Maurice Rankins (aka DJ MoxSwag) talks spinning and his move to The Office Bar

While Maurice Rankins is an LSU English major by day, he was born to be an entertainer.

At 24, the student is an up-and-coming disc jockey who goes by DJ MoxSwag, and for a while, he even ran a local nightclub.

Until the end of last year, Rankins ran Vice Nightlife, a club on Bennington Avenue. He was given the opportunity to take the reigns by the owners of the adjoining club, Allure Night Club. They had noticed his skills as a promoter and thought he was the right person to take the concept—which had previously been named Exhale—in a new direction. He and his friends rebranded it as Vice, a nightclub offering good music and a fun atmosphere to its guests.

Heading into the new year, though, Rankins is on a new path. With the owners of Allure shutting its doors, Vice had to close with it. So now, DJ MoxSwag is focusing on his new gig: performing downtown at The Office Bar on Third Street.

“I like the move,” Rankins says. “The downtown nightlife scene is where I kind of want to be right now.”

Before he got into spinning his various styles of hip-hop, R&B, old school and even some electronic dance music in clubs, Rankins started as a house party DJ. In fact, he literally started at his own house party in his freshman year at college, which led to a request to fill in last minute at a friend’s pool party the same year.

He quickly moved beyond college parties and into clubs when Vibes Nightclub in Port Allen, now known as Vibes 2.0, gave him the opportunity to perform. Back then, he didn’t even have a DJ name.

But today he’s come a long way and says he takes the craft, as well as being a host and a promoter, much more seriously.

He says the biggest things he’s learned from being a student, a DJ and a club owner include managing time and people, along with saying no to things when his schedule is too packed. Right now, he is a part-time student, and while graduation is important, he’ll get there at a pace that works for his schedule.

Rankins insists that when clients hire DJ MoxSwag, they get not only music, but also promotion through his friends and his promotional group, The Wave.

Rankins describes the type of night-out experience he wants to give clubgoers as a way to transport them to bigger cities like New York or Miami. He hopes to one day get to the level where performing in those cities becomes a possibility.

In addition to doing shows weekly—usually on Fridays or Saturdays—at The Office, Rankins appears at other local shows with Baton Rouge-based rapper Nilly, and the pair travel to other cities when possible.

“My dream is to tour,” Rankins says when asked about the future. As much as he enjoys playing at Baton Rouge clubs building a following, his goal is to DJ on tour with big-name performers. Find him on Twitter @MOxSWAG

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.