The name Crizzly has spread considerably in the last few years due to his massive heavy bass hip hop remixes, his passion for pizza, and for his crazy Crunkstep mixtapes that have been making booties bounce to an excessive degree. With amazing energy from his live sets and Pizza Gang love from around the world, this 24-year-old producer out of Texas has been taking Slice Gang members to unknown territories and spitting them back out, dripping in bass.
Recently, Chris Lee Marshall ventured to Imagine Festival to rip up Atlanta with his Dirty South Crunkstep and a few hours before his set, he sat down with EDM Chicago to give us a closer look into Crizzly and the Pizza Gang.
Who influenced you most to start making music?
There are so many things that influenced me, I can’t really pick one, but I really like Justice. Justice was really one of my most influential artists that I actually saw, they are probably the first DJ act I saw too. The noises were so dirty and it was just like man, I want to make grimy ass shit.
What are the origins of the PIZZA GANG and how have you seen it spread?
Origins are me and my homies just talking about pizza all the time and you know it just spread like wildfire. It’s a gang mentality like were all homies, if you love pizza you’re in Pizza Gang but if you’re about that life then you’re in Slice gang.
You toured with Figure on the All Black Everything Tour, if you could tour with anyone right now, who would it be and why?
Well I’d tour with my homies which is actually what I’m doing in like a month. I’m touring with Yung Nation and Zeke and Zoid. They\’re both Texas homies, Yung Nation is rap group out of Dallas and they\’re killing it. Zeke and Zoid are my homeboys, they crash at my house every week and we work and get shit done. It’s blessing to go on tour with just homies.
With various elements of Crunkstep stemming from Dubstep, how do you feel about the recent comments made by Bassnectar about the “death of dubstep”?
I still drop dubstep and a lot of it, mostly because it goes way harder than trap, but I play both and I like everything. I still think dubstep goes harder than a lot of other genres but I mean anything is fad if it’s that popular. It’s crazy but I think we’ll look back and think that dubstep defined our generation. We’ll be older and be able to talk about dubstep to people our age and say ‘Ah remember that, back in the day, when dubstep was huge.’
How do your Texas roots affect your music?
Well I started out as a wedding DJ and at these school dances, quinceaneras, bar mitzvahs hip hop always went off, that’s also something that defines our generation, Crunk music is huge to everyone my age and it gets such a good crowd response. Its party music and Texas loves its hip-hop, it’s the Dirty South and that’s what defines Texas.
Do you have any favorite cities/venues?
Lolla was probably my favorite show. It was such a beautiful venue, in the middle of Chicago. It was only a 45 minute set but it was one of the rowdiest sets I ever played like there were mosh pits everywhere. It was awesome.
Are there any toppings that would make pizza inedible for you?
Anchovies. Too fishy
