9-year-old is one of the top DJs in the world

Michelle Rasul, a nine-year-old girl from Azerbaijan who lives in Dubai, is scratching her way to the top as a DJ after competing in the DMC World DJ Championship. Photo: AP

Michelle Rasul had just learned to read and write and was already spinning turntables, scratching hip-hop records and making the beats drop. Four years later, at the age of nine, she’s one of the world’s top DJs and competed in this year’s global championship.

At her home in the skyscraper-studded city of Dubai, the turntable whiz from Azerbaijan nodded her baseball cap-adorned head to the beat and showed off her skills scratching, cutting and fading. Her tiny fingers flew across the turntable as she created a sizzling landscape of electric audio effects and recalled how she got her start as a child turntable celebrity – which, in fact, wasn't all that long ago.