Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central What Happens Roy Wood Jr. Next,
Speaker 1: you're about to hear a special presentation of the Daily
Speaker 1: Show podcast that I host called Beyond the Scenes. Now.
Speaker 1: All it is, it's very simple. If it's a topic
Speaker 1: that's already been on the Daily Show, we talk about
Speaker 1: it again and we go even deeper on the topic,
Speaker 1: and you know, see where we are now on the issue,
Speaker 1: get deeper into the origins of the problem. And we
Speaker 1: do that with Daily Show producers, writers, correspondents and expert
Speaker 1: guests who know a hell of a lot more about
Speaker 1: it than us to help us break it down. Heaven listen,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the Daily Show podcast that
Speaker 1: goes a little deeper into segments and topics that air
Speaker 1: and originally on the show. We're kind of like the
Speaker 1: ammenities you get when you stayed an all inclusive resort.
Speaker 1: You know, you get the hotel room, of course, but
Speaker 1: this podcast, it's the room service, the buffet, the fancy
Speaker 1: bath rope in and bath rope so comfortable. I've stole exist,
Speaker 1: let me stop snitch and on myself. Today we're discussing
Speaker 1: a topic from CP time that I did on the
Speaker 1: origins of house music. The piece highlights the notable black
Speaker 1: DJs and singers that created the original sound of the genre.
Speaker 1: House music is all the rage of these days, from
Speaker 1: Drake and Beyonce to Swedish house Mafia to Mickey Mouse's
Speaker 1: Cocatte cousin who lives in the bad part of epcom.
Speaker 1: But would you believe that this genre has its origins
Speaker 1: in the black community? Of course you should c p time.
Speaker 1: You never heard me say, surprise it's Caucasians. So yes,
Speaker 1: these modern artists stand on the shoulders of house music,
Speaker 1: black and gay founders. So let's talk about some of them,
Speaker 1: like Francis Nichols, a k a. Frankie Knuckles. Frankie started
Speaker 1: as a DJ in New York at a time of
Speaker 1: ferocious backlash against disco music, so bad that in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, a crowd gathered at Chicago's Comiskey Park to
Speaker 1: burn the records of artists and what was known as
Speaker 1: Disco Demolition Night. Even watching the footage today, it's still
Speaker 1: a shocking sight. A full baseball stadium. Disco was dead,
Speaker 1: but people still wanted to get down in the club,
Speaker 1: and so Frankie Nuckle started experimenting with the new style
Speaker 1: of dance music at his home club in Chicago, the Warehouse.
Speaker 1: That's where house music gets its name, not as some
Speaker 1: people think, from Doctor House, although Doctor House does love
Speaker 1: popping peels. Today, I'm joined by Daily Show producer Chelsea Williamson. Chelsea,
Speaker 1: how are you doing? I'm good? How are you Roy?
Speaker 1: I'm good, I'm good. I'm making it. I promise you
Speaker 1: that this is the voice you have after listening to
Speaker 1: house music and screaming in the club till four o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning, which is not what I was doing.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know that. We'll talk about that offline. We're
Speaker 1: also joined by American DJ, producer and house music great
Speaker 1: Derek Carter and music scholar and writer Craig Seymour. Derek,
Speaker 1: how you feeling that day? We'll start with you, all right,
Speaker 1: I have my voice and we're doing okay. Here must
Speaker 1: be nice and Craig, how you doing? I'm doing wonderful
Speaker 1: And I definitely have been there with that voice, you know,
Speaker 1: after that night at the club isn't quite what it
Speaker 1: is and I'm delighted to be here whenever I get
Speaker 1: the chance to talk about house music and give it
Speaker 1: up to the people who um provided the foundation for
Speaker 1: music that has been so important to my life. It's
Speaker 1: a beautiful day. My first introduction to house music was
Speaker 1: at Florida and M University. I had a roommate from Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: We walked down to this is how old I am.
Speaker 1: Excuse the old people, Chelsea. I walked down to Eckert's
Speaker 1: pharmacy and it Eckert I bought a two deck cassette
Speaker 1: player and that was gonna be our music for our
Speaker 1: dorm room. And I popped in master p ghetto d
Speaker 1: and then the deal was you get the radio for
Speaker 1: an hour, and then the other person gets the radio
Speaker 1: for an hour. He popped in the percolator and I
Speaker 1: had never heard of this. He starts gyrating around the room.
Speaker 1: I think he's having a seizure. It probably took ten
Speaker 1: minutes for me to realize, Oh wow, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: I want more. What else do you have? And this
Speaker 1: brother had a box. He had a box of nothing
Speaker 1: but house music and do or Die That was Midwest staples. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you know, being a Southerner, this was not
Speaker 1: something that it permeated its way, at least not as
Speaker 1: a sixteen seventeen year old, you know, in ninety six.
Speaker 1: So you know, it was shocking for me to like
Speaker 1: discover this new thing. And he's like, nah, this has
Speaker 1: always been the thing. So Chelsea, you do the research
Speaker 1: on these pieces. Let's start there. House music has always
Speaker 1: been associated with white people, But can you give us
Speaker 1: the basic overview of the black roots of the genre. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I feel like you can't really get into house
Speaker 1: without first acknowledging that it came from disco, was very
Speaker 1: influenced by disco. And July nine, basically in Chicago, this
Speaker 1: Chicago radio DJ named Steve dohl Um held a disco
Speaker 1: demolition night. It was in the baseball stadium. They're supposed
Speaker 1: to be a game that night, and he blew up
Speaker 1: a bunch of disco records because he was like, I
Speaker 1: hate this genre. They had like moved his radio beat
Speaker 1: from rock to disco. It started a riot. The game
Speaker 1: never happened that evening, to say the least, and there
Speaker 1: began this backlash against disco. I will also say that
Speaker 1: there was part of that that did feel very anti
Speaker 1: black and homophobic, because a lot of these disco artists
Speaker 1: were black, and you know, many were gay or in
Speaker 1: the closet or just were like involved in that scene.
Speaker 1: Like I just think of Sylvester and others like him.
