His specialty is rocking doubles of rock breaks, both obscure and famous. Yet he never misses a beat or bores the dance floor with self-indulgence. Ashley Beedle, Doctor L, Jay Dee and London Elektricity have all been able to balance electronic sounds with live, organic ones with incredibly soulful, cultural and inspiring results that still get people groovin'. What inspires me about this stuff is the seemingly organic blending of the soulful and the expressive. If by success you mean financial, then it's definitely in making your own tunes.
Production is a natural trajectory for anyone who wants to make a career of it.
If production isn't your thing, then you gotta be able to keep people interested in what you do live. I'm a resident DJ, so it's a challenge to keep things interesting and flip up what you play and how you play it each week while maintaining a particular style. There are many financially and artistically successful DJs who never record anything, but have a reputation for innovation and genre mixing that keeps people wanting more and not knowing what to expect. Additionally, lots of great producers are horrible live DJs and I'm sure the reverse is true. Their innovative live sets are, to invoke another clich , an artform of their own.