Keith Shocklee
While a founding member of Public Enemy, Keith Shocklee has also racked up hip-hop production credits for the likes of Ice Cub, Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson, among others, as well as a principal and artistic leader of Power5, a global talent management and marketing/branding company. While on the road for his DJ gigs, he brings along his JBL PRX600 Series powered portable loudspeakers, while using LSR4300 Series studio monitors for writing and producing new music.
“I do a lot of DJ work and recently needed to make some changes to my live DJ system, so who do I go to? Where else—JBL,” Shocklee says. “JBL has been a staple of every club in Manhattan—it was the sound of dance music! I came up in the music industry mostly on the mobile DJ side and we always tried to use JBL. I used a lot of different brands of speakers, but JBL was always at the heart of everything, and they were the speakers I kept coming back to.”
In addition to the sound quality and the PRX600 Series’ built-in Crown amplification, Shocklee notes the importance of light weight for a mobile rig. “I see friends of mine using subwoofers that need to be carried by three people,” he says. “I can carry a PRX618S sub by myself with no problem. And it’s amazing that you’re getting just as much impact from this lightweight box as you were with the old-school speakers. I can take a couple of PRX618S subs and a few PRX615M main speakers to a gig and I don’t even need any help.”
Shocklee also creates movie scores and does music production in his Power5 studios, relying on JBL LSR4300 Series studio monitors in a 5.1 surround sound configuration. “I built a surround sound system for my film scoring setup, and I like to know that when I perform that music live, it will sound the same,” Shocklee says. “The LSR studio monitors give me that accuracy and I know I can trust my mixes to sound the way I intended when I’m listening to them on another system.”
