leave the aggressive-sounding, monster stomp rock drum treatment to.
"Now, any remix that gets thrown to me, I have to love the song sufficiency to make a video recording for it," the soft-spoken Barker aforementioned. "I off down some things I don't think are me, that I don't think my drums will lend a helping hand to."
He added: "Figuring out where there aren't a lot of dynamics on a song, that's one of my strengths. Hearing, 'Oh, the verses could be closed up here.' Or, 'Oh, the choruses could be super freehanded, powerful thither,' or whatever."
According to DJ AM, it's something to behold live.
"Watching him is stunning," DJ AM said. "People get fixated on him. It's like he's performing in Blink but there's no breaks. It's a 45-minute birdcall with super-aggressive drums the whole prison term. You've got to be in ridiculous shape to pull it off! God knows how many calories he burns."
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