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Colette credits both her mixing style and her improvised vocals to coming up as part of the fertile Chicago house music scene at the turn of the Nineties. "I'm very spoiled because Derrick Carter and Mark Farina are the first DJs I got to hear growing up in Chicago. And I definitely learned how to spin watching people. Because at that time, unlike now, there weren't any classes, or people, that were willing to instruct you. I remember when I was 16 I used to watch Diz and Lego; I'd watch every little thing that they were doing and just kind of suck it in."

It was also at those house parties that Colette, a classical music student by day, began to find the liberation she still enjoys from singing over other people's records. "I started singing with house music when I was 16 or 17. I would go to parties and just freestyle over other DJs playing." That spontaneous approach, a dance music version of rapping, is something that has stuck with her through the present. To Colette, there is no better rush than the one that comes from improvising in front of a room full of clubgoers. "It's very impromptu when I write a song over a record, cause a lot of times I'll buy the record that day and when I'm playing it out that's when I write the lyrics," she says laughing. "There's definitely something to be said for a practiced performance, but it's really freeing to just improvise. Because it's almost like you're one of the people in the party. It's just like dancing; you don't really have a set dance routine when you go out to a club; you just feel it and you react to it. And it's the same thing for me."

If the idea of writing lyrics in front of a crowded club sounds gutsy, it's even more impressive when you consider Colette was shy about the idea of spinning publicly until SuperJane mate DJ Heather forced her to overcome her fear. Though her fear came not just from shyness, but from what she felt was a late introduction to the decks. "Growing up in Chicago, everyone started when they were 12, so in high school and my first couple years of college, all of my friends were DJs, and were really accomplished DJs at that. I just had been buying all these records and then I decided to buy some decks just to play around. I never was planning on playing out because it just seemed too late in the game for me to do that, and also, a little bit intimidating," she recalls.
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