Droog’s Justin Sloe Takes Himself to School
After a rowdy romp with the degenerate regulars of L.A.’s infamous Standard rooftop parties on Sundays, partygoers may recognize a familiar face as they drag themselves into work the next day: one of the men behind the decks just the night before. Justin Sloe reports in with the rest of us humps as a database administrator at Vista Del Mar, a West L.A. school for troubled youths, where fights break out regularly and security is on call in case anything gets out of hand.
Sloe is the man behind the curtain for all of the school’s digital recordkeeping, but he also spends a fair amount of time in other establishments that require security, as he’s one-third of the DJ trio Droog. Sloe—along with Andrei Osyka and Brett Griffin—have brought their label, Culprit, to international prominence by way of some well-respected releases and the now-infamous, aforementioned Culprit Sessions at the Standard Downtown.
He has been through four bosses since Droog started to catch on with a 2007 residency at Avalon in Hollywood. For a while, Sloe (not his real last name) was able to keep his DJ and work lives segregated.
“Then one person found out, and things started to crumble a little bit, but for the most part, people let me do my thing,” he says before chuckling and adding, “I think they figure if I was doing really, really well, then I probably wouldn’t still be there.”
But Sloe isn’t just a perpetual local warm-up act. He recounts a weekend earlier this year when they played a Saturday night party in London, then flew to Romania for another gig, and hopped on a plane immediately following that set. After a brief London layover, Sloe was back in L.A. at 7pm on Sunday night, getting ready to tackle the latest SQL bugs in the morning.
It was just a terrible time for everyone involved. Needless to say, I haven’t done that again.
“This is kinda weird: I was in Romania 30 hours ago,” he recalls thinking at his desk. Typically, however, the other two Droogs handle most of the heavy traveling responsibilities, while Sloe will take on domestic gigs while picking his international ones judiciously.
“Every few months, I’ll take a trip to South America, Central America or Europe for a gig using my vacation time,” he says. “But I certainly couldn’t travel every time you see the name Droog.”
Has he ever considered dropping the day job? The answer is yes, a few times, but the real world has a funny way of reminding you how green that other grass can be.
“A few years ago, I dislocated my shoulder, and it really got me thinking that I’m not a 20-year-old kid who can just take a year off,” he said. “I had $35,000 in medical bills that got paid for because of my health insurance.”
Besides, there are certain adventures inherent to having a day job that you just can’t replicate anywhere else. Like the time fives years ago when a boss of his—who handily lumped Droog and the kid with the $100 American DJ setup at last weekend’s wedding into the same “DJ” bucket—insisted that Sloe DJ the school’s prom.
“I must have said ‘no’ about 100 times and did everything I possibly could to explain to her that this wasn’t what I did, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer,” he said, remembering how his coworkers thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
Finally acquiescing, Sloe dug deep into his crate and at one point busted out some Jackson 5, only to have one of the kids ask him when he was gonna stop playing “this old ass shit.”
“It was just a terrible time for everyone involved. My boss didn’t get why the kids didn’t like it. Needless to say, I haven’t done that again.”
Thankfully for the rest of us, the kids at his school are not the tastemakers they thought they were. Culprit just enjoyed its five-year anniversary, with many more to come. Just don’t expect to book Sloe for your Monday morning afterhours any time soon.
Photos by Bradley Meinz
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