Exclusive Tell-All With DJ Don Nova

We’re going to start off with the basics, who are you? What’s your name, and where are you from?

It’s DJ Don Nova, from the biggest city in the world, New York City, more specifically inside of New York City I’m from Jamaica queens, south side Jamaica queens. ‘If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere’, that’s how we feel.

Has living in New York had any significant impact on you and what you do?

Where I’m from yes, being from New York City it gives you a sense of grind, and a sense of hustle, like we think we can go head to head with anybody from anywhere around the world. The people living in queens, always hear others say, ‘Queens get the money’ that’s the slogan, that’s always been the slogan, that’s just what we say, and what we’ve always said.

Like, "I’m from New York I’m from queens, you can’t mess with me" so being from New York definitely plays a role in my every day life being a hustler, a grinder, and someone who’s always the flyest dressed has the best cars, you gotta try to make the most money out of a deal, so again, yes, being from New York definitely played and still plays, a role in my life and with my passion. I feel like I can compete with anybody because the stuff that we have to go through being from where we’re from it’s like, no one can compete with us, you know?

We come from a place where we don’t hate, we congratulate, and we just try to do it bigger and do it better, don’t hate on the next man and what he’s making or not making, just do it better do it bigger than what you see possible.

How long have you been interested in being a DJ, was this always your plan?

My family has always been big into music, my mom, everyone around me, they always had the biggest record collection, my moms record collection was crazy. She wasn’t a DJ but she just lived music and that love of music just got transferred over to me, when I first started dj ing a lot of my records I got I actually stole them from my mom, I hope she’s not reading this

Your mom had a lot of records, so you’d say that was essentially a jumpstart for you?

yeah I took a lot of my mom‘s records and put them in my own collection, like a lot of throwback classics and stuff like that but what made me really want to be a DJ was actually watching the movie Juice, like that’s what made me want to go from being just a DJ to being a serious DJ. Once I saw that movie and just the competitive nature, and the swag that GQ has as a DJ that’s what really really made me want to do this for real.

What kind of music do you love?

I just love music, like if you listen to a playlist in my car I can go from Hip-Hop to Rock ‘N’ Roll to Jazz to EDM to some like Reggaeton, I’m honestly all over the place when it comes to music, I felt like I needed to be a DJ to be at those parties and just be creative, it’s all part of my creative nature you know as an artist music just changes people’s mood and I like to make people happy, and I just love how music can change the mood of any situation so just being a DJ and being in control of that whole atmosphere and peoples moods is just so dope.

do you have any regrets or mistakes? if so how are you bettering yourself or learning from them?

I would say that I really don’t have many regrets, but that reason is because I feel like life is a school, you live once and you learn as you’re going through life but I would say a major regret I do have is not taking advantage of every opportunity that has came by me, and taking things for granted and thinking that the opportunities gonna always be there because they did say to me when I was younger, although I never really understood it then, that ‘opportunity comes knocking and you don’t answer, then guess what? Opportunity may go knock on someone else’s door.’ Especially in the music industry because I just always felt like I didn’t take it seriously I didn’t take my career as a DJ that seriously I mean I knew that I was great at what I did in people would tell me that, but you know when you’re hard on yourself and you’re your own biggest critic you think to yourself like ‘oh isn’t good’ but you know you just rocked out an event that’s got 500, or 5000 people there, you think you didn’t do anything but everyone else that was there had a good time you know.

Really taking my career as serious as I should really is probably one of my biggest regrets, as a DJ I mean I waited later into my career to say you know what I’m going to market myself I’m going to to invest in myself and break out of the ‘you know what I’m good but these people all better than me’ mentally and adopt the ‘no I’m great’ mentality and you know just put yourself out there, what’s the worst that can happen don’t hold yourself back don’t be humble be a savage.

Be sure to follow DJ Don Nova's journey on instagram @djdonnova for the latest updates on this amazing individual.