Fam is a weekly Thursday night party in NYC with a rotating line up of  some great DJs. Every time I go, 2 things happen: I end up staying way later than expected because the music is so good, I drink a good amount of bourbon because Von has a nice little selection.

Fam is just a perfect mix of everything. The crowd is varied and the binding force is the music, since everyone eventually ends up doing some sort of movement to the beat while ponying up to the bar.  The music goes from old to new, across genres, and it all sounds great. Each DJ has a distinct groove and they play off each other well. I always have a good time. One of the few parties in NYC I try to visit as often as I can.

It’s good to now be able to take some of the vibe from Fam to my iPod with a mix! DJ Eleven, DJ Lindsey, DJ Myles, and DJ Sureshot compiled a mix of some Fam favorites. It’s just a little sample, but enough to make you want to head to Von next Thursday.

Download the mix here

Fam @ Von-3 Bleecker Street NYC. 9pm-3am Every Thursday

Speaking of NYC Parties, another favorite, The Good Spot, ended its 3 year run at CV (formerly known as 105 Rivington). DJ mOma and DJ Stimulus got a lot of people out late on a Monday night to dance and introduced a lot of songs folks didn’t think wouldn’t bang in the club but would bring The Good Spot crowd to its knees. They also brought out a lot of great guest DJs to add to the fun. Unfortunately, nothing is forever but we’ve got Two Volumes of The Good Spot mixes to rock  and both mOma and Stimulus can be heard regularly around NYC and abroad. I’m sure they’re already cooking up something new for the masses and I can’t wait.

Just when I was mentioning the impact underground hip hop radio shows has had on my entire life (not just DJ-wise), I hear the disturbing news that WKCR, Columbia University’s radio station, is trying to end Squeeze Radio.

This cannot happen.  This show is an hip hop institution and consistently presents talented emerging artists in hip hop where other radio stations have failed. It is fun, fresh, entertaining, and informative and has remained consistent for 20 years. I owe nothing but gobs of gratitude to Stretch, Bob, and Sucio Smash(who couldn’t have been a better successor for the show) for shaping me into the music lover I am.  This show has lasted for GENERATIONS now and should continue.

If you feel as strongly as I do, please sign this petition and encourage others to do the same.

I know I beat you all over the head repeatedly about SFNY 2 with good reason, but some of you still did not go! People were calling it the party of the summer…AND IT WASN’T EVEN SUMMER!

The third installment is this coming Sunday with DJ’s Moni*, Kon, and Ge-ology representing NY and DJs Mamabear, King Most, Freddy & Marky coming from the West.

The mixes in anticipation for SFNY 3 have been straight fire. My personal favorite is Kon’s, who drops some crazy unreleased song I am currently obsessed with by a Detroit cat named Chow Daddy. Also, if you know me personally, you know I love Robert Palmer with all my heart so it is great to see a lesser-known track getting some shine. It’s just great listening to this and a great way to hype yourself up to what will definitely be another great afternoon/evening/night of tunes, people, and good times. I hope to see you there! Don’t forget to RSVP!

*In addition to being a dope DJ, Moni is also an accomplished film maker. She’s leaving NY to take over LA and she’ll be missed. Catch her Friends We Love web series at the next First Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum of Art!

A lot of things have happened this summer! Unfortunately, not all has been good, but let’s not focus on that!  If you were in NYC this summer, you know how it went: hot, humid, blech. However the summer was just chock full of great events and music and I’m just glad I caught just a little slice.  I’ll give you all a recap in a few days.

In the meanwhile, I may as well start at the end: I was a guest of Jon Oliver on his weekly show The Main Ingredient, which is on East Village Radio every Monday night/Tuesday morning from 12am-2am. It was such an honor and a pleasure to just kick it and spin some of my favorite tracks to a sidewalk audience!

My brother also came through to chill which was really great. The whole experience took me back to when he and I would stay up late trying to catch The Underground Railroad on a Tuesday night or Stretch and Bobbitto on Thursdays. Staying up just late enough to press “record” on the tape player and hope we wouldn’t be in REM sleep by the time the side ended so we could quickly switch to record the rest of the show.  Those were our mixtapes growing up. I still have quite a few of those tapes stashed away. Sometimes I’ll even hear a song and remember that the first time I heard it was on one of these tapes. I actually was going to try and pay homage to that by throwing in some of these tracks in my set last night (E-Rule’s “Listen Up”, The Pharcyde’s “4 Better Or 4 Worse”) but alas, I took a more chill approach. You can listen to the show here if you were already in dreamland by the time we started. (Click “Listen” next to Sept 7th Show)

Also, if you didn’t know, Jon is also a part of an elite organization whose mission is to rock the sh!t out of parties, while spinning nothing but vinyl. This organization is comprised of some of the most knowledgeable and skilled DJs the WORLD has to offer. No hype. This is all fact.  Do they fulfull their mission? Each and everytime. Packed houses with lines snaking around corners, they are getting booties shaking and leaving dance floors dusty (ok not really but the visual made me giggle).

