How a Northeastern business school grad spun his way to Afrobeats DJ stardom
Prince Kalu still isn’t sure what happened to the DJ who was supposed to provide the music at a 2016 wedding his friend was attending. “He had set up his equipment and then he disappeared. The bride and groom were in tears. My friend called and said, ‘Hey bro, you gotta come right now.’ I said ‘I’m not really a DJ,’ but they drove to where I was living in Roslindale and picked me up.”
At the time Kalu was getting his master’s degree at Northeastern University and had only DJ’d in public a few times, but it didn’t take him long to get the music going and the wedding’s dance floor full. “I got a $500 tip and decided this is what I wanted to do.”
As DJ Prince, Kalu is now one of the hottest US-based spinners of Afrobeats, the modern
West African sound that has made Burna Boy, Wizkid, and Davido global superstars. A frequent presence when top Afrobeats artists grace American stages, Kalu opened up Burna Boy’s sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden last April, an evening many consider the genre’s biggest night to date. This year DJ Prince was named the “Best African DJ USA” at the AFRIMMA Awards. (The Houston-based pan-African music awards have a separate category for DJs based in Africa.)
Afrobeats was just beginning to achieve international recognition in 2010 when, as a dancehall reggae-loving high school student, Chibuzor Prince Kalu moved from his native Nigeria to Dorchester. Kalu went on to get both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from Northeastern. (And he isn’t done with school yet: He hopes to finish his PhD in corporate governance in 2023.)
While Kalu was juggling grad school and a job in sales, a friend asked if he could store his DJ equipment in Kalu’s apartment, and he would occasionally offer pointers on basics like song transitions. One day, after a particularly grueling work meeting, Kalu went home and blew off steam by bingeing DJ tutorial YouTube videos. As his DJ skills improved, Kalu posted videos of his efforts on Snapchat.
When a friend asked him to DJ a birthday party, Kalu’s business-school training came into play. “I asked about the demographics of the people at the party so I could figure out how to best serve them,” he recalls. It’s an approach he still uses. “It’s important for you to know your audience and to understand how to entertain them. You can’t use the same approach for every event.”
Kalu’s first major concert appearance came during a Wizkid show in Providence in 2019. But, like all DJs, he had to revert to streaming during the COVID lockdown, often attracting thousands of viewers for his Instagram Live feeds. Fate again intervened when he opened a Houston show for Omah Lay in 2021. The artist’s usual DJ couldn’t make the tour, so after his set Kalu was tapped for the rest of the singer’s dates. “I flew home, packed my stuff, and flew right back to join the tour,” he says.
When on tour, Kalu arrives hours before showtime to make sure the sound system will be up to par when the star takes the stage. Once the doors open, “your job is to make sure that the energy level is high so when the artist comes on they’ll have an excited audience.” In the coming year, that job will take him back to Nigeria, where he’ll be DJing for the first time.
Kalu acknowledges that Boston doesn’t have the Afrobeats audience that Houston, Atlanta, or Washington, D.C., boast. But that’s changing: Burna Boy filled the Leader Bank Pavilion in July, and Wizkid’s March show at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway is already sold out. Afrobeats DJ parties happen in town several times a week, and Kalu still appears at them when he’s not on tour or playing weddings. He’ll be spinning at the W Hotel’s weekly Sunday Afrobeats brunch and day party on Jan. 8.
“In 2018 I’d play Afrobeats in Boston and someone would walk over and slam my laptop shut! Now some of the same venues that didn’t want it before are asking for a whole night of Afrobeats,” he says. “It’s been amazing to see the growth in the music in Boston in a very short time. I want to start developing local artists and put Boston on the Afrobeats map internationally.”
‘Now some of the same venues that didn’t want it before are asking for a whole night of Afrobeats.’ PRINCE KALU, who performs as DJ Prince