Isaac David performed a set in a shuttle bus in New York City. Credit: Courtesy of Isaac David
Passengers bop upon the bus seats between the bumps in the road and the beats echoing through the vehicle. Amongst those passengers is Isaac David, an Ohio State student and young DJ quickly making a name for himself.
Starting as a hobby, being a DJ has become a part-time job for David, a fourth-year in marketing. His sets are a smooth collage of sounds picked from genres ranging from hip-hop and R&B to house music and pop.
Though David is no stranger to performing for an audience, this setting is unlike anything he’s ever played before —a shuttle bus turned mobile DJ set, driving down the streets of New York on a Friday night.
Headphones on, gaze focused on a laptop screen and fingers fiddling with the DJ controller sitting upon the table nailed to the wall, David is already surrounded by a lively crowd. Throughout the night, the crowd would only grow once the shuttle reached its destination.
After starting out mainly performing in the University District, David has now made connections from the east coast to the west. Extending past his DJ career, he has a strong passion for producing music for various artists.
“I kind of lock in and stare at the computer,” David said. “I try to look up just to be engaged. But I just let the music engage the people. Zoning in, full zone, headphones on. It’s not like anywhere else.”
Being a DJ for about two years, David has found himself earning opportunities such as playing sets in New York.
Hosted by Posh VIP, the shuttle bus was heading towards a larger set at LUME Studios. The headliner was Nick Cheo, an Ohio DJ popularized from bedroom sets broadcasted on his TikTok, and also a close friend of David.
“They had full logistics and everything, it was crazy,” David said. “[The main event] was huge. It looked amazing.”
Alongside Cheo, David made it on the list of DJ’s for model Alex Consani’s birthday party. Taking place in the basement of The Flowershop, a venue in New York, David got to be in proximity of Consani as well as other notable figures, like model Emily Ratajkowski.
“I obviously wasn’t gonna glaze, just because they’re normal people too,” David said. “But definitely, yeah, still kind of like, dude, where the hell am I?”
Besides New York, David’s DJing has gotten him a paid flight to California. Although it was a much more relaxed trip, David had access to events like an exclusive Adidas pop-up. He has also met people like rapper Tommy Richman, known for his hit song “MILLION DOLLAR BABY,” and producer F1lthy who worked on Playboi Carti’s “Whole Lotta Red.”
“Honestly, the opportunities of doing it are wild,” David said.
The local DJ’s talent has brought him much further than the campus bars, but his typical crowd resides in the University District.
When walking past Chittenden Avenue on a Thursday game day, you might be allured by that same sound of David’s set just beyond the doors of a packed Ugly Tuna Saloona. He was picked from tryouts for a small DJ to play at the bar, now regularly playing sets at the establishment.
“His DJing skills were far beyond anything I had from that whole little survey thing we did a few years ago from frat DJs and stuff like that,” said Brady Herron, DJ manager at Ugly Tuna Saloona. “I mean, you know, they’re all okay, just hearing the sets that he plays here. He gets bolder and bolder each week.”
David’s good friend and fellow DJ, Ani Halkatti, an Ohio State alum and also a participant in the LUME performance, often collaborates with him.
“I think Isaac is one of the best DJs that I’ve ever heard play, for sure,” Halkatti said. “So I’m confident that anytime we back-to-back together, even if we haven’t prepared for a set, we can make something happen. He’s really good at catering to what sort of event he’s playing.”
David’s DJ career in Columbus jumpstarted from watching a set at The Library Bar performed by Ethan Shun, another close friend and former president of the Ohio State DJ Club. After that, Shun got him connected to his first performance at the bar.
“Once I was watching [the set] is when I was like, ‘I want to do it,’ because I knew how to do it,” David said.
He got his first DJ board his junior year of high school, but David was just about 8-years-old when his interest in mixing music piqued upon the discovery of a virtual DJ program on his uncle’s desktop computer.
“Honestly, I don’t even know why [he] had it on there,” David said. “I’ve never seen a DJ in my life, but he just had the program on there and I just always used to mess with it. I played with it a little bit. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
When David’s eighth-grade year came around, his love for making music came to the surface. Inspired by listening to music on YouTube, he started to play around with beats on FL Studio, a program for producing music.
DJing isn’t David’s only talent. Making music since his youth, he’s been able to produce beats for artists like K Suave. He posts unique beats and also produces for various smaller artists of the hip-hop scene.
“Creating your own sound, that’s timeless,” said David.
At the end of the day, David said producing is what brings him the most joy.
“I love DJing, but definitely making beats is much more like, I’m in my room, headphones on, candle lit, I’m in for the night,” David said. “Expressing myself through making something.”
David said self-expression is a comforting creative pursuit.
“I would say it’s very therapeutic, for sure,” David said. “People like to run for therapy or whatever. Do any type of activity — that would be the activity I would do — to just let go of stress.”
Much of David’s life revolves around music, including his other current job with the radio stations Magic 95.5, Power 107.5, Joy 106.3 and La Mega 107.1. He also works with the Ohio State DJ Club.
Wherever the path that DJing leads him, David said he knows that music has an important place in his future.
“Music is like a universal language, in a sense,”David said. “I feel like everyone can gather around and talk about music and get together.”