Ladies and Gentlemen: I Love Vinyl.

They’re crossing the bridge this coming Friday for their monthly Brooklyn aka B-Side version at Brooklyn Bowl. Definitely check it out. If you can’t make it this Friday, you can check their regular Manhattan party the last Saturday of each month at LPR.

Yes, its been a minute since I updated and I’m soooo very sorry. At least it was with good reason-busy working!

After SFNY, did a few more gigs, including Venus vs. Mars, the 3-Day weekend delight brought to you by DJ Parler where 4 DJs-2 Male and 2 Female-rock all night. We kicked off the first one Presiden’t Day weekend and kept rockin until the club kicked us out so we knew we had something good going. We brought it back Memorial Day weekend to equal success. Definitely honored to spin alongside Parler, DJ Stimulus, and DJ Chela.

Then it was my birthday and I got to spend it with some great friends and relatives. So blessed!

Managed to FINALLY catch Dam Funk perform in NYC at Bowery Ballroom. Monk One and Waajeed kept the funk rolling with great pre-performance sets. Chin-Chin opened up for Dam (not really a fan of their stuff), and then Dam hit the stage with his band, Master Blaster. While I enjoyed the show, it felt a bit static. I’ll blame this on Dam not having a bass player on hand. They pre-programmed the bass and it was definitely funky and I hummed along all night, I feel not having someone doing the bass live didn’t leave much room for improvising and really jamming out like I felt they could.

Photo courtesy of Paper Magazine)

Then, this past weekend DJ Stimulus invited me to guest at his monthly residency at Deity in Brooklyn. One thing about Brooklyn crowds-they love their dancehall. I was happy to oblige. I haven’t spun that much reggae in a minute but I got to do all the classics I grew up listening to.

It got pretty hotbox in there after the reggae came on but it was cool to see a little bashment vibe. I hope to do it again real soon!

Can’t leave you without some goodies so here they come!

First is a (relatively) new Beenie Man joint. Gotta love the Whitney Houston interpolation.
Beenie Man-Skettel Shadow

The next is a new Dam Funk track he posted for download a week or two ago for just 24 hours Here’s your second chance (note: I didn’t get a chance to fix the tags on this!)
Dam Funk-Unreleased Joint

NYC is arguably the best place to be when its warm. All humidity and the odor of garbage in the heat aside, its GREAT here. Great restaurants and bars with outdoor seating, walks and bike rides, Shakespeare in the Park, live FREE shows with all your new favorite acts-we’ve got it all! The vibe and spirit in the city is just immeasurable in the summer and its always good to start it off right.

And that we did, thanks to a few great guys from San Francisco.

(Clockwise From Top Left: King Most, Moi, DJ Moma, Rameen, Freddy, Marky, Dee, Monk-One. Photo by Human)

SFNY was greater than I had ever expected. The weather was fantastic and we had over EIGHT hours of non stop dope music from a great group of folks that I’m honored to be peered-up with. Monk-One and mOma are 2 NY DJs I’ve admired for some time and to be able to rock with them was a blessing. Marky can get a party started. Freddy spins ONLY vinyl (!!!) and has a bicoastal flavor for dance music. He was rockin some hip-house that had me on the floor. King Most has these crazy edits and mixes and I did what I absolutely hate when people do-I just stood and watched him work instead of enjoy myself. I soon snapped myself out of that though b/c I love to dance and the tunes were hard to resist for very long.

Here are some more shots of the day.

After DJ Auto and Marky warmed up the crowd, I kept it simmering with my set.

When the sun set, we all just took turns back on the wheels because the crowd just would not stop!

If you love hip hop, funk, soul, boogie. house, afro beat, latin jazz, reggae, 80s pop and were there that day, you got your fill. This was the best way to kick off the summer. Even the Village Voice got up on it. I only hope the rest of it is full of as many good vibes, music, and people as there were on Sunday.

I want to give special shouts to Leonard, JP, and The Mighty G-Man who co-hosts The Underground Railroad in NYC (this show is one major reason why I’m as big a hip hop head as I am)  who also helped keep the crowd moving by MC-ing alongside our illustrious host, Dee.

