The days when people dismissed DJs as 'not real musicians' are long gone - especially when you're talking about artists such as hip hop DJ Craze, who don't just mix tracks for the dance floor, but scratch, chop and juggle beats like demons with mixers.
Craze has helped establish turntablism as an art form - twisting notes, breaking beats and turning familiar tunes into new and eminently head-bobbing music.
He's a three-time winner of the prestigious DJ scratching championship, the World DMC Championships and the only DJ to have won the trophy three consecutive times - in 1998, 1999, and 2000.
On the day we speak, Craze, born Aristh Delgado, is busy filming a commercial for scratch software Traktor in Berlin, in the middle of his European tour before a nine-day, six-city Asian tour.
Craze is considered to be one of the best scratch DJs in the world, with a clutch of scratch titles under his belt and critical praise that runs from America's best DJ as voted by Time magazine ('it was a good look,' he says) to being called the Michael Jordan of turntablism ('the most awesome thing I've read about myself').
Asked if he'd consider competing in the DMC Championships again, he says: 'I had a now-or-never attitude [when entering the first time]. The battle scene had top-notch people - Slice, DJ Dummy - and people in that competition were people I really respected.'