Speaker 1: After that, you kind of had this flash of people
Speaker 1: not really wanted to listen to disco. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, these DJs were like, well, people want to dance,
Speaker 1: but they don't want to listen to disco, so we've
Speaker 1: got to figure out something new. And that's where you
Speaker 1: have somebody like Frankie Knuckles, who kind of came up
Speaker 1: in New York m d jaying and actually kind of
Speaker 1: started out in the Harlem drag ball scene, met his
Speaker 1: friend Larry Lavan. They started out together working at Continental
Speaker 1: Baths d jaying off and on, and Frankie eventually moved
Speaker 1: to Chicago, where he started a jaying at this club
Speaker 1: called the Warehouse, which is where House actually gets his name.
Speaker 1: While there, he kind of pioneered this, you know, version
Speaker 1: of disco that was like more of a four four
Speaker 1: beat um and just like put different basses and drums
Speaker 1: under it, and he created a very helped to pioneer
Speaker 1: a whole new genre that eventually became house. It wasn't
Speaker 1: only him. Also, like I said, Larry Lavan was in
Speaker 1: New York and he DJed at this very famous club
Speaker 1: called Paradise Garage, which I don't think you can forget
Speaker 1: in the old overall history because legend it was a
Speaker 1: legendary club. He was also pioneering his own thing. Then
Speaker 1: you had all the people after them, um, such as
Speaker 1: the people that we mentioned in the CP time, like
Speaker 1: Ron Hardy. You had Jesse Saunders who had the first
Speaker 1: number one record in nine four, called on and on
Speaker 1: and helped also make it global. You know, you had
Speaker 1: a variety of people that also made this happen. But
Speaker 1: it was all, you know, the early eighties, and I
Speaker 1: do think it's very important to also acknowledge that, you know,
Speaker 1: especially the origins of it were very much black and
Speaker 1: very gay, and you can't divorce those two things from it.
Speaker 1: So then Derek, first, to the black part of that,
Speaker 1: snubby Now we get to the gay part to say,
Speaker 1: but to the black part of that. Now, you've been
Speaker 1: tintos down in this genre since seven eight years old,
Speaker 1: messing up your mama's needles on her forty fives and
Speaker 1: scratching up everything in the house as we do as
Speaker 1: children when we learn our craft. When you started, you know,
Speaker 1: first wallowed me through your introduction into the house music scene,
Speaker 1: and as you matriculated in it, did it feel like
Speaker 1: you were being snub But like, as a consumer, I
Speaker 1: understand that we sometimes have a different perspective from the artist.
Speaker 1: So as a creator of this genre, as one of
Speaker 1: the pioneers of this genre, did you see this did
Speaker 1: it feel like you all were not getting the credit?
Speaker 1: Give me the origin and and then talk about it
Speaker 1: once you were inside the tornado of it all. Well,
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I ever heard the term
Speaker 1: house music. Friend of mine had come over and just
Speaker 1: was talking about house music, house and I'm like, what
Speaker 1: the hell this house music? I mean, that's probably twelve
Speaker 1: thirteen at the time. We sit on my front porch
Speaker 1: at my parents house, and uh, we'd all been dj.
Speaker 1: It's that thing like I started a DJ for the
Speaker 1: first time at nine. You know, we all had little crews.
Speaker 1: And the amazing thing is that your rates? What were
Speaker 1: your rates at nine years old? What was you going
Speaker 1: for for a show? Give me a plate where I
Speaker 1: grew up. It is just like just outside of the
Speaker 1: city and a place called broad View, Maywood, Illinois. Um,
Speaker 1: they were probably man easily like ten fifteen other like
Speaker 1: kid DJs uh in my neighborhood, Like we battle each
Speaker 1: other in the garage and just like make music and
Speaker 1: have fun and do that sort of thing. Uh. And
Speaker 1: one of my friends who was in this kind of UH,
Speaker 1: I don't know our association. This is like started talking
Speaker 1: about house music house music, like I don't I don't
Speaker 1: understand what you're saying. Then he explained it to me,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, you're just talking about music,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know. Why are you calling the house music?
Speaker 1: Like you why what is this? But the thing about
Speaker 1: it here locally was that they played um had mixes
Speaker 1: on the radio, So we had like disco d AI
Speaker 1: back in the uh Steve Doll days, and then it
Speaker 1: went on to w BMX and w g c I
Speaker 1: and then on through like B ninety six and other stuff.
Speaker 1: But basically we had on Friday nights from I guess
Speaker 1: like nine till four am, basically the time that the
Speaker 1: club would be open. If you couldn't make it to
Speaker 1: the club, there were radio DJs that would give you mixes.
Speaker 1: It became sort of the soundtrack, you know. And I
Speaker 1: was crafty and broke, so like I would manage to like,
Speaker 1: I wanted to record all these mixes and find all
Speaker 1: this music. So I figured out a way to hook
Speaker 1: up my parents VCR to the radio and instead of
Speaker 1: a tape deck, so I could get six hours on
Speaker 1: the tapes, so I could tape the whole mix show
Speaker 1: from start to end and just like have it on
Speaker 1: on a vc I tape. The thing was that there
Speaker 1: was a lot of record stores, like all over the place.
Speaker 1: There's one locally, Reamer's Record that sold a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: There was one we had, you know, Rose Records in
Speaker 1: the city, and a bunch of other things. I worked
Speaker 1: at a place called Imports, etcetera, which is the store
Speaker 1: that gave House Music its actual name, like it came
Speaker 1: from the club the warehouse. But Paul weissberg Um, who
Speaker 1: was the owner um had set up a little been
Speaker 1: of music that Frankie play, because that's kind of the
Speaker 1: thing at the time, you know, it's like DJ picks
Speaker 1: or like music that you could hear in these various places.
