Dubai: At 14, Dubai DJ Michelle is chasing a world title and making her own rules
The two-time DMC Middle East Scratch Champion has played at Tomorrowland, wants to become the first woman to win the world championship and is experimenting with combining turntable scratching and electric guitar.
When the winner of the DMC Middle East Scratch Championship was about to be announced, 14-year-old DJ Michelle was trying to keep it together.
She had been confident going into the competition, but standing there waiting for the MC to call her name was a different story.
“I was just standing there like, ‘Oh my God,’” she recalls. “The second time is way crazier because people are expecting things from me now. They know me.”
When her name was finally announced, the feeling was almost surreal. Michelle had defended her title, securing a second consecutive win and a place at the DMC World Championship in London.
Winning once had been a dream come true. Winning again came with expectations.
“Defending my title was definitely harder and more nerve-wracking,” she says. “The first time, it was my first time. But this time, people expected me to win, and I really wanted to do it again.”
The pressure, however, seemed to disappear when she stepped up to the turntables. During her performance, Michelle says, everything else simply faded away.
“I don't see the people, I don't see the other contestants. It's just me and the turntables,” she says. “I forget that I'm competing and I just scratch like I would at home.”
It was a different experience from her first championship, when she remembers shaking, sweating and needing a towel to deal with her nerves. This time, she found herself in a state of concentration she cannot quite explain.
“I don't know what changed, but everything went blank."
From watching her dad to playing Tomorrowland
Michelle's relationship with DJing began long before the championship titles. Growing up in Azerbaijan, she spent much of her childhood watching her father practise in his studio. By the age of five, she had already told her parents she wanted to become a DJ.
“At first, I think I just wanted to be like my dad. I was a daddy's girl!” she says. “But then I started loving it more and taking it seriously, and the rest is history.”
Her first performance came when she was six, at a friend's birthday party. While the other children played around, Michelle was behind the decks, discovering that performing was something she wanted to do again.
As soon as she stepped off the stage, she ran to her mother with a request: “Can we do this again tomorrow?”
Her second performance was at City Walk in Dubai. Since then, the stages have grown considerably. At 11, she performed at Tomorrowland as part of a project showcasing young DJs.
It was an experience that came with its own share of nerves. Rain threatened her performance that day, stopping just a minute before she was due to go on stage. Then there was an unexpected encounter in the green room.
Her waiting area was next to Tiësto's, and when she met the DJ, she was so starstruck that she could barely answer his question about where she was from.
“He asked me where I was from, and I was like, ‘Um...’ because I was so shocked that it was Tiësto,” she says, laughing.
For now, another Tomorrowland ambition remains on her list: its main stage. Having already played at the festival, Michelle will have to wait until she turns 18 to perform there because of the age restriction.
“It's always been my dream to play on the main stage,” she says. “Just hundreds of thousands of people. I expect the energy there is amazing.”
The misconceptions about being 14
Despite her growing list of achievements, Michelle still encounters people surprised to discover how young she is. When she tells them she is 14, she often gets a double take.
Some of the reactions have changed over the years. When she first started out, she says, people struggled to believe that someone so young could have the necessary skills. Some assumed her performances were pre-recorded or that she was not doing the work herself.
The same misconceptions persist online, where she occasionally encounters comments suggesting her sets are fake, AI-generated or controlled by her father.
“It's funny because my followers will jump into the comments and correct people,” she says. “They get more bothered by the criticism than I do!”
The comments have not always been easy to ignore. Michelle remembers being bullied when she was younger, with people questioning her followers, her talent and even whether she should be DJing at all.
She used to care about fitting in, she says, trying to like what everyone else liked and dress the way everyone else dressed. Eventually, she realised that trying to avoid criticism was not going to work.
“People are going to judge you anyway,” she says. “So you might as well be yourself and do what you love.”
It is a lesson she hopes other young people can take from her experience, regardless of whether they want to pursue music or something entirely different.
“If you love something, you have to do it. You'll be so happy if you get to do what you love. And be yourself. Don't worry about what other people think.”
A different kind of representation
Michelle's next challenge is the DMC World Championship in London, where she will represent the UAE and the Middle East. She will also be the only female DJ competing, giving the event significance beyond the title itself.
“If I win, I'll be the first woman to win the DMC World Championship,” she says. “As far as I know, no woman has even made it to the finals before, so that would mean so much to me.”
There is pressure attached to that possibility, but Michelle sees it as something to embrace rather than fear. Dubai and the wider Middle East are places she is proud to represent, having grown up in the region.
She also wants her performance to challenge perceptions of who belongs behind the turntables.
“DJing is a male-dominated profession, but girls can do it too,” she says. “I also want people to see how much young DJs are progressing. Basically, girl power!”
She believes the UAE has been supportive of young talent, although she would like to see even more opportunities for emerging performers to be recognised.
For someone who has already played on an international stage at 11, her ambitions are hardly limited to one competition.
Scratching meets electric guitar
Away from championship preparations, Michelle has been experimenting with a combination that brings together two of her musical interests: DJ scratching and electric guitar.
A self-described metalhead, she enjoys rock and metal music and has started exploring how the guitar might fit into her performances. The idea came about almost accidentally while she was playing along to a song through her headphones and her father was working with the same track on the turntables.
“I just started playing guitar along with it,” she says. “We looked at each other and thought, ‘We should combine these!’ It was completely unplanned.”
Michelle says she is developing her own approach to combining scratching with electric guitar, something she hopes to perform more often in the future.
Music is already woven into her family. Her mother used to play the violin, her aunt plays the piano, and her great-aunt was also a violinist. For Michelle, pursuing music in some form feels almost inevitable.
She plans to study electric guitar, rock music, music theory and musicology at music college, while continuing to DJ.
“DJing will definitely stay part of my life because I love it so much,” she says.
She also has a practical advantage when it comes to balancing her ambitions. Michelle studies online with Academy Middle East, which allows her to manage her education alongside practice and performances. She typically spends around an hour a day practising, dividing the time between freestyling, learning new techniques and refining them.
That consistency, combined with what she describes as a still-burning passion for the craft, is what she believes helps her compete against DJs who have been doing it for much longer.
“I've only been scratching for around five years,” she says. “It's still fresh for me, and I still have that burning spark. I think that's my advantage.”
A dream years in the making
For Michelle, winning the DMC World Championship would mean much more than adding another trophy to her collection.
She remembers staying up late with her father as a child, watching the championships and learning about the DJs who had built the competition's legacy. Now, she has the chance to become part of that history herself.
“To win it myself, especially as the first girl, would be an indescribable honour,” she says.
Whether she is working towards that title, dreaming about the Tomorrowland main stage or finding new ways to combine guitar and scratching, Michelle is already looking beyond what she has achieved.
At 14, she has a world championship ahead of her, a musical future she is still exploring and a simple philosophy that has taken her from a little stage at a birthday party to international competition.
“People are going to judge you anyway,” she says. “So you might as well be yourself and do what you love.”