BabeyDrew is fighting for credibility

Andrew “BabeyDrew” Bisnaught can be a hard man to pin down. For the moment, he’s in the basement studio of his Gresham Park-area home, going over mixes for a slate of weekend shows. The DJ, radio personality, and budding EDM producer has just returned from one of his international runs, the kind that have him doing club gigs from Dubai, Cannes, and Montpellier to Cyprus, Qatar, and Lebanon. It’s not a bad gig. In fact, it’s a wonder he hasn’t grown increasingly bored huddled up in the suburban confines of DeKalb County.

Since moving to Atlanta from Virginia in 2012, DJ BabeyDrew has flirted with the idea of leaving. Not that there’s not enough keeping him here. He’s nabbed weekly gigs at Tongue and Groove and Havana Club, as well as joining Top 40-friendly Power 96, and drops his own live mix on the station every Friday morning. He’s played 420 Festival (opening for Snoop Dogg), opened for Steve Aoki, as well as New Kids on the Block, and will headline the forthcoming Foam World at Quad later this month. However, it took a while for ATL to grow on the New York-born son of Jamaican immigrants. “At one point, I was just like, ‘forget Atlanta,’ because they pay the DJs shit, and nobody is really interested,” he says.

That might seem like the kind of bold statement natives are used to hearing from transplants, especially one they’re more familiar with as the baby daddy to local entertainer Traci Steele. BabeyDrew and Steele’s rocky 10-year relationship came to a head on VH1’s “Love & Hip-Hop Atlanta” in season two.

However, long before he was sitting in the confessional chair on prime time’s most ratchet hour of programming, BabeyDrew built a name for himself in radio. Due to his Caribbean familial ties, he was on a heavy dose of Beres Hammond and Sanchez while growing up in Queens. He’d take his love for DJing with him to Hampton University where he further honed his craft and, out of college, was making roughly $900 a week spinning. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t till he was offered a job with the financial institution Standard & Poors that he decided to take on music full time. “I was like, ‘No, I think I’m going to just DJ,’” he says.

DJing kept BabeyDrew in Virginia where he’s still a household name on local radio. He would link with singer Chris Brown and his manager in 2007 through the radio station, and that turned into BabeyDrew becoming the full-time tour and personal DJ for the Grammy-winning artist. They’d travel to countless countries together, and occasionally butt heads, but the experience provided BabeyDrew with a global industry network to build on. More recently he’s been able to book gigs as a solo act, whereas before he was getting international gigs being billed as “Chris Brown’s DJ.”

It was also on these tours that BabeyDrew started to transition from a mostly hip-hop DJ to more of an open format style. He’d take the Euro sound heard in Parisian dance clubs back with him to the haunts of Virginia. Immediately, his boldness — fusing Caribbean traditions with house and EDM — caught attention stateside.

“I was one of the first DJs to play Dutch house in the states, in Virginia, and people were like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ But now that Dutch house sound is the sound,” he says.

In an effort to be closer to his son, Drew, BabeyDrew relocated to Atlanta, but quickly found ATL wasn’t quick to respond to the DJ with the baby face and island bass charms. “When I moved here none of the pop stations would reply to any emails, and I wasn’t smart enough to go meet anyone,” he says, adding that it was around that time he agreed to be on “Love & Hip-Hop Atlanta.” He figured the TV time exposure might help book more gigs in Atlanta, after failed stints at both 107.9 and V-103.

He was wrong.

“I ran as far away from that as possible when it was done,” he says. “I don’t even put that in any of my bios; don’t put it in the EPK. ... I don’t want to be associated with that.”

With VH1 in his rearview, and taking cues from Major Lazer, DJ Snake, and A-Trak (his current biggest influences), BabeyDrew is seemingly next in line to take the reigns of what Your EDM refers to as the island bass movement. In fact, Skrillex and Major Lazer ringleader Diplo have both sampled BabeyDrew’s latest BSSMNT and Bunji Garlin-assisted single “In the Air.” The song’s vocals were also jacked by notorious EDM group Caked Up. He’s currently closing out an untitled EP with the Belgium-based BSSMNT, and the team just released a new single featuring Agent Sasco titled “Walk Out.” There’s also BabeyDrew’s own EP in the works, which he says is coming sooner than later. He’s been obsessing over a track that includes a sample of comedian Gilbert Gottfried on loop saying, “This DJ sucks.”

Like a good student on the come-up, he’s tinkering and toying with what does and doesn’t work. He’s more than honest with himself. “I’m not going to say that I’ve been listening to Tiesto for 10 years because I haven’t,” he says. “For me it was a gradual transition into things.”

In the meantime, he’s linked with local DJs such as RL Shine, and hails the likes of Heroes X Villains as acts that are helping to push ATL’s EDM scene further into the global consciousness. Others are taking note.

“Drew is a guy that has entertaining in his blood and it shows every time he takes the stage or the DJ booth,” says Scotty K, a Power 96 personality, co-host of station’s successful morning show, and a world-traveling DJ who considers BabeyDrew a friend. “He works hard at his craft, he knows how to read a crowd, and is humble enough to not play music for himself or other DJs.”

The two bonded over their mutual love of radio, music, and being transplants in the city while trying to build a name for themselves in a new town. That, and the fact they’re both single dads.

Being that TomorrowWorld — where BabeyDrew is set to perform this year — is expected to bring in more than $93 million to the Georgia economy, artists see the rise of EDM in Atlanta as both a financial and cultural win for the city. “We don’t want Atlanta to be just known for strip clubs and big booty hoes,” he says. “I’m glad I’m on the threshold of what’s happening and growing here.”