Speaker 1: And this is also this I'm talking like nineteen that
Speaker 1: would have been like nineteen eighty four, maybe nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three somewhere in there. But I started working there at
Speaker 1: eighty seven. I mean I was eighteen, I had just
Speaker 1: I was a fresh eighteen and we just used to
Speaker 1: run around and like, man, it was the heyday. It
Speaker 1: was like there was a party in every little neighborhood
Speaker 1: every weekend for you know, like years. You know, there'd
Speaker 1: be the dance off battle and like a DJ battle
Speaker 1: or like a dancer battle or biggest booty battle. You know,
Speaker 1: those have never gone away, the spirit of house music.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like it was properly honored by white
Speaker 1: people to have been this thing that originated within the
Speaker 1: black and gay communities at that time? Uh? Yes, there
Speaker 1: were club issues and things like that with segregate Chicago
Speaker 1: is notoriously terrible about that sort of stuff, and at
Speaker 1: that time particularly, But there are a lot of parties
Speaker 1: and a lot of events, and like they would be
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of people. I mean, yeah, most
Speaker 1: of the DJs or a lot of the DJs, and
Speaker 1: the places where it found its start were primarily h
Speaker 1: black and brown queer spaces helmed by black and brown
Speaker 1: queer people. But they weren't exclusionary, you know, they weren't
Speaker 1: uh in any way running the same kind of game
Speaker 1: that the actual club owners in the city were running
Speaker 1: where you had to have four pieces of I D
Speaker 1: to get in, and who the hell has four pieces
Speaker 1: of I D in ur there weren't even four pieces
Speaker 1: of I D to be had. You know, you write
Speaker 1: your name on a piece of paper if that counts.
Speaker 1: That's one. You know, bringing your electric grill. But at
Speaker 1: these events they would be white people that'd be like,
Speaker 1: you know, white passing Latinos and shoot, white passing black folks.
Speaker 1: There would be all kinds of people and just having
Speaker 1: a good time. And so I feel like how kind
Speaker 1: of fostered and um nurtured this kind of uh community
Speaker 1: and and for lack of a better term, that anybody
Speaker 1: could come, you know, and like there's a famous song.
Speaker 1: You may be black, you may be white, you may
Speaker 1: be jew or gentile. You know, it don't make a difference.
Speaker 1: Working at the record store, I saw it all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, people coming in like black people, brown people,
Speaker 1: white people, gay people, straight people, uh people just catching
Speaker 1: up to it. More so because it was on the
Speaker 1: radio at the time, so it became uh something commercial
Speaker 1: that could be I guess exploited something you could sell
Speaker 1: commercial times to uh make a little money off of it.
Speaker 1: But I think that in the black, the blackness of it,
Speaker 1: I mean it was black. It was real black. You know.
Speaker 1: You would get like just steppers coming in and full
Speaker 1: green outfits, and you know, brothers from the deep south
Speaker 1: Side who just didn't leave this outside to go to
Speaker 1: do anything but go get records. You know, for the
Speaker 1: party it was there were a lot of characters. You know,
Speaker 1: you would run into some interesting people. To that point,
Speaker 1: Craig speak a little bit to the LGBTQ community and
Speaker 1: how they fit into the history of music, specifically queer
Speaker 1: Black and Latin X men. Well, first of all, I
Speaker 1: just have to give it up to the black ingenuity
Speaker 1: of cooking up a cassette player to a VCR. I
Speaker 1: had never heard of nothing like that. Yeah, that just
Speaker 1: needs a long first of all. Doesn't give it up
Speaker 1: to that, all right? And then I also wanted to
Speaker 1: um say a little bit about the Steve Dobb the
Speaker 1: Disco Demolition um riot. The reason why it can really
Speaker 1: I feel very comfortable calling it racist is because, um
Speaker 1: some of the people that were taking the records that
Speaker 1: people would get were able to get in free for
Speaker 1: reduced price to get they were bringing in Stevie Wonder
Speaker 1: records they were bringing in, and read the Franklin records
Speaker 1: they were bringing in funk records. So the record they
Speaker 1: weren't making any distinction between black music in general and disco.
Speaker 1: They just wanted to burn these black records. So that's
Speaker 1: something that's very important that often gets lost in that.
Speaker 1: That was definitely racist. I don't care what am I
Speaker 1: drives to say, the point is and what this one.
Speaker 1: I believe it was Vince Lawrence. Excuse me if I'm
Speaker 1: wrong about that, but I believe he said, you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't see any Carpenters records coming through, he didn't
Speaker 1: see any doors Day records coming through, he didn't see
Speaker 1: any Barry Mandelow records coming through, but he did see
Speaker 1: mainstream black R and B records coming through. That we're
Speaker 1: not disco. So to me, what's what's what's the what's
Speaker 1: the you know, connecting threat between all their artists they're black,
Speaker 1: you know, So it really did have a racial um implication. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's important to very much think
Speaker 1: of a black queer aesthetic and queer community as very
Speaker 1: distinct from a white queer community. And I think it's
Speaker 1: very important to think of the practices of black queer
Speaker 1: communities as very different from the practices of white queer community.
Speaker 1: So that's why when Mr Carter said the thing about
Speaker 1: it was always a mix of people, a black queer
Speaker 1: aesthetic and community, and the principles of the black queer
Speaker 1: community have always been about inclusion, and they've always reflected
Speaker 1: sort of the thinking of black feminist authors that I'm
Speaker 1: not free till everybody's free, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's not a get mine type of situation. It's a
Speaker 1: someday we'll all be free situation, you know, and we're
Speaker 1: trying to free everybody's mind. So that's why the inclusion
Speaker 1: of um all sorts of different people was so possible
Speaker 1: within these black queer safe spaces where they might not
Speaker 1: have been in white gay spaces, which, again, like Mr
Speaker 1: Carter said, when you show up to the door, you know,
Speaker 1: if you were white, you have to show and you know,
Speaker 1: multiple ideas this and that have to go through all
Speaker 1: sorts of changes. But I think that inclusive aspect was
Speaker 1: always a part of it for me, not growing up
Speaker 1: in Chicago, but being around that. I was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen eight, so um I saw it all from the
Speaker 1: point of view. I grew up in d C. But
Speaker 1: I lived in New York for a long period of
Speaker 1: time during this period, and New York at this time
Speaker 1: in the early eighties was the capital of dance music.
