Gregg Michael Gillis (born October 26, 1981), better known by his stage name Girl Talk, is an American disc jockey who specializes in mash-ups and digital sampling.
Gillis began experimenting with electronic music and sampling while a student at Chartiers Valley High School in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bridgeville.
After a few collaborative efforts, he started the solo "Girl Talk" project while studying biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
The New York Times Magazine has called his releases "a lawsuit waiting to happen",[10] a criticism that Gillis has attributed to news media that want "to create controversy where it doesn't really exist", citing fair use as a legal backbone for his sampling practices.
In a 2009 interview with FMLY, Gillis stated:The name Girl Talk is a reference to many things, products, magazines, books.
The whole point of choosing the name early on was basically to just stir things up a little within the small scene I was operating from.
Girl Talk released his fifth LP All Day on November 15, 2010 for free through the Illegal Art website.
[17] A U.S. tour in support of All Day began in Gillis's hometown of Pittsburgh with two sold-out shows at the then-recently completed Stage AE concert hall.
[18] Since Gillis releases his music under Creative Commons licenses, fans may legally use it in derivative works.
[25] In the years following the release of Broken Ankles, Girl Talk continued to tour and play festivals.
He also began to do more production and collaborative work with other artists such as Wiz Khalifa, Young Nudy, T-Pain, Smoke DZA, Bas, and G Perico.