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But there was a time when it did look like Louie’s DJ c His dreams, though, went far beyond the Staten Island stomping grounds where he grew up. “I started selling mix tapes like any other street DJ trying to get known,” he recalls. “When mix CDs became popular, I started doing mix CDs. I’d sell them at the Italian Feasts in New York, and local mom and pop stores.” Under the abbreviated name of DJ Louie, he became “a myth around Staten Island and Brooklyn. No one knew who I was but everyone knew the CDs. I would never dispute it. Everyone would ask, ‘Are you DJ Louie?’ I was like, ‘I don’t even know who that is!’” Eventually, the time came to make himself known: “I was like, ‘You know what? I want to put together a real compilation and mass market the whole thing.” After funding the inaugural NYC U By the weekend, based solely off customer inquiries from Louie’s local radio ads, the store’s management had ordered 1,000 CDs. “They hooked me up with a distributor,” Louie recalls. “They ordered 1,000… a week later they ordered 3,000… then they ordered 7,000 more…” And so a DJ legend was born. While Louie may have made his early success on playing to the mainstream, he’s recently branched out with a contribution to the Pacha nightclub compilation series. “It’s def But ultimately, Louie considers himself a DJ of the people. “I play the music for the room,” he says of his style. And he brushes off snobby remarks that greet his choice off commercial cuts. “Everyone’s a wannabe DJ,” he says, imitating the attitude of a backseat-spinner. “’Why didn’t you play THIS?! Why didn’t you play THAT?!’” He pauses. “Just do your thing.” Sure. And if “your thing” happens to sell a few thousand records in the process… not bad. Not bad at all.    
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nderground Party compilation on his own, adding his last name, advertising on local radio stations and keeping up the club gigs, Louie found his first taste of success: “My goal was to sell 5,000,” he says. “I was storing them in my parent’s garage, selling them box by box to record stores and stuff like that. I was thinking, ‘man, I made a big mistake… I’m gonna have a lot of boxes left over!’” Then, a trip to the local mall’s record store proved the turning of the tides. “I had a box of New York City Underground and I asked to see the manager. I said, ‘I was wondering if you’d be interested in carrying this CD.’ The guy’s eyes lit up like it was Christmas. He goes, ‘Where’d you get this CD? We’ve had 200 people call or come in for this CD in the last three days!”
initely a different sound,” he says of the album’s less commercial vibe. “This one was sold internationally, all over the world… so it’s a little bit different… a lot more underground stuff and progressive stuff.” And over the next year, Louie will also be hard at work on his first album of original productions. He admits that, compared to his compilation work, this is the more daunting task: “Taking 12 or 16 songs… I think I’m on my 14th cd, and not that it gets any easier, but programming that out… I can have that out in a week. This is gonna take me a year of producing.”