DJ Maniac Magee

Gregg Mardirosian (AKA: DJ Maniac Magee; AKA: MAGEE.me)

Maniac Magee is a DJ, MC, & songwriter. After growing up in and around Washington, DC and spending time throughout Pennsylvania, he moved to Oakland, CA where his career began to take off while working as the resident DJ at the legendary nightspot Mingle’s Champagne and Martini Lounge in Jack London Square. From Oakland, he headed to Japan and spent a year DJing all over the country alongside the PARTYKINGS crew (DJs Taquia, Machivari, & Toshi). When he returned to the United States, he settled in Tallahassee, FL and has been DJing throughout Florida as well as in the Carolinas, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and his hometown of Washington, DC. In November of 2005, he and DJs Sven and Set started RHT entertainment, later renamed RHT United, and in March of 2006 they launched www.roughhousetactics.com, which later morphed into www.RHTTV.com, a promotional tool and online store for the Rough House Tactics crew, a multi-genred and multiregional family of musicians and artists dedicated to throwing events and sharing art without the help of the pre-existing and problematic system of major record/distribution labels, radio play monopolies, and traditional music video outlet politics.

DJ Maniac Magee has released various collaborative mixtapes with MCs from all over (including L.E.G.A.C.Y., SBE, R.E.A.L.I.T.Y., ST. James, and Leaf Qwembi), has more coming, and will also soon be releasing a debut solo EP entitled Art Brut: Time in Tallahassee (late 2011), the debut EP from his group Vintage Tux (w- M.E.R.C., Ish, and DJ Seveny Cypher) entitled Crockpot Muzik: The Return of Mr. Ruffles (late 2011), and a collaborative poker-themed concept album with lyricist Redd Simpkins (Spring 2012).
His real name is Gregory Mardirosian…

After earning a BA in Psychology from Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, PA, he attended the California College of Art (formerly the California College of Arts & Crafts) in San Francisco and Oakland, CA where he earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. A published writer of short stories and the crafter of two screenplays, he found himself teaching English by day and DJing by night in Japan before heading to Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL. There he taught “Multicultural Film” (where he and his students together investigated the relationship between the on-screen representations of and real world situations for different ethnicities, socioeconomic groups, genders, and sexualities) for three and a half years in FSU’s Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities before creating and teaching a course for the Program in American & Florida Studies entitled “Hip-hop in America.” He has earned a graduate certificate in World Music/Ethnomusicology, and is now writing his dissertation for a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities where he majors in popular culture, minors in film studies and focuses on the art and culture of the Hip-hop community. In addition to his dissertation, in the midst of writing an as-of-yet untitled third screenplay, and is in the editing stages of a collection of essays entitled “How Hip-Hop Turned a DJ into a Dr.”