Speaker 1: Like everything came out of New York or New Jersey,
Speaker 1: filtered through New York to clubs like the Zanzibar and
Speaker 1: Tony Humphries, and then they get played by Larry Levan
Speaker 1: at the Paradise Garage and that type of thing. So
Speaker 1: that was the center. And I distinctly remember when house
Speaker 1: came on the scene because what was b back in
Speaker 1: those days it's kind of like what we now call freestyle,
Speaker 1: but you can call elektro and records like Shannon's Let
Speaker 1: the Music Play and things like that, which are very
Speaker 1: kind of um of the Jaunty records. And I remember
Speaker 1: when the first time like jam Silks Music Is the
Speaker 1: Key started playing, people were like, what is this because
Speaker 1: it's just it was much more fluid than the sort
Speaker 1: of electro rhythms before. And then once we start getting
Speaker 1: like Marshall Jefferson's House Music Anthem with the pianos and
Speaker 1: all of that kind of stuff, it was like somebody
Speaker 1: switched a light switch and like all of these kind
Speaker 1: of hard electro records that were once popular, we're just gone.
Speaker 1: And now it was all about house music, whether melodic
Speaker 1: house music or the sort of um cut up tracks
Speaker 1: that people like Um Todd Terry and people were doing.
Speaker 1: New York producers really picked up on this sort of
Speaker 1: cut up sounds that Chicago producers were doing. Producers like
Speaker 1: Arthur Baker, who produced Looking for the Perfect Beat, one
Speaker 1: of the first electro hip hop records, he really started
Speaker 1: being a champion and of house music and bringing that
Speaker 1: into the New York scene. And once it became big
Speaker 1: in New York, then the pop artists wanted to get
Speaker 1: getting on that money. So that's when you started getting
Speaker 1: Frankie Knuckles remixing records for like Janet Jackson and Windy
Speaker 1: Houston and people like that, And that's when it really exploded,
Speaker 1: when the pop people started getting into it. But again,
Speaker 1: it was about how the New York producers were kind
Speaker 1: of translating this raw sound that was coming from Chicago.
Speaker 1: So then would you all say that these house music
Speaker 1: venues became a bit of a cultural and behavioral safe
Speaker 1: haven for the gay community, And I would guess to
Speaker 1: some degree the black community as well, where you could
Speaker 1: come and just be yourself in this one bubble away
Speaker 1: from all of the other bullshit that's going on outside
Speaker 1: in the city. That was literally it for so many people,
Speaker 1: including myself that I knew, uh, particularly because clubs were
Speaker 1: always in many ways meant to be an escape, um
Speaker 1: from the sort of just things that you do every day.
Speaker 1: My job is terrible, but the weekend, you know, my girlfriend,
Speaker 1: my boyfriend's mad at me. But the weekend, you know,
Speaker 1: all the things that you go through during the make
Speaker 1: your money part of the week are absolved and you
Speaker 1: are just the weekend. So having those places where you
Speaker 1: just could be free, well you wanted to be free,
Speaker 1: and then we're able to be free. Uh, that is
Speaker 1: a great recipe for a good time, and people were
Speaker 1: coming to have great times. You know. The interesting thing
Speaker 1: um book Miss card and I've talked about like how
Speaker 1: in certain cities like the big cities, the New York's Um,
Speaker 1: the Phillies, the Baltimore's, the Chicago House also had a
Speaker 1: life on radio, which really sort of spread the message.
Speaker 1: But in terms of black queer spaces, there were places
Speaker 1: all around the country, even in the South, in Atlanta
Speaker 1: and Houston and all of these other places where house
Speaker 1: music clubs were really all that the black, gay and
Speaker 1: lesbian community had at that time because they weren't hearing
Speaker 1: it on the radio, they weren't couldn't even find it
Speaker 1: in the record stores. But they would go to these
Speaker 1: particular clubs um in order to hear the music. And
Speaker 1: in many ways they were much more isolated than people
Speaker 1: were in bigger cities like Chicago and d C. And stuff,
Speaker 1: where there was a larger Black A community. And then
Speaker 1: there were also the clubs. In the South, there was
Speaker 1: only the club, and the Black A community was the club,
Speaker 1: and the soundtrack to the club was house music. So
Speaker 1: there's it provided such an important um connection. And you know,
Speaker 1: like I was saying about the inclusivity of house music,
Speaker 1: you hear that in the music. You hear that in
Speaker 1: um Sterling Voids It's all right, you know. You hear
Speaker 1: that in Joe Smooth Promised Land. You hear that in
Speaker 1: CC Rogers Someday. You know, you hear that in um
Speaker 1: Mr Fingers. Can you feel it? It's all about trying
Speaker 1: to seek for a better world for everybody. It's not
Speaker 1: just a day pride anthem is that it is an
Speaker 1: everybody thing and it's talking about This was the eighties,
Speaker 1: so it's talking about apartheid in South Africa. It's talking
Speaker 1: about all sorts of things that oppressed people. That's what
Speaker 1: house music is to me. So with those artists you've
Speaker 1: just named, Chelsea in the segment we featured, you know,
Speaker 1: the late great Frankie Knuckles, Martha Wash made in appearance.
Speaker 1: We actually got Martha Wash to just straight open up
Speaker 1: to zoom camera and do a joke with us on
Speaker 1: the fly, and she was with it on zoom. She
Speaker 1: she knew the button like, ain't no shot because she's gone.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's seen the errors. You know. She was
Speaker 1: two tons of fun. She was the backing band for Sylvester,
Speaker 1: so she was She's a disco is disco gets pedigreed.
Speaker 1: That wraps up our time with house music. If you
Speaker 1: like that sort of thing, which personally I do not.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm old school, but that type of music is undignified.
Speaker 1: Shaking my hips like a heathen. No thank you, there's
Speaker 1: no commandment about dropping it little. That movie Dirty Dancing
Speaker 1: was about two people rubbing crotches in public places. So terrible,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it? Roy? Is that you God? I knew you
Speaker 1: were a black woman. No, it's me, Martha Wash. What's
Speaker 1: this I hear about you not liking dance music? Martha?
Speaker 1: I cannot abide by dance music, not a single note.
