Today we’d like to introduce you to Dope Dragunz.
Hi Dope Dragunz, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Dope Dragunz is a Los Angeles-based electronic/DJ music production duo, made up of husband-and-wife team Chris and Vie Le-Kooreman, with music supervision performed by their two chihuahua-mix studio pups Lola and Gidget.
CHRIS: I was born and raised in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. An original Dutch B-Boy, I transitioned from breakdancing to DJing, producing and artist development, and my career led me here to Los Angeles. Vie and I first met while working on the studio album for JammX Kids, and she was so much fun and so incredible to work with that -despite my rule of never dating one of my artists/colleagues- I fell hard for her. Luckily, the feelings were mutual so we began our journey of being a couple who works together. I was signed to EMI/Sony ATV at the time, and I got her signed there as a writer as well. We spent the next years submitting song after song to artists on the EMI roster, along with our music partners Edo Plasschaert and Lawrence August.
VIE: I had spent most of my career as a background singer to major label artists, such as Eric Benet, Christina Aguilera, Paulina Rubio, and Luis Miguel, and arranging and recording studio backing vocals for other artists, like Selena Gomez and Robby Williams. I was very excited to pursue songwriting with Chris and Edo, aka “Beat Royalty”, who were the most talented music producers I’d ever worked with and had a string of European hits and awards under their belt. We worked on a variety of projects and wrote hundreds of songs together. After a few years of this intense grind, I found myself wanting to try different things, which included finishing my first romance novel and my first romantic comedy script, so I took some time out to do that while Chris continued to work on music and film projects.
CHRIS: The cool thing is that when Vie was working on her romance novel, she wrote a bunch of lyrics inspired by her characters, and she wanted to turn them into actual songs. I always want to work on music, so I was only too happy to get her back into the studio. We ended up writing and producing some very cool songs, just the two of us, which was a unique and exciting experience as we used to always write with our other two partners. Our latest release “Bleeding”, featuring the very talented Sedríque, came from this collection of songs and is out now on all music platforms. The other interesting thing is I started getting booked for DJing gigs again after all these years of making music instead of spinning! I would bring Vie with me, and we would DJ together, deciding together which songs to play, creating mash-ups, testing some of our new tracks and giving each other a solo turn at the console. On several gigs, we went all out with live drums and vocals. We had great chemistry, and our audiences loved us. It was during this process of making music together and DJing together as a duo that we realized we were a band. Dope Dragunz was born.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
VIE: The road has definitely NOT been smooth! We thought we hit the jackpot with JammX Kids because we had heavy hitters like Merv Adelson bankrolling the project, Brad Gilderman and Bill Pfordresher executive producing, and the music team from High School Musical working on tracks for the project as well! But we had so many problems: the Screenwriter’s Guild Strike happened so we couldn’t move forward with the planned show, investors started pulling out, one of our star kids was having a lot of success with his TV show and was possibly leaving the project… It was just one thing after another and the album never got released. It was such a disappointment after we had invested almost a year of our lives working on this project.
CHRIS: We shifted our focus back to our song submissions for artists on our EMI lists and hit that hard while also working on indie album projects. It was around this time that the music industry pretty much crashed with MP3 illegal downloading, and we watched helplessly as advances, opportunities, and high-end production jobs dwindled. Suddenly, we were being asked to work for one-fifth of what we used to get paid. Many times, people wanted us to work “on-spec”, but “on spec” doesn’t pay the bills! It was a nightmare that no one really knew how to navigate.
During this turbulent time, we did manage to get an indie album out: “Yellow Brick Road” by debuting artist Sabrina Starke, which got picked up by Blue Note Records. Even though this album went platinum in Europe, it was not released in the U.S. because of reorganization within EMI Music, which owned Blue Note Records. This was frustrating when we managed to get one of the songs of that album placed on a prime time ABC TV show, but people here in the U.S. looking for that song couldn’t even find it because it wasn’t available to the American market! We were too locked into the old paradigm of major labels and radio controlling the music industry, and many of the music execs I knew fell out of the industry, one by one. Most of us had difficulty switching gears and completely missed the Youtube and social media boat, whereas all the people hitting that early on were cashing in on this new opportunity.
Then my precious mom passed away. I was absolutely devastated, and it forced me to take a closer look at my life as to what I really wanted. My mom was my biggest fan and always encouraged me to do what I love, that it would bring true inner richness which would attract the right things for me to succeed in life. She was right. I had just moved to the U.S. to further my career, and although the music industry as I knew it was ending, that did not mean that people would give up on music because music has been and always will be a super important part of everyone’s life! I just needed to figure out how to make it work in the new creative landscape.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As Dope Dragunz, we create music that is influenced by Pop, R&B, HipHop, Chill, Future Bass, vocal-driven EDM, Indie Pop Rock… pretty much anything that sounds nice and makes us wanna dance… or cry. We love working with talented artists, such as Pollux King, Sedríque, Ryan Toby, Zelzah, FEM, with whom we have several releases coming up! We reach deep within our artists’ souls to help them fully understand who they are as artists and express themselves completely in their songs. We never intend it, but some of our songwriting sessions are as intense as a group therapy session! A great example of that is the song “Anybody” by Pollux King, which had us in tears when we were finished! Luckily, we have our sassy chihuahua-mix fur daughters Lola and Gidget on hand as studio/emotional support animals!
We believe music is a powerful medicine: it heals the artists during creation, and when it hits the world, it can change people’s lives. 2020 was a difficult year for so many, and to get through the day, we listened to different music to help ease our anxieties. Our song “Safe in my Arms” is a result of those inspirations; we wrote it as a kind of lullaby to send love out into the world. We also released our own electronic version of John Lennon’s “Imagine”.
As DJs, we just want to play music that keeps people dancing, singing, loving, living! What sets us apart from others is the thing we are also most proud of: we’re a happily married couple who works together successfully. It’s hard to work with your spouse and a lot of people can’t do it, but we really enjoy it. We have each other’s back through all the highs and lows of this crazy industry we’re in.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
Vie: I was born and raised in Los Angeles so I love this city with my whole heart. I love the diversity, the progressiveness, the energy, the beauty, the endless things to see, do, and EAT! I love the beaches, the WEATHER. I love that Hollywood is here and it is one of the entertainment capitals where you can catch a film crew working at random locations every day of the week. I love that there are so many talented people here to work with. I am never leaving LA.
On the flip side, traffic sucks, it’s really too crowded sometimes, the housing prices are outrageous, and I’m super upset that there are so many homeless people on our streets, though I am glad to say that problem is being dealt with finally! Shout out to Hope of the Valley for their beautiful tiny home villages for the homeless! I’m also frustrated with our high taxes, but only because I don’t see them being used to improve our public schools and to keep people off the streets! Why does it look like a Third World Country out here when California has one of the greatest economies in the world and we pay so many taxes? I’m progressive, but I want accountability! Oh! Let’s not forget earthquakes and fire season.
CHRIS: What my wifey said. She’s always right.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dopedragunz.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dopedragunz/
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/dopedragunz
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjfMJTMfyYIdB2yRuh3MYBg/featured
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/dopedragunz
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7ikN97E3F2sZ5iJP9xrR14?si=sweQatRXQ1q6bNIWQmrwhg
