GO, DJ. THAT’S MY DJ

Think of any fulllength album or single from 1990s rap music. No matter how obscure or rare, Will Rhoten, the Oak Cliff resident known as DJ Sober, certainly had it in his collection.

“There was a lot of stuff that I hadn’t played in years,” he says.

He has most of them as digital files anyway. And any time he plays all-vinyl sets, he spins disco, boogie and R&B, mostly.

So earlier this year, he held a pop-up sale in Deep Ellum and unloaded about 550 hip-hop records. There are another 1,000 or so that he plans to put in another sale.

The most rare, including Diamond D’s “Stunts Blunts and Hip Hop,” brought in around $200.

At one time, Rhoten’s record collection numbered around 5,000. Now it’s just about 2,000 deep.

“I don’t regret it at all,” Rhoten says of the sale at Off The Record.

Seeing crate-diggers find the treasures of their lifetimes was worth it, he says. He met a guy from Spain at the Belmont Hotel who came to the sale, paid $200 for the Digable Planets’ “Blowout Comb” and was thrilled with the acquisition.

Rhoten learned to blend house-music tracks in the early 1990s growing up in

Fort Worth and going to raves. He later started mixing hip-hop records, and rap music remains his claim to fame in Dallas, where he hosts the weekly Big Bang Thursdays at Beauty Bar on North Henderson Avenue.

He was the third member of Dallas rap group A.Dd+, and he’s been the opener for Erykah Badu’s birthday party, toured nationally with Black Milk and opened for the Flaming Lips and Cut Copy, to name a few. He regularly books gigs in other cities.

Elsewhere, he’s known for specializing in Texas music. During a recent appearance on DASH radio in New York, he played a 30-minute set entirely of Dallas hip-hop.

Asked about his favorite career accomplishments, he says: “To be deeply rooted in Dallas and the scene here and to have a great local following.”

Rhoten quit his job planning events for Red Bull in 2006 and has made a good living for himself as a DJ since then. He bought a house in Elmwood about 10 years ago.

Freeing up space in the collection brought new enthusiasm for record shopping, he says. In hindsight, he wishes he’d amassed more Bjork records, which now sell for hundreds of dollars. And being a collector, he doesn’t want the reissue.

He cherishes his Smiths albums, which are rare and have cool art. He’s got just about every album and 45 put out by Sade and Prince.

“You always are filling in the gaps,” he says. “I’m more selective now.”