Speaker 1: I'm a man of culture shipment once a decade and
Speaker 1: that's nonsense. Everyone can dance, Everyone must dance. Hit a
Speaker 1: studio from Chelsea, who were some of the other DJs
Speaker 1: or singers in the house genre that came up in
Speaker 1: the research that they're just we just ran out of time.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot like that's the thing with houses,
Speaker 1: Like there's so many DJs and so many people that
Speaker 1: were integral. Um. I know, especially on the we were
Speaker 1: trying to find you know a lot of women DJs
Speaker 1: that helped out early on, and um, we came up
Speaker 1: with Yvon Turner, who did you know the music is
Speaker 1: the answer dub mix that is this huge song And
Speaker 1: she actually was never properly credited for it. She was
Speaker 1: actually credited on the original vinyl as Evan Turner. They
Speaker 1: credited her as a man. Weirdly um and that happened
Speaker 1: to her a few times in her career and she
Speaker 1: ended up actually leaving but then coming back a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago and got Grammy nominated um for song.
Speaker 1: So you know, she's like managed to do the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But you know, people like her recommend to Von Turner
Speaker 1: tracks just while we're on Yeah, I think they would
Speaker 1: like to know. Google Whitney Houston, I'm Your Baby Tonight,
Speaker 1: the Von Turner mix, do yourself a favor. And also
Speaker 1: Lisa Stansfield you can't deny it the Von Turner mix
Speaker 1: and Layla half the way. Um, heaven knows the Von
Speaker 1: Turner Mix. I just want to throw that out there
Speaker 1: because that's Von Turner's all good, all good. Um. And
Speaker 1: then on the singer side, I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that's very um cool and interesting about house music
Speaker 1: and it really allows for a lot of women to
Speaker 1: sing it full of voice, um, whereas like especially now, UM,
Speaker 1: I feel like in a lot of pop music it's
Speaker 1: not very normal. So especially you know the eighties and
Speaker 1: nineties we talked about Martha Wash, but you know there
Speaker 1: was also Crystal Waters who Gypsy Woman She's Homeless, which
Speaker 1: was this huge smash hit. You know, you have Ultra
Speaker 1: Nate who had this huge hit free and she's one
Speaker 1: of the most commercially successful house music singers ever. And
Speaker 1: when we were speaking about the sampling of these disco
Speaker 1: records early on, you have Lolita Holloway's Love Sensation, which
Speaker 1: then got turned into good Vibration, which everybody knows. But
Speaker 1: she actually also did not get credited for her vocals
Speaker 1: because it was just remixed and sampled so many times.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's so many women that have like
Speaker 1: made it in this it made dance music their main
Speaker 1: career because, especially for a lot of black women with
Speaker 1: huge like church gospel vocals, like house music is at home.
Speaker 1: It's a safe space, and it's a place where um,
Speaker 1: it's consistent work and they know that people will listen
Speaker 1: to it, they'll get paid for it, and their voices
Speaker 1: will be appreciated. One of the things that it's often
Speaker 1: overlooked I feel is, uh, lesbian's. Back in the good
Speaker 1: old days when I would go clubbing at things, they
Speaker 1: were like lesbians who would just out being themselves and
Speaker 1: finding places because it's hard for especially you know, black
Speaker 1: and brown women two be queer um in public, and
Speaker 1: I feel like they are often relegated to the at
Speaker 1: the bottom when in reality at that time particularly there
Speaker 1: were a lot of uh female DJs running like coming
Speaker 1: to the store and buy things for you know, the
Speaker 1: Paris Club and all these other places that were going
Speaker 1: on at the time that just catered more specifically towards women.
Speaker 1: So there was a place that existed for them in
Speaker 1: this sort of pantheona, this uh hierarchy of um black
Speaker 1: and queer. Like, it wasn't just men, you know, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of women. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: trans people, um a new queens that kept raizor blades
Speaker 1: in their cheek because as they couldn't get home unless
Speaker 1: they have some protection. Keep it raised way in between
Speaker 1: your toes. So you gotta do is kick your shoe
Speaker 1: off and you can kick somebody in the face if
Speaker 1: they try to, you know, mess with you like these
Speaker 1: like but you know these are like hard bitches, like
Speaker 1: you know, just ain't playing with you and you're and
Speaker 1: you're gonna know it. You could learn a lot from
Speaker 1: them though. I've learned a lot of self protection, a
Speaker 1: lot of self protection things that I know from trans
Speaker 1: women back in the day. Keep fifty dollars in your
Speaker 1: shoes you get arrested, the ibon like all the all
Speaker 1: the good, all the good street stuff, like the street
Speaker 1: knowledge came from you know, trans girls, especially the ones
Speaker 1: who were see this one. We can get the CRT
Speaker 1: in schools. We need this knowledge in the in the textbooks.
Speaker 1: I mean. And if you had somebody and if you
Speaker 1: had like you know, a trans woman, you know that
Speaker 1: had your back like that, oh baby, she would go
Speaker 1: to town spe kind of inclusion. After the break, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the way that Europe played a
Speaker 1: role into the evolution of house music and what many
Speaker 1: would argue is the pushing out any eratier of black
Speaker 1: and gay faces within the craft and how that affected
Speaker 1: the evolution of house music. We're going to get into
Speaker 1: that after the break. This is beyond the scenes. Beyond
Speaker 1: the scenes, we are back. We are talking house music. Now.
Speaker 1: We have discussed the foundation of it. We've discussed the
Speaker 1: base of it, the origins of it. But let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about how it evolved beyond America
Speaker 1: and how that led to what I suspect would be
Speaker 1: some of the eraser of black and LGBTQ folks from
Speaker 1: the historical context of the music. Why do you all
Speaker 1: think the eraser started and what role did the global
Speaker 1: evolution of house music playing that well. I don't have
Speaker 1: anything against Europe in the eraser, because Europe is responsible
Speaker 1: for house music gaining its international popularity. When house music started,
Speaker 1: nobody in the States in terms of music journalism, in
Speaker 1: terms of anything, cared one small bit. It was the
Speaker 1: European journalists who came over here and wrote about house music.
Speaker 1: It was the licensing deals UM from the small independent
Speaker 1: Chicago labels that they licensed and took over to UM
Speaker 1: Britain and in the UK. These records became like number
Speaker 1: one records, Jack your Body, the house music anthem. They
Speaker 1: became number one records when over here nobody was trying
Speaker 1: for them. I remember one of the best, one of
Speaker 1: the most important house groups of all time, Ten City.
