Meet Perpetua Romain of Purple Lettuce

Today we’d like to introduce you to Perpetua Romain.

Perpetua Romain, known as DJ Purple Lettuce, is a Southern Californian Open-Format female DJ. She is an east coast New Jersey native, currently building a music career in Los Angeles, California. Having been raised in and around the areas where hip-hop was created, Purple Lettuce had exposure to the rapidly-growing culture and her seed of interest in turntablism and music production was planted at a young age.

Purple Lettuce comes from a very musical family and has been involved in various facets of performing arts including dance, theater, acting, voice-overs, band, classical orchestra, poetry, rap, songwriting and a strong focus on vocal training. Her father was a musician and inspired her to incorporate her special interests and musicianship in her daily life. Over the years spanning from middle school through college, she created mixtapes and spent many years of her youth providing music for parties, being the person who gets the people to dance.

Purple Lettuce is synonymous with “good vibes” when selecting music to showcase. Her main focus is to excite everyone at each ceremony with a widespread of various genres including but not limited to Hip Hop, Dance, Reggaeton, Pop-EDM, House, Funk and more. She wants to get everyone ‘high’ from her energy, nostalgic song choices and unique spin on current mainstream hits, aiming to have her listeners feel all the different moods that collectively produce an internal and natural euphoric experience.

Purple Lettuce began her DJ journey as a broadcast journalist in college and award winning News Anchor at WPSC-FM Brave New Radio in Wayne, NJ. She wanted to learn the art of mixing on turntables but patiently grew in the realm of radio broadcast in the meantime, while simultaneously working as Director of Publicity to California based independent music label, Beautiful Noize Entertainment (BNE).

Purple Lettuce shortly moved to Los Angeles to pursue her career in Public Relations and build with BNE, but never stopped her pursuit to DJ. She started a music and talk radio podcast called “The Underground Speaker” at Titan Radio in Fullerton, CA for two years under the alias: DJ AioniA. Many of the DJs she encountered were mainly into broadcasting and not actually on turntables nor a controller, but her ambition to learn technically never wavered.

After leaving Titan Radio, Purple Lettuce spent a great deal of time focused on Public Relations and media, freelancing in Los Angeles and working with several artists including producers from Kanye West’s label, G.O.O.D. Music. She also photographed music performance events hosted by KJLH Radio and was an assistant camerawoman filming radio interviews for Damon “Boogie” Dash (of WE TV’s “Growing Up Hip Hop Los Angeles”) on “BD Radio” at Dash Radio in Hollywood, CA.

In the midst of providing full-service marketing materials and promotion for several artists in LA, Purple Lettuce felt like she had spent too much time away from her own artistry. She decided it was time to showcase her artistic abilities and market herself exclusively. She started branding herself with purple hair and officially adopted her new alias, training herself to sharpen her musical skills. She returned to singing and in 2018-2019, she presented four public vocal recital performances at the Ruth Todd Concert Hall in Long Beach, CA.

Immediately after, she shortly joined a 16 week DJ training program where she was one of 12 students chosen out of over 150 applicants. She was strategically selected as the premiere opening DJ for the school’s festival-style graduation showcase held at Esports Arena on September 1st, 2019. She performed a live 15-minute graduate debut set on turntables in front of a wall-to-wall filled venue of 1000+ people, party-rocking the crowd and entertaining them with a unique ensemble. She mixed various music genres, cleverly vinyl scratched, ate a real head of lettuce for brand performance value, and delivered an electrifying choreographed dance on stage. The energy in the room was at all-time high, leaving many speechless and with an uncontrollably proud smile on their faces.

Since then, Purple Lettuce has serviced many clients by DJing various events from backyard boogies and clubs to corporate events and elegant weddings; all over Los Angeles and surrounding counties. She entered into her first DJ ladies-only mixtape challenge and placed in the top 3 finalists alongside veteran DJs with ten years of practice. She’s booked radio/podcast interviews on “The Soul Suite with Marcus Noel” on World Tuned Radio, as well as HoneyDewLA @hon3yd3wla)  an all female-driven broadcast platform run by DJ Ry Toast (@rytoast) and DJ Allura (@allura_music).

Listen to Part One of HoneyDewLA podcast interview featuring DJ Purple Lettuce: (https://open.spotify.com/episode/7bY2sgrb1JN0SjrSUDeV7W?si=erzLE-zBT2OxOrgZqowwCg)

She landed residency at the Masterminds Connect: Interactive Art Gallery Experience in Los Angeles founded by Marco The Artist (@mastermindsconnect), whose drawings showcase re-imagined art of nostalgic characters from various 90’s pop-culture shows and video games; including but not limited to Disney & Nickelodeon. Purple Lettuce recently created a production inspired by “MastermindsConnect: Pridelands Project” in which Disney’s “The Lion King” characters are re-imagined into human form. Therefore the inspiration led to Purple Lettuce sonically re-imagining the whole film into a mixtape production, re-telling the story by use of meticulously curated Hip-Hop songs, selected Afro Beats, direct sound bytes from the movie as well as added flare by way of scratches, vinyl breaks, backspins and more. “Everything The Light Touches” debuted on July 21st and is now available to enjoy on Mixcloud.

