AS a teenager, Kevin King had big dreams of being a basketball player. That all changed after he went through his father’s stash of vinyl records and ended up playing them on a turntable.

He has long given up hopes of shooting hoops. Today, he is known as Kevin Crown, one of the top disc jockeys in the tri-state area of the United States — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

“I started as a DJ as a hobby but after listening to my father’s records my interest in music developed. I was also a dancer and I would gravitate towards anything that had a beat including soca, dancehall, reggae and hip hop,” Crown said in an interview with the Sunday Observer.

The 30-odd year-old Crown was recently in Jamaica, playing two nights at the Fiction Fantasy club in Kingston to celebrate businessman David ‘Squeeze’ Annakie’s birthday. He hosts the Friday Night Madness programme on New York’s WRTN 93.5 FM, which is owned by Annakie.

Though he is immersed in Jamaican pop music culture, Crown was born in Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York to Grenadian parents. His ties to Jamaican dancehall are solid.

He once operated a sound system and hosted a feature film called How Fi Dance Reggae, in which he interviewed the influential dancer Bogle. He has built an impressive résumé as a DJ, spinning discs at parties for celebrities such as Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx and the Wayans brothers.

Crown also has a small role in the low-budget drama Jamaican Mafia. Though the hip-hop/dancehall radio and club scene in New York has got increasingly competitive, Crown says he never looks over his shoulder.

“I really don’t care what my competition is doing, I do me. I focus on the people who come out to have a good time. I never pay attention to other DJs; I love what I do and I focus on that. It’s that simple