Producer Tracy Young on Her History-Making, Grammy-Winning Career
The Advocate. As a teenager, she snuck into Washington, D.C., nightclubs. At 16, she discovered the art of DJing.“I heard like one continuous song, and I was like, How are they doing that?” Young remembers thinking as she heard the DJ’s remixing music for the first time. “I was just blown away.”“That was when I fell in love with DJing because it was like people were just creating a new song, like it was a remix [but] live.
In other words, people were just being really clever and creative and dropping sounds.”It wasn’t until her first year in college that she was able to get her hands on turntables for the first time.
That period was rough for Young, who attended Radford University in Virginia. She was queer-bashed that year and her roommates, after finding out she was a lesbian, moved out.
Young ended up dropping out of school and moving back to D.C.It was her time in D.C., though, that led to her getting a job at a local radio station.
