DJ Bassassin, a San Diego Music Award winner for his hip-hop song about the San Diego Padres, will be performing for the first time in Ocean Beach at Humble Heart on Saturday, Nov. 25 at 7 p.m.
In June, Humble Heart, a thrift store and boutique at 4873 Newport Ave., added a live concert venue to its retail mix. The establishment now hosts weekly evening live concerts featuring a wide variety of local, domestic, and international bands from as far away as Canada, Singapore, and Japan.
Humble owner Christina Riley got her permits to operate as a live music venue at the end of December 2022. She since has also introduced a new performance-based music school named “The Heart of Rock N Roll.”
Bassassin, who studied music theory at Palomar College, has performed at the biggest venues in San Diego including Pechanga Arena in Midway, as well as the Music Box, Nova, Bloom, Hard Rock Hotel, and Moxy.
“I have had my songs on radio stations 95.7 and 97.3,” said the 35-year-old Bassassin, who lives in Poway with his wife and two daughters. “I’ve been featured in the Reader twice and the Chieftain.”
Bassassin’s nickname is “DJ,” one of his occupations in today’s music business which, he said, requires individuals to be multi-talented as well as multi-tasking to survive. “I book things on my own and reach out to different venues, promoting myself by sending them my social media information and we negotiate from there,” he said about his gigs.
Hip-hop is Bassassin’s preferred musical genre. “I have a lot of San Diego rappers on my songs,” he said. “It’s all local music.”
Bassassin noted he has always “felt connected with all types of music.” He collaborated with local rapper Mitchy Slick recently to do a new Padres hip-hop anthem titled “Padre Gang,” which can be heard on YouTube. He added he was inspired to do Padre Gang because, “I saw a rise of songs about sports teams in the hip-hop world and I knew there wasn’t a song for the Padres, and I wanted there to be one.”
Bassassin pointed out he does all his songwriting, engineering, mixing, and mastering. To supplement his music, he DJs on the side for weddings and private parties at people’s homes.
It’s not easy to make it in the music business these days. “It took me a very long time, about seven years, to start seeing a profit in this,” noted Bassassin adding, “Now, after about 10 years, I’m able to do it full-time.”
Asked what advice he would give others interested in breaking into the music business, Bassassin counseled: “With the new payment model, you get a fraction of a penny per play online. It takes about 1,000 streams to earn $4. It’s not business-smart. Be in it for the long haul. Be ready to lose sleep, lose friends, and lose money.”
