Sami Automatic

When he moved to Raleigh from Los Angeles his senior year of high school, DJ Sami Automatic was just a kid obsessed with soul and funk who missed the West Coast. “I started DJing when I moved here,” he says. “I was working at a drug store and loved music and decided that I wanted to do high-school parties.” Los Angeles may have been a few time zones away, but the music of the West Coast—NWA, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube— lived in the grooves of the records, ready to be played, and manipulated. “I would stay at home on weekends and scratch records, get up with a group of friends and we’d practice. That was my main focus, to be good at the turntablism part. Then as I grew older, I realized that hey I could start making money doing this.”

His first gig, a high-school keg party, got shut down by the cops, but his next gigs parleyed him into the club scene. His cumulative rep keeps him in demand at clubs and private events around the Triangle. Spinning the very best hip-hop, reggae, funk, house and ’80s, DJ Sami Automatic’s established himself as a go-to turntablist with an ear for tracks that make the crowd move. —Ashley Melzer