Blk.ID Twins
When it comes to the intersection of brotherhood and business, it’s something that Tahir and Tyrell Perkins have mastered. While they were born and raised in New York, these gentlemen have built a successful brand that’s taken them worldwide to work with major brands such as CultureCon, Meta, and others. The Perkins brothers, under the pseudonym Blk.ID Twins consistently use their superb skills as masterful DJs to bring musical creativity to every venue they grace. While they’re known as prominent DJs in their craft, their journey to such mastery started early on in their lives, thanks to a family relative.
“We have an older cousin named DJ Perks who would record mixtapes, and one day we went over his house and kind of just messed around with the turntables in the middle of his recording,” Tahir Perkins said. “It was then that we got interested in this. A few years later, when we got a little older, he gifted us his set of turntables.”
The duo’s ability to masterfully command a crowd isn’t something they learned recently, but it’s a gem they picked up early on. After successfully curating and playing the musical selection at a family event for their first gig, the bookings became more significant. What didn’t change, however, was their innate ability to connect with diverse crowds.
Blk.ID Twins
“The way that we connect with crowds is through conducting ‘taste testers’ during our warm-up session,” Tahir Perkins said. “We’ll play certain songs to gauge the audience’s reaction, and that helps us decide what music will evoke a positive reaction within people.”
As with most entrepreneurs, the New York natives have faced their fair share of obstacles along the way. One of the main barriers along their creative journey has been muddling through the negative stereotypes that others have put upon them.
“One of the obstacles we face is going to a venue where they already have a perception of you and what they expect you’re going to play,” Tyrell Perkins said. “There have been times where we sat down with a manager to discuss business, and they decided to go with someone else because they ‘don’t want to hear hip hop.’ Although we play multiple genres of music, some people have only associated us with hip-hop and reggae music.”
Despite these roadblocks, the Blk.ID Twins have still prevailed. While they consider themselves to have been outcasts during their youth, it’s their uniqueness and confidence that have sustained them and will continue to do so.
“We know who we are, and it’s always been us against the world,” Tyrell Perkins said. “Often, people will judge a book by its cover but don’t realize that they love the book until they start reading a few pages.”
