Millennials often place value on what they post on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or other forms of social media to project a certain image of themselves, but Arizona State University senior Malcolm Brinkley, also known as PshLove — the DJ who helped bring the One Love Festival to Phoenix’s Icehouse on April 12 — is pushing a different message: to love yourself.
One Love is a local talent and arts festival that Brinkley, with the help of several others, organized to promote peace and love through self-expression and positivity.
“That is forgotten in today’s world, and almost frowned upon, to love yourself and have any high regard for yourself,” he said. “We are now losing ourselves in the process of all of that. And so that’s what the festival is mainly about.”
Though Internet personas are a relatively new concept, the idea of inventing an alternate version of oneself is something DJs have been doing since the 1970s. But Brinkley, who adopted the name PshLove for the One Love festival, usually performs under his own name for his regular radio segments on Blaze Radio 1330 AM, DJ-ing at weddings or playing at music venues.
“My mom named me Malcolm,” he said. “I’m proud of my name and my name is my brand.”
People come for the experience — for the person — not the name, so he’s willing to go by different names from time to time because at the end of the day he’ll still be Malcolm.
“You have to own your name,” he said. “You have to own every part of that, and the last thing I want is to build a brand around something I’m not.”
For Brinkley, DJ-ing is about creating an experience for people and creating energy that keeps them going. The success of DJ-ing isn’t in the technicality because it’s not a hard thing to do, he said.
Brinkley grew up playing saxophone and said DJ-ing often feels unimaginative compared with the process of making music.
“I’m playing other people’s creations, and so then my job is to create something: an experience,” he said. “I’m not going to create music for people. The music is already there. It’s being played on deck one and deck two.”
His close friend since high school, Gregory Song, said watching Brinkley DJ is an amazing experience.
“You can tell this guy really feels all the music he plays,” he said. “No sound is accidental. He’s intentional with his flow.”
The 22-year-old broadcast journalism student has always had a proclivity for music.
“Malcolm always had a love of old music, the music he heard from riding in the car or listening to my records,” said Brinkley’s father, Gregory. “It doesn’t surprise me at all that he would end up on the radio, or behind the turn tables.”
Before picking up the saxophone in fifth grade, and then putting it down when he got to college, Brinkley was surrounded as a child by music.
“I grew up in a very musical family,” he said.
He wasn’t exaggerating. Brinkley’s grandmother is a gospel singer, his mother and sisters can sing, his brother plays saxophone, guitar and drums, and his father — who owns the biggest vinyl collection Malcolm said he has ever seen — just started playing the bass guitar.
“He’s always had a unique taste in music,” Song said. “He brings all of his orchestral experiences to understand music in such a fundamental and classical way.”
One summer between his freshman and sophomore years in college, Brinkley said he had some extra cash and asked his friends who were already DJ-ing what the best starter equipment was, and then went out and bought it.
“I think it was probably my work doing radio combined with my love for music. It’s pretty cool and I ended up just falling in love with it.”
Brinkley said he started playing on campus and at house parties and “next thing you know I’m doing it for weddings, I’m doing it for shows, and I get to open up concerts sometimes,” which cultivated his passion for curating and fostering what he called a culture of self-love and self-expression. One Love is the culmination of that.
“I want people to love themselves because that was something I battled for years,” he said.
What evolved from One Love, he said, “was me finally finding myself in the midst of all this.”
“He really found himself personally, and that shows in his music,” Song said. “It’s eccentric, charismatic, and memorable in an odd way. I’m excited to see what else he can create and share with the world.”
Contact the reporter at alexa.levine@asu.edu.
