The words “Filipino,” “female,” “DJ” and an alternate way of spelling “cotton candy” are not usually found in one sentence, unless it is one used to describe DJ Kuttin’ Kandi. Commonly acknowledged as one of the premier female DJs spinning today, she has been in the public eye for a brief four years. She was the first female to reach the DMC USA 98 Finals, a national competition for turntablism. For the layperson, Kandi defines turntablism as “manipulating vinyl [records] through scratching and spinning as an instrument of expression.” Turntablism, a small but vibrant contingent of the hip-hop underground, is still largely unknown to the masses, but has recently been gaining more attention. Previously known only as “the DJ’s [Roli Rho] girlfriend,” she astounded everyone when one day she quietly stepped up to the turntables herself. She practiced in secret for a year and a half, unbeknownst even to her boyfriend, until she was ready to showcase her skills confidently. Why all the secrecy? Because she wanted to be taken seriously. She wanted people to take notice, to be surprised.

To her chagrin, she has become known as a “female DJ,” or “one of the only female and Asian DJs,” but she wants to defy categorization, to transcend labels. It is still difficult for many to wholly accept that a female can be a capable DJ. In a testosterone-drenched field, many females feel that the only way they can gain attention is through their appearance. Many shamelessly promote themselves, easily obtaining gigs because a female DJ is still a relative novelty. Kandi says, “A lot of them are all talk and no show. They make the claims but they can’t back them up.” Her method was to attack through silence, and was effective because from the beginning she commanded respect.

However, while she doesn’t want to be pigeonholed by her gender, she does admit that some advantages do come with the estrogen. Although she shuns the tag of “female DJ,” she grudgingly admits that she can use it as a marketing strategy. Other women in the turntablist scene give her tremendous support, building a valuable rapport in a female-thirsty discipline. But the camaraderie can be disturbed by the divisive comments made by the men around them. Kandi says that many of her male peers placed intense pressure on her to maintain the status of being the “best female DJ.” Sometimes it was almost as if they were baiting dogs, pitting one female against another. She sighs, “I shouldn’t have to start a rivalry just because of the fact that I and another competitor both happen to be female. I get all this pressure to be the first woman to win Nationals, to win Worlds. But I want to be known as more than just the first female to do this or that. Because to most of them [males], when the next female comes along, what I did will not matter anymore.”

She also has complaints about how female DJs are expected to look. Many males anticipate a female DJ to wear skimpy, revealing clothing, to dish sex appeal with palatable music. The key word is “palatable,” because many do not expect or want a female DJ to have any legitimate skills, as long as they have the “certain look,” an element of fantasy. Kandi says, “They [many female DJs] don’t represent the reality of what a woman is.” But overall, she says that both the negative and positive have shaped her to become a much more resilient, much more defiant woman.

Legally named Candice Custodio, she was first known as “Candygirl,” but considering that too feminine, she went by several other names, like the very original “DJ Candice.” She laughs and says, “And then one day one of my friends called me ‘Cotton Candy who’s always kuttin’.” [Kuttin’ is a reference to the DJ art of cutting and splicing songs together]. Soon the name morphed into ‘Kuttin Candy,’ and then I changed the spelling to ‘Kuttin’ Kandi’ because I liked the way it looked better.”

She first started working the turntables when she was about 16, nervously taking turns on her friend’s equipment at house parties. But her earliest influence was her father, who was a passionate music lover and casual DJ. She became more resolute about her pastime when she bought her own equipment at 18, and she began to practice in earnest. From 1997 to 1998 she qualified for and competed in over 20 DJ competitions such as the ITF, Vibe DJ battle, and Rhythm Method, culminating in the DMC 98 USA Finals. After eight years of deejaying, she is a mere 25 and is considered a pioneer, both for her formidable battle skills and what she has achieved away from the turntables.

It has been two years since her last battle, and she contemplates about making a comeback. She has primarily been hosting and judging contests, and misses the exhilarating adrenaline of competition. But she hesitates because she is worried about whether she will be able to “hang with the new generation of DJs.” She asks, “Can I keep up? I hope I haven’t fallen off. To the young kids, I’m one of the ‘old skool kats,’ which is kind of funny because I still feel so new. But I miss the feeling of the stage.”

Along with battling as an individual, she is part of the famed DJ battle crew, the 5th Platoon, and a founding member of the Anomolies, an all-female hip-hop collective. She is a hip-hop activist, dedicating to bringing the “real meaning of hip-hop culture to the world,” to eradicate the negative image conveyed by the media. She speaks at conferences, deejays at benefit events, and organizes her own events, such as “Thanks4giving,” which began as her birthday party and gradually evolved into a charity concert. Through all of this, she intends to prove that “hip-hop is not about violence, that it’s a powerful unifying force.” She says fervently, “There’s a love in underground hip-hop, the kind you feel when you’re bobbing your head to the beat with someone else. Even if you’re from two different worlds, you feel the same music. Whether it’s mainstream or underground, it causes people to connect.” But she warns, “If you don’t use it properly, it can divide people.”

While she has always felt comfortable in the hip-hop world, it took quite a bit longer for her own Filipino American community to recognize her. While the general Asian American community welcomed her, she felt largely ignored by her fellow Filipino Americans, a fact that saddened her greatly. She laments, “The Filipino media should have been there from day one. They only began to care when I became vocal, an activist. I was slapped with the label “hip-hop,” and the older generation automatically assumed that I represented something negative.” Kandi is determined to bridge this gap between the parents and the children, the old and the new, along with the uneasy breach between Asian Americans and African Americans. “ I used to be so sad that while hip-hop accepted me, my own community didn’t have my back. It hurt until I realized that all that what mattered was that at least my mother and sister encouraged me. I’m proud of my race and culture, and I learned (the hard way) that as long as I support my community, it doesn’t have to be vice versa.”

Now she is widely respected by the Filipino American community, and she speaks, in her effusive, avid manner, at schools, panels, and universities about music, hip-hop, and Filipino American women in the music industry. She currently volunteers with such organizations as Filipino American Human Services Inc. (FASHI) and the Gabriela Network.

Kuttin’ Kandi says that her extraordinary devotion to community service began with the death of her father a few years ago. As a child she was shy and reserved, the opposite of her current self, until she became a stereotypically rebellious teenager. She craved attention and was always disobeying her parents. She reflects, “I was a wild party person, until my father being sick changed my outlook on life. His death made me realize that I had to care about something, about who I am inside. Even a few years ago I never dreamed that I would be an activist.”

Her parents were extremely Americanized and supported her DJ “hobby” and eventual decision to make it a career, a widely-considered-to-be unconventional choice for a Filipino American woman. It seems that this epochal decision was the right one, and Kuttin’ Kandi is as occupied as ever, currently working on a new mix tape. She hopes to someday record a full turntablist album and ultimately to produce. She says contently, “I’m glad I gave up nursing to be a DJ full time. I decided to do what I love, and it gave me the courage to believe, to have confidence in myself. Deejaying saved me inside and out, this soul inside me. I didn’t care about anything before, and now I’m passionate about hip-hop, about women’s self-respect, about my Asianness and Filipino culture.” Quite a lot to gain from two spinning records and a pair of hands.