Though it wasn’t played that day, this song I’m leaving you all with would have fit right in and is currently my newest obsession. Dee sent me this via King Most. Its a remix of Ryan Leslie’s “You’re Not My Girl” by DJ Big Jacks. I have no idea who he is other than he is from Canada and is obviously magical. I played this song and all of a sudden I was wearing a dress with shoulder pads, my hair was teased, and I had on tights with rhinestones on them and I nearly shimmied myself into a seizure b/c of his blend of Leslie’s vocals with Sherrick’s “Just Call”. I did find these two websites on his Facebook (no stalker-o) so let’s all get familiar. Catch up is probably more like it.

Ryan Leslie-You’re Not My Girl (DJ Big Jacks Call Me Mix)

I’m super excited about my next gig this Sunday.

3 NY DJs

3 San Fran DJs

1 amazing rooftop in Manhattan

1 lovely sunny Sunday

Massive Selector is back again to do their second installment of SFNY, a party bridging 2 of my favorite cities in the world.  Its going to be a day of great folks, amazing music, and good vibes all around. You have to RSVP for more details

You can also check out a quick mix and interview I did with the homie Dee for the party here. There are also mixes by the other DJs spinning the event and theyre all dope: Monk One, King Most, MoMa (whose Good Spot party on Mondays is KILLER) as well as Marky and Freddy. Can’t wait to rock with them all! Hope to see you there .

 
(photo by Joann Gomez)

Wow. I think after 20 days, I’m recovered. What a night!

Seriously, we (RareForm) do this every year because of the outpouring of love and support folks have for Dilla’s legacy. Its really amazing. We had no clue that when we did the first one at Galapagos Arts Space, that we’d be going strong four years later and beyond!

We raised $4,400 this year! That’s a thousand dollars more than we raised last year! The J Dilla Foundation is incredibly grateful and they are already putting that money to good use and have already located music programs that can benefit from the money!

While DJs Parler, Low Key, and myself held it down in the lounge, DJ Brainchild was absolutely killing it on the main stage with some live blends with some Ruff Draft acapellas he created. He did one with “Nothing Like This” which was really dope.

There was just a ton of great energy in the room when it came time to introduce ?uestlove and Dilla’s mother, Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey (!!!) to the crowd. ?uestlove literally stayed up all night to prep his set and performed in his pjs! The Roots recreated 70 something Dilla beats for the occassion, and we got to hear quite a few woven into ?uest’s set. It was truly a fitting tribute to a great friend of his and I’m glad he was willing to share it with the rest of us.

We are really forever indebted to ?uestlove for bringing Donuts are Forever to a whole other level.

Y’all really don’t want to hear any more of my take on it when you can see and hear a bit of what went down, do you? Of course not.

You can see some photos as well as video of Ma Dukes greeting the crowd on our Donuts Are Forever website.

And since I’ve been away so long, I’d like to do some penance by sharing with you some of the “sandwiches” of Dilla beats that The Roots recorded for ?uestlove’s set. You can download them here.

Finally, there are so many folks to thank and I’m going to try and do this now. We couldn’t do this without the help of: Brooklyn Bodega, DJ Parler, DJ Brainchild, DJ Lowkey, Okayplayer.com, Stones Throw Records, Hot Mop Films, Decon, Rule4080.com, Richard Louissaint, N. Corren Conway, Liz Allen, and Joann Gomez.

I’ll always have a Valentine as long as I have music. Come through to Fat Baby on Sunday. DJs Chela, Stimulus, Parler, and myself will be spreading the love in a friendly battle of the sexes.

Its time!

My third job involves throwing on and supporting dope events in NYC. This by far is our biggest event each year and is the one we hold dearest to our hearts: Donuts are Forever-our annual tribute to James Dewitt Yancey aka Jay Dee aka J.Dilla aka Dilla aka my most favorite producer/MC. This is the reason why my blog remains without updates for yet another week and rightly so-there’s a lot of work to be done and this year is going to be EPIC.

We finally were able to get Drummer/DJ/Producer/Bandleader/Music Director extraordinaire Questlove to DJ. If you’ve been following him on twitter (@questlove) you already know he’s literally in the studio prepping for this event. We also have some other suprises up our sleeves so if you can make it out, please do so. GET THERE EARLY.

I love our event because its also a great mix of folks who knew Dilla personally, as well as DJs and MCs who were personally influenced by his body of work, which was prolific during his short  time here on earth. This year I’m honored to be a part of the DJ lineup. I’ll try my best to honor the man who gave me so much enjoyable music.