David Guetta Builds A 'Bridge' Between Dance Music And The Mainstream

Over the past two years, French DJ/producer David Guetta has made impressive strides, turning dance music into pop music. "He's an incredible DJ, first of all," Guetta's "Sexy Chick" collaborator, Akon, recently told MTV News. "Second, he's an incredible producer." Dutch electronic-music icon Tiësto told us, "After all of the collaborations, like the Black Eyed Peas did with David Guetta ['I Gotta Feeling,' which Guetta produced with Will.I.Am] and Kelly Rowland ['When Love Takes Over'], I think that woke up the whole scene. Everybody wants to be a part of dance music." Dance music's new shining star, 22-year-old Afrojack, told MTV News, "He introduced me to everybody, and I had a great time with Will.I.Am, Kelis and Apl.De.Ap. David is just a really nice guy. He's not only my friend in the studio, but he's my friend outside."Respected by most in music, Guetta has been on a dream run with a series of collaborations (with folks like the Peas, Akon, Estelle, LMFAO, Ne-Yo, and Kid Cudi) that have done as much to make dance music mainstream as they have to turn the DJ/producer into a global superstar. On an average weekend, he spins records for a 100,000 people (like he did at the recent in Miami). "I always felt that our music was underrated," Guetta told MTV News recently. "I felt that it should be as big as hip-hop and rock. It happened this year with my album One Love. This is still a huge, fantastic, underground scene. But that bridge that I created between electronic Euro culture and American urban culture really made a difference, I think. To finally have dance-music records being played on the radio in America is pretty incredible.

"It is, like, really crazy, because I started as a hip-hop DJ, then discovered house music and was pulled into house," he added. "But also, I never stopped listening to hip-hop at home. It just came back to me. It's like destiny."

Now that he's found success merging dance and hip-hop, Guetta plans to keep the collabos coming.

"The mix between urban and electronic is really what I'm excited about today, and I want to do that direction for the next album, absolutely," he said. "Dance music is the next thing for the next 10 years. There's nothing you can do about it!"" Article source: www.mtv.com.