The Love & Logic behind Soup NYC

SOUP has been around since the late 90s and survived what many would call the end of “prime New York City nightlife.” What were some hurdles you had to overcome, or changes you had to make over the years to keep SOUP constant in a city and industry where change is inevitable?

Logic: I was DJing from the mid-90’s on, but around that time (late ‘90s-early 2000s) I was at school in Washington D.C. and became resident DJ at a club called Buzz, which was one of the premiere mega clubs in the country. There would be 6,000 people on a Friday night. Back then I was playing Drum & Bass so I started playing D&B at Buzz. I finally worked my way up to be a resident DJ and then they closed (laughs). I made my way back up north and was throwing house music parties. Around that time Chris had re-started SOUP and that’s when we connected.

Love: The end of “prime-time” is when I was taking a break and Andy was getting started. Right before the relaunch I was doing bottle service parties like hosting Guns N Roses afterparties, models and bottles (laughs), but that got boring because I wasn’t DJ’ing, I was just booking the events. What we needed to accept in order to successfully relaunch the SOUP brand was: work with younger, newer, emerging artists and promoters who were like-minded.

Logic: One of the biggest challenges is that people who go to clubs get older, so people who were out ten years ago may be home with families of their own now. What happens is the attendees and party-goers turn over, so you have to be relevant to the new ones. We came from an era when hip-hop music was Biggie, Tupac, Mobb Deep, and people like that, and now you have all this “mumble rap”. Things change. What we’ve been doing is looking for talented DJs and producers with the same kind of musical outlook that we have. Artists that mix for real, aren’t “computer DJs,” who are true to their craft. Then we book them and if they do a good job during opening slots we’ll work them through, and if they’re getting people out and we like the people they’re bringing, it goes hand-in-hand. Recruiting new talent and new fans.

Love: You have to embrace the new ones as they come in. Working with younger talent, emerging DJs, new promoters, that’s key.

Speaking of new talent, ‘Movement’, ‘Nighttime Bubblin,’ Shake the Club’… three high-energy, dancefloor-ready EPs recently released on the SOUP label. What do you guys look for in an artist or a track that you’re going to represent?

Logic: For the most part, Chris and I DJ every weekend and when we’re out playing we have a good range for where we can go musically by reading the crowd and feeling things out. The music we put out comes from many different influences. I’ve been a part of records with Mobb Deep, shared the stage with Jeru, and rapper Born-I out of D.C. which we’re working with now. Chris has years of working with hip-hop artists, I mean Slick Rick came out for his birthday party. He sang him ‘Happy Birthday,’ I was like W T F….

Love: Slick Rick performed at my birthday party, we’re old homies. I started out first throwing hip-hop parties. Back in the day, my first sampler was an SP1200 lent to me by Large Professor… he’s one of the main guys that discovered NAS and he produced tons of talent. He was my first graffiti partner. We used to go out bombing, my younger sister and his niece were our lookouts. My roots have been hip-hop way before house.

Logic: I think that kind of b-boy attitude influenced by hip-hop definitely comes out when we DJ as far as the way we perform. We do a lot of cutting and spin-backs, and different things to entertain the crowd that you might not see from every techno and house DJ. We move around a lot, we have a lot of fun behind the decks. When we’re picking tracks for the label, I picture how the crowd would react to it. If I hear something good I’ll think to myself, “I can’t wait to drop this Friday night. At this part of the track, I think the crowd will go ape-shit.” And then when it happens we’ll look at each other like, “Yeah, we’re signing this.”

Love: But it also has to be produced well. When we get demos and they’re not mastered yet, you can tell. You can tell if the track has been compressed too much, or if the drums aren’t separate. I’m real picky about that stuff. I can’t stand hearing all the drums on one track; you can tell when you hear that song that it’s not going to work in the club. You have to have the parts separate and they all have to be EQ’d properly! Proper EQ’ing is a must!