Speaker 1: They were signed to Atlantic Records here, but their record
Speaker 1: was blowing up overseas. Do you think that Atlantic Records
Speaker 1: gave them money to tour overseas? No. The lead singer Byron,
Speaker 1: he had to ask his grandmother for the money. She
Speaker 1: gave him a ray are blade, told him to slit
Speaker 1: underneath the curtain where she hit her money. Ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars dropped out on the floor and that was his
Speaker 1: touring budget. They went over there and toward it, and
Speaker 1: I believe it was That's the way Love Love Is
Speaker 1: became a top ten UK pop record, but not because
Speaker 1: of any support of the US labels. And also all
Speaker 1: of the old house music legends can go overseas now
Speaker 1: and still get a check and still perform, and they
Speaker 1: get performed like rock stars. What really happened is that
Speaker 1: And we haven't talked about this yet, but we can
Speaker 1: never underestimate the power, the just the loss that happened
Speaker 1: with AIDS that decimated the black gay community at every
Speaker 1: single level. So that affected the people that were making
Speaker 1: the music, that affected the people that were in the
Speaker 1: clubs listening to the music. Those clubs began to close
Speaker 1: because there wasn't enough of audience. We're talking about estimates
Speaker 1: where some black A clubs feel like between the eighties
Speaker 1: and the nineties they lost forty and fifty of their
Speaker 1: audience more or more. And so as the music is
Speaker 1: getting popular, it starts getting played in the white clubs
Speaker 1: and these big white clubs. It started be calling the
Speaker 1: big rooms. So the music started to be couldn't be
Speaker 1: made for these big rooms that were mostly white. It
Speaker 1: wasn't being made for a black gay audience anymore, and
Speaker 1: it lost many of the It lost the soulfulness, the
Speaker 1: rootedness and R and B, and it lost the sense
Speaker 1: of social responsibility that was so much a part of
Speaker 1: the early house. So to me, that's where the eraser
Speaker 1: comes from. I don't blame a UK kid who grew
Speaker 1: up with you know, ten City and Steve Silk Curlely
Speaker 1: in the Top ten trying to create their own version
Speaker 1: of that. I mean, that's just something people are going
Speaker 1: to try to do. I think it was because so
Speaker 1: many black creators and audiences died out because of AIDS
Speaker 1: that made it very easy for the erasure to happen.
Speaker 1: Because once you got these big rooms, these white gay
Speaker 1: spaces doing their version of house music, then those DJs
Speaker 1: became to prominence and they came to set the aesthetic,
Speaker 1: and it actually became the first time, I think, in
Speaker 1: the history of music. I'm gonna go this far to
Speaker 1: say when dance music in general was not connected to
Speaker 1: the priorities of black people. Like every from the blues
Speaker 1: to jazz, to R and B, motown to disco to
Speaker 1: original house, all of those were um the aesthetics of
Speaker 1: those were found died by black people and were rooted
Speaker 1: and black culture. But once you started getting the music
Speaker 1: playing in these white venues and the circuit parties and
Speaker 1: all of that kind of stuff, dance raves, all that,
Speaker 1: thank you, id m all that that was no longer
Speaker 1: rooted in anything black, and that, to me, is what
Speaker 1: led to the erasure. I feel like part of this
Speaker 1: also exists on a level that has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with socio economics. So I knew growing up thirty
Speaker 1: DJs fifteen of whom I would easily say could kick
Speaker 1: my ass and the dj W in the battle. They
Speaker 1: were great, great, great, but you know you have to
Speaker 1: get a job and you know, you what, you just
Speaker 1: go DJ all the time. UM people particularly um black
Speaker 1: and brown people off then don't have a parent or
Speaker 1: a family structure that allows them to be independent muso's
Speaker 1: to you know, chase their dreams. And you know, like
Speaker 1: I knew people that wanted to keep Djan, but somebody
Speaker 1: mama got sick and he had to go get a job.
Speaker 1: I knew people who d Jan uh broke, you know,
Speaker 1: got to a motorcycle accident and couldn't keep Djan because
Speaker 1: you know it didn't have insurance. And you know, all
Speaker 1: these sorts of stories that I feel are particularly tethered
Speaker 1: to black and brown and often queer spaces because of
Speaker 1: associo economic position. Oftentimes, particularly with black and brown queer people,
Speaker 1: they were excised from the homes, you know, when someone
Speaker 1: found out that they were gay or queer, or transgender,
Speaker 1: or you know, just not not right, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And so they were they of it on the street.
Speaker 1: They are, you know, doing these things and trying to
Speaker 1: cobble together a sense of expression from whatever they can,
Speaker 1: however they can, whenever they can. That's hard. And then
Speaker 1: that's also why a lot of the the aids when
Speaker 1: it came in, um, I remember people just disappearing, you know,
Speaker 1: just not there anymore. You know, you would like even
Speaker 1: at the record store, you know, what happened so and so,
Speaker 1: and then somebody come in with a little spot on
Speaker 1: their face and something something looked a little different about them.
Speaker 1: And then the next thing you hear is that they're
Speaker 1: in the hospital. But you know, it's still a shame
Speaker 1: attached to it, so no one really would say the
Speaker 1: real cause would be you know, we called it the
Speaker 1: package back then. You know, she's got the package um,
Speaker 1: and people would make you know, working me to my
Speaker 1: last t sale. Honey, you try to find the humor
Speaker 1: even in tragedy, but uh, I can, like when greatest something.
Speaker 1: But I felt like, man, I remember just so many
Speaker 1: people who are just just disappeared that I no longer
Speaker 1: see that like aren't around. And it kind of like
Speaker 1: made me, you know, like in a better world where
Speaker 1: people have been able to be recognized and be seen
Speaker 1: and not treated as outcasts and not um sort of
Speaker 1: stuck on the side on these margins that could have
Speaker 1: been more. But I also feel like if that was
Speaker 1: the case, then these marginalized people wouldn't have been so
Speaker 1: eager to live for today and live for now and
Speaker 1: have this enthusiasm, have this like strive and drive to
Speaker 1: create and do these things because tomorrow is not promised
Speaker 1: or you know, like you better get it now because
Speaker 1: you never know. It's so much deeper to not deeper.
