How Years of Travel Have Influenced Sam Blacky’s Sound

San Diego native Sam Blacky is a globetrotting producer with a touring schedule that extends from Mexico to Ibiza to Bali and beyond.

Traveling abroad was instrumental in inspiring Blacky to pursue DJing and continues to shape her sound today. Before her career in music, her wanderlust took her to Australia’s Gold Coast, where she finished her degree in marketing.

“A week into being there. I met [a] hilarious, outlandish guy who was my best friend, still is to this day, and we lived together almost the whole six years. He was so funny, Sammy Prosser. Just a legend,” she says in an interview with Gray Area.

Prosser ran several nightclubs in Melbourne and was the first to encourage Blacky to experiment on the decks. He also took Blacky in a limo to her first Aussie festival, Sterosonic, an hour north in Brisbane; Blacky would go on to produce music and perform live in Australia for several years, before eventually moving back to Los Angeles.

Mexico City is Blacky’s favorite place on earth and a core component of her globally inspired and freshly evolving sound. “My two loves were tech house and Afro tribal, like Tuluminati, for lack of a better word,” she explains.

This Latin influence is palpable on “Colombiana” (her recent release on Repopulate Mars), as well as “Bogota,” which takes on a softer, more lilting sound without letting up on the energy. “In the beginning, to be honest, I was just trying to make stuff that was popular,” she says. “And you know, that never works. That’s never the right thing to do.”

Her commitment to authenticity and open-mindedness paid off in the long term. Now a proud label owner, with releases on established labels and a title as one of the most influential producers of the year by 1001 Tracklists in 2022, Blacky continues to go from strength to strength.