Richard “DJ Qbert” Quitevis is a Filipino American turntablist and composer who has heavily influenced the history of DJing. He was awarded America’s Best DJ in 2010, was DMC USA Champion 1991 (solo) and achieved titles as DMC World Champion in 1992 and 1993.
Qbert started his musical career in a group called FM20 with Mix Master Mike and DJ Apollo in 1990. In New York City when playing a show, FM20 was spotted by Crazy Legs, who invited them to join the Rock Steady Crew. They accepted the offer to join the crew. Going by the name Rock Steady DJs, they then proceeded to take the 1992 Disco Mix Club World DJ Championships (DMC) world title. Qbert was also one of the founding members of the band Invisibl Skratch Piklz. Although there were other turntablist crews before the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, the Skratch Piklz were the first to apply the band concept to turntablism, layering drums, basslines, and scratch solos on top of each other.
Qbert, along with other Skratch Piklz, created a series of videos entitled Turntable TV. Now out of print, the first 5 episodes were released on VHS and contained demonstrations, showcases, skits, and other DJ related content.
Qbert’s solo efforts include 1994’s Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Musik, and 1998’s Wave Twisters. The latter album was created mainly with samplers and beat machines versus the turntable, and later turned into an animated feature of the same title. 2001’s Wave Twisters movie was somewhat unusual in that the animators and digital artists had to invent images and movements to the pre-recorded music, as opposed to the other way around (Disney’s Fantasia was made the same way).
More recently, he has worked with Vestax to develop the QFO, an all-in-one scratching instrument. The QFO combines a turntable with a mixer’s crossfader. In 2006, he introduced the Qbert turntable cartridge, a model put out by Ortofon.
In May 2009, Qbert launched the Qbert Skratch University, an interactive online learning school and community for DJs through the ArtistWorks website.
At the 2016 edition of the DMC World DJ Championships, DJ Q-Bert was awarded with a DMC Legend jacket.