Speaker 1: But I mean there's another layer in that you have
Speaker 1: to talk about the business owners and the socio economics
Speaker 1: of black club ownership. Once black club owners were losing
Speaker 1: their audiences, they couldn't always afford to pick up and
Speaker 1: start a new venue. Somewhere else just because of the
Speaker 1: sociogonomic conditions that affect black businesses, you know. So that's
Speaker 1: why you had the white owned big clubs. And what
Speaker 1: do white owned big clubs want is their customers. They
Speaker 1: want white people, They want white DJs. So that's why
Speaker 1: I don't quite I'm not so quite as quick to
Speaker 1: blame it on Europeans because if you think about a
Speaker 1: lot of dance acts like Daft Punk on their first album,
Speaker 1: they don't do anything but like they have a song
Speaker 1: called Teachers where they just throw out people's names. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: right right exactly after the break, we're gonna take it
Speaker 1: home and we're gonna talk about where house music can go.
Speaker 1: They're gonna talk about Beyonce and Drake is beyond the Scenes.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back on beyond the scenes, bringing it home.
Speaker 1: We are talking house music. Now, we've talked about the
Speaker 1: de evolution of it in terms of black and gay
Speaker 1: creators being able to still be at the forefront of
Speaker 1: the creative evolution of it. So Dereck and Craig, I
Speaker 1: want to pose this question you all before we talk
Speaker 1: Beyonce and Drake. Do you think y'all's working contributions to
Speaker 1: the industry helped keep the history, the black history, and
Speaker 1: the gay history of house music alive. Let's just talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the work that you do now
Speaker 1: to make sure that this genre still remains as relevant
Speaker 1: as it was, you know, back in the day. Because
Speaker 1: you know, Derek, I feel to some degree with what
Speaker 1: happened in the nineties with the eighth Epidemic, what happened
Speaker 1: with poverty and just the you know, and we really
Speaker 1: could even blame crack and jail and drugs sentencing as
Speaker 1: well as part of that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, all
Speaker 1: of that losing some degree of your autonomy and being
Speaker 1: able to control this genre like you lost some of
Speaker 1: your autonomy. So talk a little bit about the things
Speaker 1: that you all are doing now to try and get
Speaker 1: some of that back. There's a lot, there's really a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean I I travel a lot for work for deejaying,
Speaker 1: playing clubs, doing um various events and things like that,
Speaker 1: and I always try to make sure that there is
Speaker 1: a heavy dose of blackness and something that represents me
Speaker 1: and my upbringing and my people and my feelings in
Speaker 1: what I do. I don't play hits, I don't play
Speaker 1: the latest um whoever the new girl is song? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know I Chopper a Sap, whoever dog, you know, Billy,
Speaker 1: Somebody's anybody. I don't because that that doesn't represent me
Speaker 1: or speak to me. So I played records with jazz,
Speaker 1: I played records with funk, I play records with blues keys.
Speaker 1: I play records um with women who are telling telling you,
Speaker 1: selling you the story like you're gonna hear this right quick.
Speaker 1: I feel that one of the best parts about being
Speaker 1: able to still be here and still have a platform
Speaker 1: is that you should use it. You know, you should
Speaker 1: take that platform and make it so that it has
Speaker 1: some sort of relevance to what it is you're trying
Speaker 1: to say, Like I I have people that you know,
Speaker 1: DJ friends who I don't want to say sell out,
Speaker 1: but you know that, Oh it's about the music. It's
Speaker 1: about there. I mean, yeah, it's about the music, but
Speaker 1: it's about the voice. You know. Um, I always say
Speaker 1: the voice was the first instrum it h and people
Speaker 1: who don't understand that can't quite relate to a lot
Speaker 1: of things. I do. You play a lot of vocals,
Speaker 1: you do this, you do that. I'm like the voices,
Speaker 1: the first instrument people you know they made I didn't
Speaker 1: see any dinosaurs, didn't hit on rocks and you know
Speaker 1: have rhythm, but they did holler, you know, all animals,
Speaker 1: even going back. That's that's how you gotta mate. You
Speaker 1: sing your little song in the tree or whatever, you
Speaker 1: make your call in the fourth google. That's that's how
Speaker 1: you That's how you got some. So I mean, and
Speaker 1: that's what we do with music and with instruments. We
Speaker 1: do these things because there's also like level of I
Speaker 1: have something to say, or I'm trying to get some
Speaker 1: or you know, there's a story I want to tell,
Speaker 1: you know, communication, all these sorts of things. And so
Speaker 1: I still feature heavily um black and brown people singing
Speaker 1: and playing and um music that suits and sits within
Speaker 1: that wheelhouse. I mean, my parents are from MSS Sippy
Speaker 1: like MS Like. I called my dad yesterday to make
Speaker 1: sure they had water because Jackson, Misissippi ain't got no warter.
Speaker 1: So I was like, y'all got water dot there? And
Speaker 1: he's like yeah, but you know, and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, my parents not Stephen Fetcher. I
Speaker 1: don't want to sound like that like my parents had
Speaker 1: just in a tin roof shot. My mom's side is
Speaker 1: from Clarksdale, so I'm not offended in the least. I know,
Speaker 1: you know, you know at the end of the road
Speaker 1: where the road stopped, you know, that's where my grandmother's house.
