In five years, Vancouver’s Thre3Style championships have grown into arguably the premier DJ battle in the world. Over the last week, a knockout competition, both literally and figuratively, was staged in various local clubs around town, including Bar None, Venue, Fortune Sound Club and Club Five Sixty, culminating in a final battle Saturday night at the Commodore Ballroom that saw six turntable masters take the stage to see who was best in the world.
Local DJ Hedspin won what was arguably the stiffest elimination round of the week on Wednesday just to make the final. His winning set on Saturday (which was 15 minutes long and had to include three different genres of music — hence the name of the competition) was peppered with fun samples and technical skill. He started off with a clip of Russell Peters’ famous “Someone gonna get a hurt real bad” bit before kicking off the music with “Hit the Road Jack.” What followed was a typically creative Hedspin set that had all kinds of nice flourishes that got the not-quite-sold-out crowd throwing their hands in the air and waving them like they really do care. Hedspin did suffer some technically difficulties as his MPC stopped working midway through his performance, but he rode out the rest of this set, still managing to do enough to convince the high-profile judges that he deserved the title.
Good to know we got one of the top ranked DJ’s in the world, Vancouver what up!
