History

Christmas Eve 1991 at my grandparents' house in Rotterdam, NY

The first time music became something I really cared about was Christmas 1991. I was eleven years old and in sixth grade. I bought a Sony Walkman and two cassette singles: "Black or White" by Michael Jackson and "O.P.P." by Naughty by Nature. A year later in seventh grade my father drove me to Crossgates Mall so I could buy Das EFX's Dead Serious at Tape World. It wouldn't be long before I went to a dance at the Boys & Girls Club in my hometown of Rotterdam, New York where there was a hip hop DJ named Rich Reohr playing vinyl and doing tricks. That was when I fell in love with DJing. My father was raising me to be an athlete though and laughed when I asked him to buy me DJ equipment. That didn't stop me from trying to scratch my Disney records on my mother's living room turntable though. I even went as far as trying to stick my hand in the opening of the CD player door on my Sony boombox while the CD was spinning (needless to say, it didn't work).

In 1996 I started attending Bishop Maginn, a private school in the city of Albany, for my junior year of high school. It was then that I met Brandon Pitcher, Joe Brace, and Quan Liddel. Brandon taught me how to DJ, and even though I had been writing rhymes on and off for a long time, they all taught me how to freestyle. My first rap name was Dutchmaster, but when I started focusing more on DJing I changed my name to Royal Crown.

As a huge Wu-Tang Clan fan, I started watching kung-fu movies in earnest. Pai Mei, the bad guy in the Shaw Brothers film Fists of the White Lotus, was an old, wise Taoist priest who kicked everybody's ass in style. The movie made such a strong impression on me that I decided to take the name White Lotus as a moniker covering all my efforts as an MC, DJ, and graffiti artist.

VHS box art for Fists of the White Lotus

Near the end of my junior year I sold the majority of my 100-plus CD collection for money to buy turntables. Those were cheap Geminis, but once I graduated high school my grandfather lent me the money to buy brand new Technics 1200s. I would go to Music Shack on Central Avenue in Albany or go down to Fat Beats and Rock & Soul in New York City to buy records. I started DJing house parties during my senior year of high school and that continued through college. Between 2000 and 2002 I also released four mixtapes.

DJing a house party in Schenectady, NY in 1999

My first attempt at college directly following high school was a failure. No sooner than I enrolled at SUNY Albany in the fall of 1998 had I dropped out. A year later, around the time I started attending Schenectady County Community College, I joined my friend Matt Wemple's band, effectively becoming the group's DJ. A couple months later I switched to sharing vocal duties with Mark Turcotte, the band's other vocalist. We called ourselves Constant Elevation and some of our key influences were Rage Against the Machine, The Beastie Boys, 311, and Pantera. Between 1999 and 2003, we made a lot of music that I will always be proud of.

(L to R) Matt Wemple, Eric Walrath and I performing as Constant Elevation in Binghamton, NY ca. 2002

In the fall of 2000 I was back at SUNY Albany and the first thing I did was march up to WCDB 90.9 FM, the college radio station, and find out how to get on the radio. I quickly landed a slot playing every Saturday night from 10:00 to midnight. My show was called Steel Wheel Tai Chi and I held down that time slot for about two years. As an undergraduate I also did two semesters of a major in music. I was good at music theory but had no experience playing piano or singing and didn't make enough time to practice.

Also while in college I heard that a popular local nine-piece R&B cover band named The Refrigerators were auditioning DJs to join the band and give it more of a hip hop feel. When I went in to audition they were pleasantly surprised that I could rap too, and I played with them from 2002 to 2003, covering songs like "In the End" by Linkin Park, "Wild Wild West" by Will Smith, "Hot in Herre" by Nelly, and "Lose Yourself" by Eminem.

Back in 2000 the members of Constant Elevation all scraped together enough money to record and release an EP, but we all agreed that sonically there was a lot of room for improvement. So in early 2002 I took it upon myself to learn how to record, and my mother loaned me the money to buy an Apple PowerMac G4 computer with a Pro Tools rig. With the help of my recording mentor, John Foshee, I proceeded to record a three-song demo for Constant Elevation. A couple different managers took an interest in us over the years, but after we recorded a second unreleased demo in late 2002 for one of them, nothing came of it and the band broke up shortly after.

Right around that time I started working on a solo project. After several months spent cooped up in a studio basement I built in my mother's house, I released Intellectual Evolution as White Lotus in May 2003. I did everything: writing, rapping, beatmaking, scratching, and engineering. That summer I performed with my childhood friend, Jeremy Smith, as my DJ. Jer was known as Deejay Gyro at the time but would eventually change his name to Angel Hands.

Deejay Gyro and I performing at BR Finley's in Troy, NY, June 2003

In 2007 I rented a house on Glass Lake in Averill Park, New York with the intention of building a recording studio, and over a period of several months I recorded an album for my friends' band, Severe Severe. The album was called Beyond the Pink and it was released on Bad Archer Records in 2008.

In the control room of my studio at Glass Lake, June 2007

In 2011 I discovered SoundCloud and got inspired to create some mashups. So I put a few of them on the website, shared them to a few groups, and then one day saw a spike in my profile's traffic. My mashup of Kanye West's "We Major" and The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" had gone viral and was picked up by several trendy music blogs at the time including Earmilk, Music Ninja, Indie Shuffle, and Hypetrak (now Hypebeast Music). Then about a month later, my mashup of Notorious B.I.G.'s "Suicidal Thoughts" and Kanye's "Runaway" found even more success. At its peak, that mashup had over 2 million plays before being removed when SoundCloud changed their copyright policy.

Performing live as DJ White Lotus, August 2011

My next musical adventure was Deep Groove Mono, a blog I launched in 2014 that documents my experience collecting vintage jazz records. I posted about my new vinyl acquisitions and wrote several nerdy articles. One of the more popular articles is about Blue Note Records' transition between the mono and stereo formats and it can be found on the London Jazz Collector website.

I also took a strong interest in the work of legendary jazz recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder at this time. I studied his story and methods in great detail. Then in October 2019 I gave a 90-minute presentation on him at the Audio Engineering Society's annual conference in New York City. After COVID cancelled several plans to give my talk in public again, I decided to present my research online. So I wrote a narrative, designed and developed a website, and launched RVG Legacy with the help of Van Gelder Studio and estate in October 2020.

At Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 2019 (Photo credit: A. Ofiaja)

Back when I was an undergrad at SUNY Albany taking music courses, I took a two-semester sequence in electronic music with Professor Robert Gluck. I have always been fascinated by the mathematical aspects of sound design, and in late 2020 I finally acquired my first modular synthesizer. As of January 2024, I have published over 30 recordings of my electronic compositions on YouTube.

With my modular synth, March 2022

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