Today we’d like to introduce you to HB Smooth
Hi HB, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I started off as an internet radio host in my sophomore year of high school. The radio station was overseas in the UK. Back then, everyone was using Shoutcast as a radio streaming server, or sometimes Icecast, and you needed special software to connect to the radio server, like SAM Broadcaster. At that point, I wasn’t DJing—I was just pushing play on mixes I made on tape, listening to a lot of juke, techno, trance, house music, and rock. One of my favorite places to be was Coconuts Music Store or Virgin Megastore, where I’d buy techno and trance albums. I would ride the train home, listening to one of the CDs in my CD player to get inspired.
In my senior year of high school, my homie Tha Crack Capone DJ Roc showed me how to make juke tracks on FL Studio. It was something I’d wanted to learn how to do since I was 12. I burned my tracks to CDs and let my classmates hear them at school—though I won’t lie, my juke tracks sounded like pots and pans! But I kept at it. I had the opportunity to meet one of the legends of juke music: DJ Slugo. Along with DJ Roc, DJ Speed (R.I.P.), and DJ Pnut, we all met him. It was incredibly inspiring and made me push harder.
At that time, my DJ name was DJ Smootth. I’m not sure when I changed it to DJ HB Smooth, but it was probably when I left for college. In college, I started recording rappers in my dorm room. I was still 100% focused on making juke music until one of the rappers told me I should start dropping rap mixtapes. So, I did. I applied for a DatPiff account—back then, they had to approve your tape. Some of the covers I made myself. I started using Cool Edit Pro to make the tapes, and they were often double-disc projects. I even hosted mixtapes for the artists I recorded in my dorm room, all while still making juke tracks and albums.
Eventually, I linked up with my homie DJ Kellen, and we started DJing mansion parties. But it was one particular party that really got me focused on making R&B mixtapes. At a certain point of the party, when it was time to slow things down, I noticed how the dance floor moved when I switched to R&B. I transitioned to another R&B track, and then it hit me: I should drop some R&B mixtapes. So, I did, and eventually, I came up with a mixtape series called College Freak, which did some serious numbers. I spent a lot of time looking for R&B artists to feature on my mixtapes, and if I vibed with the artist, I’d reuse their songs on multiple volumes. I even had R&B artists emailing me their tracks from other countries, hoping to be featured. It was much easier to promote on social media back then, so I took full advantage. I was tweeting 200 times a day to promote the College Freak mixtape.
Social media paid off—by the last week of December 2014, my Facebook fan page jumped from 15K to 50K likes. This was before they started calling them “followers.” I think I was gaining around 100K followers a month until things started slowing down. During my climb, I helped build up other comedians’ pages and even made an R&B artist go viral, to the point where she got signed. Then, one of the artists I was working with had a clip from his music video go viral—reaching 2.3 to 4.3 million views. It all happened so quickly that I started suffering from imposter syndrome.
That same year, I started building my Audiomack page and growing my following there. I also began taking trips to different cities to link up with content creators for viral skits. Sometimes, I did remote skits—meaning the collaborations didn’t require us to be in the same city. It was a win. After editing the skits, I’d refocus on making mixtapes. Most of my practice came from making mixtapes, as I’d mix them until I thought they were perfect enough to release.
One of my main goals in life was to be a tour DJ, and I can honestly say I’ve accomplished that goal. I’m currently one of the tour DJs for “Put the City On.” My homie Jt Da Don had been telling me I needed to get outside more. It took me a minute, but I finally jumped off the porch this year and haven’t looked back. Maybe one day, I’ll be DJing at a festival next.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, it has not been a smooth road because I was getting in my own way. One of the main obstacles that has been a true pain was dealing with social anxiety and imposter syndrome. I didn’t even know I had them at the time, and I used to think people wouldn’t accept me because of it. As a result, I didn’t go as hard as I could have. That’s been my struggle my whole life. My social anxiety was so bad that I had a hard time being around people, which was one of the reasons I didn’t take certain risks back then. And outside of the times when I didn’t have money, it was easy not to worry about finances because all I had to do was create and not think about money.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I consider myself a creative because I do more than one thing. I write music, make remixes, DJ, etc. What sets me apart might be my work ethic and my ear for talented artists. It just seems like I always bump into the right people at the right time when it comes to talent.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I would say good luck has played a crucial role in my creativity. I can just feel the energy whenever I go to create something or find an artist I know I can help. The energy of good luck is always there. But I can’t really call it luck. Considering the numbers I cranked out online, how quickly I built my Facebook following, and the success I had with my mixtapes, I guess that could be considered good luck. When it comes to bad luck, I take it as a lesson because I know you can’t win all the time. But when you don’t, you have to go back, review, and learn the lesson. And that’s exactly what I do.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://hbsmooth.music/overview
- Instagram: https://Instagram.com/djhbsmooth
- Facebook: https://Facebook.com/hbsmooth
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/djhb-smooth
