You can ask Armand Van Helden anything. And, lo and behold, you did. Join house’s booty boy as he stuffs his face and expresses his regard for home-made porn and cockroaches…

Armand Van Helden pushes play on his beatbox and starts to stroll down Miami’s uber-’street’ Ocean Drive. His b-lines get somewhat lost in an area filled with Very Big Cars With Very Big Speakers, and the two-block walk takes forever as he is distracted by respect-pushing homeboys and the sight of bootys bouncing on the back of bikes. We eventually settle in a cafe for what Armand calls a “light lunch” (Bloody Big Cheeseburger And Fries), a block away from the scene of Gianni Versace’s murder.  With a rough­arsed Gary Numan-sampling single (‘Koochy’) out now and new album ‘Killing Puritans’ due soon, the boundary-breakin’, genre-trashin’ adopted New Yorker, whose street patois makes Ali G sound like the Queen’s butler, defends himself against the Jockey Slut readers’ missive attack...

What nicknames do you have?

Adam Barford via e-mail

“I didn’t really have any nicknames when I was younger because people couldn’t say my name right to begin with. But I’ve had a nickname for the last ten years with my manager. It started as Fog Bank which then went into The Fog and then The Fogger. He used to see me work in the studio and he’d come in and
say: ‘Can you do this, this and this?’, and if I was working I would say: ‘Yeah, yeah cool’, but I wouldn’t hear him really.  So, when I’m creating and something sidetracks me it just goes right through my head with no connection. So, my manager would say: ‘You’re in the fog.’ That’s how it started.”

You said in Jockey Slut last year you were getting into Bryan Adams. Now he’s number one in the UK do you feel you’ve missed your chance to work with him?

Robin Courts, Manchester

“Nah, you know what it is? Those two words, ‘work with’, don’t mean nothing to me.  I’m not in music to work with people. I’ve no turn-ons for that at all and I’m the only person I know like that because every producer I know dreams of working with somebody. What other rock stuff do I like? I don’t think you could name a rock record I don’t have. Boston’s ‘More Than A Feeling?’ I’ve got five of ‘em! Do I drop rock records in my sets? Yeah, I’ve just started to do it just to piss people off which is the whole point. I do it so people say: ‘What is he doing? I hate this, I don’t get it, Armand sucks!’ The problem is finding rock 12-inches. I have a large rock album collection but a lot of Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan you can’t get on 12-inch single.”

Why do so many cool Americans – like Afrika Bambaataa – rate Gary Numan when so many British musicians think he’s a joke?

Jonathan Belmarsh via e-mail

“Gary Numan? I don’t know his history that well. When I sample people I find out all the knowledge after the fact. I’m just like: ‘Look, I like the sound.’ It’s nothing personal. But I’ve always loved ‘Cars’, even though I found out from people who were, like, Depeche Mode fans that he was kind of a fraud. But hey, I don’t care.”

Did you get any props from hip hop playas for your ‘Enter the Meat Market’ hip hop album?

Martin Lyell, Birmingham

“Oh yeah! A guy came up to me just when we stopped here who’s a hip hop DJ out here. Surprisingly, I get a lot of love from the hip hop community. They don’t understand why I put time into house music until you start talking figures with them and they’re like: ‘What?’ They can’t believe that shit. They think you’ve got to be (Funkmaster) Flex to be close to those kinds of figures. Is my heart in hip hop or house? My heart is in breaking barriers, my heart is in nowhere but everywhere.”

How do you justify your DJ fee when you’re not in the same league as Roger Sanchez or Danny Tenaglia?

Stephen Magill via e-mail

“I don’t care about the word ‘better’ DJ. I don’t really wanna spin so that’s how it’s justified. I’m not the kind of guy who will respond to like: ‘Hey, Armand, we have this wicked after-hours club we want you to come and play at but there’s no money.’ If there’s no reason to be there then I’m not that tight, I’m not a true DJ. A true DJ? Roger. He would go. Because getting the love back from the people is what propels his ass. It’s like fucking gas to a flame. But that shit with me, there is no flame. I have no ego, so I get nothing off a million people going: ‘Armand’s the best, the number one.’”

How much would we have to pay you to walk down the street in a pair of Michael Jackson’s LA Gear?

David Owen, London

“LA Gear made Michael Jackson sneakers? That’s the weirdest fuckin’ thing I ever heard. That’s just weird. How much would you have to pay me? Actually, the question should be: ‘How much would you have to pay me to listen to trance for six hours?’ Because I don’t think you could give me a million dollars. Straight up.”

As you’re from Boston, are you a ‘Cheers’ fan and who was your favourite character?

Clive Partridge via e-mail

“I hate everything of Boston that’s about ‘Cheers’. But I did like the show; it was somewhat entertaining. I liked Ted Danson and Woody and the fuckin’ mailman. The show was alright, but it was kind of, like, the culture in Boston that hated me. There’s a lot of racial hatred in Boston and ‘Cheers’ people hated me, straight up. I was on the other side of the fence.”

Which tunes by Ace Of Base, 2 Unlimited, Rednex and Sash! did you secretly like in their original form before you remixed them?

Danny Smith, Liverpool

“None. Not Ace Of Base, Sash!? No. They all suck. But if I had to pick one that’s bearable it’s Rednex, because looping country still, to this day, fascinates me. There’s a wide-open hole for that. Just ‘cause Rednex did it their way somebody’ll come up with a way to do it cool.”

What is The Shit in your life at the moment?

