DJ Godfather

Early start

DJ Godfather is the name of Brian Jeffries, a DJ and producer based in Detroit. He started DJing at 15 at Jams, a teen club at the Four Bears Waterpark in Shelby Township, Michigan, only months after getting turntables. He began producing at 17, in his senior year of high school, and his first group, The Bass Association, got the record “Drive That Thing” played on Detroit radio before he turned 18.

Building ghettotech

In the late 1980s and early 1990s Jeffries was mixing Detroit techno with Miami bass, combining vocals from one and drums from the other. That fusion became known as ghettotech. In the mid-1990s he co-founded Twilight 76 Records and its sublabel Databass, which became one of the genre’s main outlets. His Da Bomb series of releases ran from 1998 to 2003, and under the alias Sekter .17 he made electro in the tradition of Drexciya and Dopplereffekt.

Label head and collaborator

Unlike some of his peers, Godfather signed and promoted other artists rather than only releasing his own records. Databass put out DJ Slugo’s “Godzilla” in 2003. He also bought catalog from Chicago’s Dance Mania artists after that label shut down, and he worked with Chicago juke and footwork producers such as DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn, later launching the Juke Trax imprint for them. In the early 2000s he remixed Fatboy Slim and worked with Andrea Parker and DJ Assault. Mix CDs such as Ghetto Tech Detroit (2002) and The Godfather Chronicles (2004) took the sound abroad.

First solo album

Decades into his career, he released his first full-length solo album, Electro Beats For Freaks, on Databass in November 2020. He followed it with This Detroit Thing of Ours (2021) and D3T.3L3CTR0 (2022). His Boiler Room sets in Granada and St. Petersburg brought his mixing to an international audience online.