Get To Know Canada’s Red Bull Thre3Style World Finalist, Charly Hustle
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Get To Know Canada’s Red Bull Thre3Style World Finalist, Charly Hustle

Make way for a potential World Champion. And some culture shock. Lots of culture shock.

Once described as a cross between Napoleon Dynamite, a Wal-Mart employee, and Paul Simon, DJ Charly Hustle can now add "Red Bull Thre3Style Champion" to that strangely charming list. Earlier this month, Hustle, or Sean Daniel Grant, wound the Thre3Style National competition around his finger and finished with a ticket to Tokyo for the World Finals. But Tokyo, Shmo-kyo—the champion title is more than enough for Hustle.

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"There's this idea of being a national champion of anything that I'm down with. Being a national champion knitter would be really awesome, but if it happens to be in this Thre3Style competition, that's sweet too."

Hustle is the Thre3Style West Coast Qualifier turned Finalist, hailing from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Outside of the painfully Canadian television shows Corner Gas and Little Mosque on the Prairie (cue American readers tapping out), there's little the average person equates with Saskatoon. (Sorry, eh?) But at its mention, Saskatchewan's flatland typecast has little effect on Hustle. "Saskatoon is notorious for being a small, little town but we have a really big music scene. It's an incestuous place in terms of bands and musicians, we're constantly working with one another," says Hustle. "If you have any sense of pretentiousness about music it will be gone really quickly in Saskatoon."

Read More on THUMP: Scratch and Switch: Red Bull Thre3Style Nationals Brought Winnipeg to Life

Though his Thre3Style crown gleams anew, music is Hustle's old ball and chain. "I had always stolen records from my dad and actively listened to music, but the expression of any sort of music took time." By the late nineties, Hustle set his sights on Saskatoon's community radio station, CFCR. The station's primarily volunteer powered non-profit base took on a then younger Hustle to host a Friday night rock music program. Eventually, it turned into a soul and funk music based program called Hot Buttered Soul, which still pumps through the airwaves today. "I don't want to do the math, but that's about 18 years. It's one of those things I loved listening to in high school and dreamed about being a part of," he says. "I was one of the first hosts to do a soul and funk music show on the radio in Saskatoon. Years later, here I am."

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It wasn't until 2002 that he met his first set of turntables, somewhat at the helpful discretion of fellow local turntable DJ, Gaf. "He taught me the basics of digging for music and what I should look for," he says. "I think that was a big turning point, going from thinking about music to physically doing it." Even with the elegant finger-skating he divvied out at the Nationals in Winnipeg, it took Hustle some time to level out the art of scratching. "As soon as I started, I wasn't good. I had tried incorporating these scratching techniques from the start. Last year I made effort to not just 'get by' on the skills I have but improve them."

Before he could trudge the road to improvement, Hustle rid himself of some baggage—baggage in the form of previous Red Bull Thre3Style losses. (Yes, plural.) In 2008, he participated at the Regional level in his hometown. Long story short, it didn't go so hot. "If we're counting, this is my fourth time in a row being in the Nationals," he says. "My first time I was god awful. Gaf—the guy who taught me everything I knew—actually destroyed me and everyone else so badly that there was basically no point waiting on the results.'' Eventually dealt a new hand of cards, Hustle won the runner-up title at the Nationals in 2012 and took first place in the Regionals in 2013, with this year's Nationals Champion title being the obvious high point.

"Thre3Style makes me a better DJ, all the time, effort, and practice that goes with it. It's less about who wins and more about what you learn and share with other people," he explains. "It's weird, but it feels like we're all in it together. It's almost like a clubhouse meeting for a gang or something, like 'Ah, finally we have our yearly gang meeting.'"

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An unassuming gang of music nerds is more like it. Proud ones, at that. Thre3Style provides DJs from across Canada the chance to share their music and commonalities. It's clear Hustle, like many, values the shared aims of his fellow competitors, if not more than the win. Though it's unlikely that anyone else, anywhere at all, has a love for Prince like Hustle does. "If there is a human embodiment of sex and goodness, it would be Prince," he gleams. "It's become one of those things about me. 'Oh, the Prince guy.' For birthdays and Christmas, I'm that family member that you always know what gift to buy. 'Just get him a Prince something, he'll be fine.' The strenuous, unfortunate expedition it took for Hustle to finally catch Prince in concert is a whole other story.

As for the World Finals in Tokyo, the preparation begins and ends with practice, practice, practice. On top of that, some research on Japan might be in order. "The furthest I've traveled in all my many years has been to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I'm assuming that it's really similar to Tokyo, I'm pretty sure they're about the same size and they also make a lot of overalls."

Make way for a potential Thre3Style World Champion. And some culture shock. Lots of culture shock.

Charly Hustle is on Facebook // Twitter // SoundCloud
Red Bull Thre3Style is on Facebook // Twitter // Mixcloud

Rachael is on Twitter.