Purple Lettuce’s Mixcloud – https://www.mixcloud.com/DJPurpleLettuce/

In relation to her singing capabilities, Purple Lettuce just released a powerful single and music video as a featured artist on the song, “BAD C.O.P.S. (Criminals Out Patrolling Streets)” which is a call-to-action, PSA-formatted track surrounding the topic of police brutality that offers solution-based lyrics to help uplift all communities to promote peace.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=OSnCZhtqLp4)

Watch BAD C.O.P.S. music video featuring Purple Lettuce

Purple Lettuce is creating a lane unique to her talents in which her musical performances and production can incorporate dance and singing intertwined with her DJ skills as her main platform to support her multi-faceted abilities.

Has it been a smooth road?
It hasn’t always been easy since I fund my own business and sometimes the finances aren’t always what they need to be in order to continue the path without interruption. Regardless of this, I stay determined to find other avenues to garner the equipment I need to continue on my journey. Other struggles I’ve also experienced was some racial injustice, and the focus to continue on pushing myself to be noticed as a female in what is still considered to be a male-dominated profession. Listen to Part Two of HoneyDewLA podcast interview featuring DJ Purple Lettuce entitled “Racism & DJing.” (https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Ba1mmG0DLDQeRgJTVFGbL?si=tbDJCe_QQo2LO8Y-goYhBA). Coronavirus, of course, got in the way of many great plans and very important gigs that would be a tremendous bonus to building my business.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Purple Lettuce – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
As a company, my main focus on the kind of events I aim to book most are weddings. At the weddings, I supply my own equipment as a mobile DJ and I MC the event as well. My next focus regarding events includes independent art events, galleries, album release parties, etc. I’ve always been one to support artists, especially independent ones and this allows me to use my skills and knowledge from being a publicist to help these artists build their necessary marketing materials such as their bios, EPKs and photography. What sets me apart from most DJs who actually have become their own company is my deep passion for the art and everything that surrounds making it successful. I have no issue having to wear many hats and switching them off periodically. I also am not shy to entertain so adding the kind of flair and performance value I enjoy into my art of DJing makes for a great showcase. I’m known for my bubbly personality, my kind and helpful demeanor and my rare ability to remain calm and pleasantly professional during the roughest of circumstances or encounters with others. I exude an energy that is very inviting and trusting, which I believe is key in order to be able to build a business that people will continue to respect.

My proudest moment would be the creation of “Everything The Light Touches” which is a production comprised of 14 mini-mixes. The mixes including scratches were created using Serato DJ Pro on my Pioneer SX3 as one shot recordings, with minor post processing done in Ableton Live 10. What’s personally great about it is that I was teaching myself Ableton on a 90-day trial while creating the project, so the journey itself was a great experience and I’m really excited to deliver this work to every single person who loves The Lion King. Another proud moment is my placement in my first mixtape competition, which was a huge confidence boost to know that I am good enough to contend with women who have been DJing for nearly and well over a decade. It was great to see that so early on in my career, I was trailing not too far behind! It definitely still feels like a win to me.

What’s your favorite memory from childhood?
One of my favorite memories was the moment my dad unknowingly planted a seed in me that sparked my interest in DJing. When I was very young, perhaps 6 or 7, my dad’s favorite song came on the radio: Now That We Found Love by Heavy D. We were sitting in his Oldsmobile Cutlass and he started talking to me about the importance of genuinely feeling music in your body, your soul, your mind and your veins. He always told me when you feel it in your veins, you’ll know that the actual power of music is in you. Then he began to manipulate the bass and the treble of the music and the volume in various ways to make the song more interesting. I had never heard music get manipulated in that way before and I was so inspired.

Ever since then, I became heavily interested in the manipulation of sound in general, even though I didn’t know what to call it or that there were so many avenues that this general thought could birth into. I had no idea that it would lead me into broadcasting on FM/college radio, podcasting, session editing my own vocals on several digital audio workstations, production and ultimately DJing. I always think about what an impact my dad had on my life artistically and I gauge my music selection based on his rule of thumb: to feel it in my veins.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
What I like best about LA is the diversity and the amount of different activities available which shows opportunities are available for DJs when your work hard to get them. What I like least about it is that so many people are superficial and can be very disingenuous. Coming from the East Coast, our demeanor is to “tell it like it is” whereas what I’ve experienced in a LA are people who portray themselves as genuine but are really being dishonest or leading people on for no real reason. This is especially frustrating when running a business as a sincere person who truly sees the benefit in genuine collaborations. However, I like to remain optimistic and attract the kind of people I want to work with by continuing to have integrity and give good vibes only..

Contact Info:

• Website: soundcloud.com/djpurplelettuce
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @djpurplelettuce
• Twitter: @djpurplelettuce
• Other: linktr.ee/djpurplelettuce

Image Credit:
Images by Timothy Santos (@abadjay & @capturedl1ght on IG), Images by David Chad Yu (@dchadyu), Image by Cecily Lorica (@cec.ilyx)

Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.