The Youngest DJ in The Midwest DJ TAB

DJ Tab: He was the baby-faced guy behind the turntables in J-Kwon’s 2004 “Tipsy” video, but he’s accomplished more than a cameo in the last few years.At 19, “The Youngest DJ in the Midwest” is recognized as much from DJ booths in St. Louis clubs as BET’s Rap City. DJ Tab is a music lover who can work any crowd. “It’s all about crowd control,” he says. “If I want the people to dance, I play a dancing song. If I want the crowd to fight, I play a Lil Jon song.” Whether he’s spinning hip hop or techno, “I can do it all,” he says with a laugh.Tab’s done it all in more than 15 mixtapes including his Grind-Up Radio series and Real Mixtape Shit. “I worked hard on that mix tape!” he proclaims. But hard work has always been Tab’s thing.Trumaine Anson Barnett-Epps, a native of St. Louis proper, became a DJ after seeing Omar Epps’s character in the movie Juice.“I saw Omar Epps and I was like ‘I want to do that.’ I watch Juice once a week now just to remind me of why I started DJing.”“I used to draw a turntable on my mom’s hardwood floor with headphones on and act like I was scratching.” His mother and late stepfather decided to buy him real turntables, and his step-father, also a DJ, taught Tab the basics.But the determined Tab worked hard to teach himself how to scratch. “I used to wake up in the morning, practice before I would go to school, go home, finish my homework, and practice my turntables.”“The turntable is an instrument just like a sax or trombone; it takes practice to put two songs together. For me, it took three years to get it down pat.”Tab made his name DJing at school dances and skating rinks, but his break came in 2004 when a childhood friend, J-Kwon, brought Tab onto his team. When Tab first saw himself in the video for “Tipsy,” then the #1 song in the country, while at a friend’s house, he knew he was going to make it. “Yeah, I been DJing ever since after that.”And the work hasn’t stopped. Weeks after “Tipsy,” Tab mixed the southern hip hop compilation, Turntables Always Burning. He’s currently working on more mixtapes, including Confessions, an R&B mix, and The Hongree Mixtape featuring Potzee of The Quor. Tab tours on his own and with two DJ crews, Southern Style DJs and Bum Squad DJs, and he heads the DJ coalition Assassin DJz.Tab is now Geffen/Interscope artist Jibbs’ personal DJ and is touring with him on the Snoop and Diddy European tour this March. He is also the official tour DJ for Shoty Da Kid, of 100.3 The Beat in St. Louis, and Penelope Jones, to whom he credits his deal with Universal/Motown. Tab is producing for Jibbs, Penelope Jones, and his own project, featuring Murphy Lee and many others, for nationwide release later this year.He and close-friend running back Laurence Maroney of the New England Patriots are starting a music label this year. Tab is enrolled at Harris-Stowe State University, and his non-profit organization, DJ Tab Towards Teenagers, helps young people do better in school or get their GED.Tab stays pretty busy, and not everyone is happy about that. He’s never done local radio, but he has done BET, MTV, and the Apollo. “By me not doing radio but still doing Apollo and BET, most DJs think they’re supposed to get first dibs.” But Tab doesn’t have a problem getting past the criticism. “The haters make me want to push harder and become a big name DJ like a Kid Capri.”“I have a lot of faith,” Tab says. “I never say ‘I can’t.’” He has too many fans to please to stand in his own way. At just 19, the only thing The Youngest DJ in the Midwest can’t do is stop. There’s a lot of hard work to be done.