Tom Vine; London

“Right now, what is good for me that I’d say is The Shit is something that’s been pretty consistent: my focus. That’s where my head is, I’m a focused person. I like to stray off, lose myself, but I never go off the deep end. I’m in a business where you’re supposed to. I call it the roach theory. Roaches were here before man, here after man, and they will be here regardless of anything. The roach is the strongest survivalist that nature has created, the strongest single species, reproduction-wise, survival-wise, numbers-wise. They haven’t had to evolve. So, cockroaches are The Shit.”

Would the Mongoloids (a Wu­ Tang-like collective featuring Sanchez, Sneak, Basement Jaxx etc) ever let Sasha and Digweed in their collective?

Jim West via e-mail

“To be honest with you, I don’t know much about them personally or know their music. I’ve never heard them spin. I’ve heard they play a little like Danny (Tenaglia), a little like Deep Dish, a little like Paul Van Dyk, but I can’t really say anything. The Mongoloids is about love, about a personal chord that gets struck. We talk about family, stuff that strikes home, not business. You get deep with somebody; that’s what makes you Mongoloid. It’s a gang but not a gang where you hustle. It’s a new millennium way of having a gang. No violence.”

At what age did you start talking street, and do you turn it off when you see you’re at home?

Jenny via e-mail

“I don’t turn anything off ever. I have one button in my life and it’s ‘on’. The only off time is when I’m sleeping. When I was growing up overseas on military bases you’d have kids coming up from LA, Chicago, Florida, New York so I never grew up with a distinct area of English. I never said ‘Y’all’ or ‘Wassup’. There wasn’t a talk to hip hop in the early days, the culture hadn’t developed that strong yet, but after about ‘85, ‘86 you had dances coming up, then you had ‘Say this’ and ‘Say that’, and I was right there with it. It’s definitely who I’m around though, because when I’m around regular Americans for two weeks I go into that mode and the street will leave. Do I know any cockney? I fuck around with that all the time. This girl from Ministry called me up some time and said: ‘I’m knackered.’ I thought she said ‘naked’.”

Which records bond you and your singing mum?

Andrea Nutley, Brighton

“Me and my family? My parents are very broad and I’m a reflection of them. My father will have on some French music and then Sting’s new album and then some music from Cambodia and solid rock’n’roll like Steely Dan. What does he think of my music? He’ll tell me straight up: ‘I like this one, that one, but I don’t like that one.’ He’s honest like me. Or he may say: ‘I don’t really like it, but I know why it’s big.’ My mother’s the same. They don’t like it when I go off the course into the sexual arena, but what can they do, it’s me.”

Why did you start dealing cocaine and what made you stop?

Alan Raina via e-mail

“I started when I was 18 at college in Boston and I started going to this Latin freestyle club because it was the only one I could get into because America’s so strict on the 21 thing. I happened to meet some pretty big willies early on who weren’t even dealers, they were above dealers. They were big. One guy had six cars and they were all the shit like you see out here. I rolled with them and did runs. I did it a little and a couple of times I was up three or four days. I would go off the deep end and sometimes the party would be over and everyone would be sleeping but I’d still be wired and I’d go in the street and be fuckin’ flippin’. I knew this wasn’t me. What made me stop, what I learned from dealing, was the people who were big up on the food chain didn’t do it. They had a code f’real.  They’d be around people all day but they never touched the shit. It’s business and that’s it. I was in the business and in the fun. What made me stop was basically having some bad nights drinking like a fucking sieve, downing bottles of Absolut like it was water. They also got me on house calls going to the projects around me, run down brownstones. I’d get calls at 2am and I used to go and I’d see a mother, four kids still up with shit running down their legs, house smelling like cat piss and she’s like: ‘I ain’t got nothing but I’ll suck your dick.’ That’s the main reason I got out. I was 18 and I got it out of my body early and real quick; we’re talking six to nine months.  I got annoyed by people on coke after that ‘cause I know all the English do coke because they don’t shut the fuck up. I’m now anti-coke.”

Who won between you and Fatboy?

Nick Radley, Stoke-On-Trent

“He did. He won big time. People kind of expected that anyway. I was the underdog, but I like that. I’d like to continuously be the underdog. I don’t want to big myself up. If I was to assume the position it would be the underdog. I love being the underdog.”

Would you ever appear in a porn movie?

Martin Pace via e-mail

“(Looks at friend) Marcus, would I ever appear in a porn movie? (Both crease up laughing) I’m in, like, 50 of them, amateur-style.”

Marcus: “He is already!”

Pitch your new album to us!

Jockey Slut question

“As my manager would say: ‘It’s a drive-by.’ There’s a lot of shots being shot out from some corner somewhere and it has no real understanding of what it is or why, like a drive-by. For me I’d say it’s like ‘2 Future 4 U’ in the sense that the next track has nothing to do with the last track. No theme. In terms of the material on the album it’s up for grabs. Everybody’s got a fire and mine is breaking borders. How many borders can I break before I die? How much shit can I break down? How many cultures can I clash? That drives me.”

What music do you get busy to when you’re with a girl?

Claire Padwick, London

“Anything off Metalheadz. I get romantic when I hear the hardest, most fucked up drum’n’bass. That makes me romantic. Drum’n’bass to me is perfect straight-up sex music, nothing fucks with that. On a serious note, you could throw on anything by Sade, some Sting. Sometimes I’m in a retro mood and I want to throw on all the songs I’d slow dance to at high school, like Janet Jackson, Keith Sweat, Bobby Brown and Al B Sure.”

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