DJ Qbert came up in the San Francisco Bay Area, drawn to the "weird" and futuristic in music after a childhood steeped in classical and jazz. He started scratching around age fifteen with no schools, YouTube or internet, learning alongside neighborhood friends and his first crew, Live Style Productions, before spending the late '80s as a mobile DJ working proms and parties all over the Bay.
With DJ Apollo and Mix Master Mike he formed what he calls the first turntable band, initially known as the Rock Steady DJs before renaming themselves the Invisible Skratch Piklz, later adding D-Styles, Shortkut, Flare, Yoga Frog and others. They won the DMC World Championship in 1992 and 1993, kept the title in 1994 when there was no battle, then retired from competition to judge.
Qbert made Wave Twisters, which he calls the first animated hip-hop movie, animating the storyline to his debut album of the same name. He was the scratch DJ on Dr. Octagon (Dan the Automator's production, Kool Keith on the raps), helped invent mixer features with Vestax (the reverse/"hamster" switch, the QFO all-in-one), and now gives away his scratch secrets free via Thud Rumble's "Wisdom of Wax."