DJ Shaitan feat. Christine Laskowski
"The Good Life"

When Shakar Niyatbekov, a.k.a. DJ Shaitan, is not taking money from the Swiss government and the World Bank to improve the quality of life in Tajikistan, he’s improving it in other ways, namely by disseminating rap and hip-hop beats in his home town of Dushanbe. Now the story behind what Daisy Sweetgrass was doing in Tajikistan is too long and involved to delve into now. We'll get to that later.

The story behind the song is that I came up with the chorus years prior. The problem was I have no talent for rapping and that’s exactly what the chorus required. So that’s what it remained- a chorus. And then one day while out to lunch with Shakar and his friend Angel after I’d arrived in Dushanbe, I learned that Shakar was both a rapper and a DJ. I told them I sang and when they requested a sampling the chorus for “The Good Life” came to mind. One thing I’d like to note is that I’d written it as “We be living the good life,” but what Angel and Shakar heard was “We believe in the good life,” which I think fit a whole lot better. But the instant they heard it, they wanted to make sure that Shakar and I could build a song from it before I left in a week. Sure enough, he wrote rap lyrics and found people to help us with the music and recording. It was my first time recording in a real studio, real meaning two small rooms located in the backstage of an old theater next to Port Saïd.

Angel supplied the drinks, the smokes, and the moral support, while Shakar and I recorded. After an afternoon and part of an evening, it was complete, thanks largely in part to the dedication of the old Russian guy who recorded it and whose name I can no longer recall. We left together for a celebratory dinner at a really nice restaurant, where I proceeded to consume nearly an entire bottle of vodka, chased with cherry juice.

I’d like to take the time to thank the unsung hero in all of this, my host Clinton, for his consummate understanding at what I did to his bathroom that night.