A Quote by Wilfried Zaha

I am the Crystal Palace DJ. I'm the guy who gets us going. I play the songs. — © Wilfried Zaha
I am the Crystal Palace DJ. I'm the guy who gets us going. I play the songs.

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Traditionally, with a DJ set, you just go hear DJ that has a good reputation and let the DJ take you somewhere. It was up to the DJ what he wanted to play. Typically in dance music, people didn't know most of the songs a DJ played.
At the end of the day, if I do a set at a festival and I only have an hour, which is kind of short for a DJ set, I know that I have to play at least six of my songs. Then the whole challenge is what do I weave around that. How do I stand out? Because at a festival there's probably fifteen songs every DJ's going to play every hour, for the whole day. That to me is more interesting, because I still feel like an outsider in this world.
I'm not going to play gigs as Jamie xx. I'm just going to DJ. I'm not comfortable performing my songs on a stage. It's not something I think I'm particularly good at.
It was Cosmos who actually told Crystal Palace about me. Palace came to have a look, liked what they saw, and they took it from there.
When you're a soul singer, I'm singing a lot of songs about love and relationships that I think a lot of girls really relate to. For whatever reason, that seems to get 'em excited. The DJ, everyone always says the DJ gets all the chicks, but that's never been my experience.
It hasn't always been a Premier League ride for Crystal Palace supporters. They're there to support us through the hard times.
You'll see me just walk into the local Tesco. I don't feel I need to hide myself because there's no reason to. Okay, I play for Crystal Palace, but I'm still a normal human being.
When I was 11 my school held a sports day near Crystal Palace. We were told we were going to play a rugby match. The ball was eventually passed to me and I was obviously expected to run with it. I took one look at all these players charging towards me, placed the ball on the ground and walked off the pitch.
I made my name and reputation DJing in hip-hop clubs in New York. 'Celebrity DJ' is a term that I hated. To me a celebrity DJ is someone that's on 'Big Brother' or in some kind of B-movie who gets a gig to DJ even though they're not talented enough to do it.
We don't test out the songs live, and we don't play them for weeks on end in the studio. We have, like, one day to get two songs down. So what happens is, everybody's attention and energy gets ratcheted up. But it's good because it helps us focus.
A bad guy in a movie has a lot of latitude for acting. He can walk up the wall, crawl across the ceiling, go piss in the corner and everybody will say, "Fantastic!" But somebody's going to have to catch that sucker. Somebody's going to have to play the guy who gets him in the end. And that's a better part.
When Sunderland turned down an offer for me from Crystal Palace I went to see Moyes in his office three or four times. I was angry. I told him: 'Accept Palace's bid and just let me leave - it is the best thing for all concerned.' But he said that he wanted to keep hold of me.
When I go in to fight week, I go, 'Maybe I'm going to be that guy on the highlight reel that gets knocked out.' I'm always thinking, 'How am I going to react? Am I going to be a sore loser?' I'm almost checking myself in case something bad happens.
DJ-ing itself is not just about playing songs. The art of DJ-ing is presenting new songs to the crowd that they haven't heard before and creating a party vibe that's different than just listening to anybody's playlist. It's the only way to truly be big and respected in your craft.
It's tough when you're an artist because you get to go around the world and make a lot of friends, but guess what? One day, all these people that you love are going to die, from DJ Mehdi to DJ Dusk to J Dilla to Austin Peralta to DJ Rashad.
I think Crystal Palace is always a tough place to go.
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