Speaker 1: So I am of this kind of like people who really,
Speaker 1: really really had it. I won't say I don't want
Speaker 1: to like, I don't want to make it sound like,
Speaker 1: you know, these are victims, because they've never we consider
Speaker 1: themselves victims. They don't play like their victims. My parents
Speaker 1: are not victims of anything, but they their conditions and
Speaker 1: and and their situations weren't always the best. They weren't
Speaker 1: geared for success. And the fact that you know, they
Speaker 1: made it out. My mom's a teacher, my dad engineer,
Speaker 1: Like you know, they raised their kids in the suburbs
Speaker 1: and said we had enough of this cold, we're moving back,
Speaker 1: and allowed me to go to private school and this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Um, I find that and all that
Speaker 1: and and all the like whiteness that I was often
Speaker 1: the blackness, and I was the blackness in the whiteness
Speaker 1: as a child a lot. You know, I always had
Speaker 1: my roots to keep me strong. If if that's another analogy,
Speaker 1: you know, like a good foundation of things. You know,
Speaker 1: my my roots kept me upright, My roots kept me
Speaker 1: from doing some things because there's always like you know,
Speaker 1: I asked us to hear or like you know, my
Speaker 1: my mother still sits on my shoulder and corrects my English,
Speaker 1: you know, and and this sort of thing. So, Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like being able to still be the blackness
Speaker 1: in the whiteness is part of my very platform in
Speaker 1: general and the way I approach a lot of this
Speaker 1: and go through it. Beautiful Craig, talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about your writing. Yeah, As for me, Um, one of
Speaker 1: the most perplexing questions that I'm dealing with in my
Speaker 1: writing is, like I think a lot about the brothers
Speaker 1: who aren't here, Like the brothers who like might have
Speaker 1: become superstars but past of aid, the brothers who might
Speaker 1: have been a great producer but just didn't get that chance.
Speaker 1: That haunts me all the time, and I don't know
Speaker 1: quite how to get it that but I know I do, right,
Speaker 1: you know, So much of my work is about preserving
Speaker 1: the stories and the names of um, black gay men
Speaker 1: that have contributed to pop music throughout you know, from
Speaker 1: seeing the Sissy Man's blues too, Saucy Santana, Booty, you know, Stewart,
Speaker 1: So you know, it's all the way, and you know,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to call some names. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think we do have to talk about the people that
Speaker 1: were out during the period, like the Robert Evans, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest vocalists, um you know house music vocalists,
Speaker 1: um ever like and David Cole using his church piano playing,
Speaker 1: you know, became part of CE and C Music Factory
Speaker 1: and then remixed the Whitneys and stuff. But just these men,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to tell those stories. I just
Speaker 1: kind of tried to record the stories of people who
Speaker 1: I feel haven't been given they're due, and also to
Speaker 1: sort of share my stories of how it felt literally
Speaker 1: to be a black gay man in their twenties in
Speaker 1: the eighties dealing with this kind of stuff in real time.
Speaker 1: To that point, with the Saucy Santana's of the world
Speaker 1: and the more present day artist Chelsea, give us some
Speaker 1: of those genres that have been influenced by house since
Speaker 1: its rise through the seventies and eighties. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like houses um ever present an omnipresent actually, which is
Speaker 1: so crazy because a lot of people don't necessarily equate
Speaker 1: it with a lot, but it's had so many influences.
Speaker 1: So I think you have Acid House, which is kind
Speaker 1: of like known for like more like squelching noises. It
Speaker 1: sounds a little bits, it sounds different, and Ron Hardy
Speaker 1: was actually one of the ones who helped to kind
Speaker 1: of bring it to the forefront pre techno, It's right.
Speaker 1: So then you had, you know, you kind of started
Speaker 1: Acid House. You know two Live Crew, two of the
Speaker 1: members and they're actually started Miami Bass, which is huge
Speaker 1: and it's also part of the House family. They also
Speaker 1: helped to start you know, Baltimore club music, which we
Speaker 1: still here to this day. Um, you know, I will
Speaker 1: say for people if maybe you're not as familiar, I'd
Speaker 1: say one of the latest ish ones that you've heard
Speaker 1: more mainstream is probably like and Rake's album Sticky is
Speaker 1: like a Baltimore club influence, but also wop Sam samples,
Speaker 1: you know, early Baltimore club song. You know, horns in
Speaker 1: this House. So, um, you know, we hear that one
Speaker 1: a lot. You have I'm a Piano, which is like
Speaker 1: a South African house, you know, a genre like deep house,
Speaker 1: gospel house, hip hop, house, ghetto house like houses like everywhere,
Speaker 1: gospel house were go into Jesus. Yeah, yeah, gospel houses
Speaker 1: every might not every Sunday morning. I listened DJ spin
Speaker 1: who's a Baltimore person, and he has his Sunday service gospel.
Speaker 1: You know, because of the thing is the pianos like
Speaker 1: that Marshall Jefferson brought in through the house music anthem.
Speaker 1: That's not the church piano. And they you've got people
Speaker 1: like David Cole who were used to the church. So
Speaker 1: all that piano you hear in house music house remixes,
Speaker 1: that's all from the church. And that the singers were
Speaker 1: all from the church. So it's like that's the most
Speaker 1: that's the most natural thing in the world. If you
Speaker 1: had to sit in church eight hours on a Sunday
Speaker 1: and couldn't leave except to you know, you get some
Speaker 1: food and then come back to church again and then
Speaker 1: you do all the things that if that was your life,
Speaker 1: you know, especially for a lot of black men and women,
Speaker 1: that was your life for the first sixteen seventeen years
Speaker 1: of you being on this earth. Like you, it's in
Speaker 1: your bone and how you hear music, it's in how
Speaker 1: you approach uh people, getting getting happy, and it's the
Speaker 1: release you want from it that you expect from she
Speaker 1: don't got happy and you got a fantom and like
Speaker 1: put it. You know all that, you know the church
Speaker 1: fan and and you because that's that's like a club.
Speaker 1: You know, that's what the club as you get there
Speaker 1: and people get the holy ghost churches churches the club
Speaker 1: with better chairs if you're lucky. Breaky Knuckles used to
Speaker 1: call the club the haven for the children falling from grace,
Speaker 1: so he was. He was very much aware that a
Speaker 1: lot of the gay people that came to his club
Speaker 1: were people that were grown up in the church experience
Speaker 1: but were then outcast because they were gay. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you need to get on the gospel house wave. Now
Speaker 1: come on, now, this has been a wonderful discussion. I
Speaker 1: will end on a simple question we can answer as
Speaker 1: quickly as we can. Chelsea, you'll go first. We'll end
Speaker 1: with Derek Drake and Beyonce's House influence albums that came
Speaker 1: out in good or bad, Chelsea go. I will say
Speaker 1: that I think that anytime somebody black mainstream artists taking
Speaker 1: back a black genre overall, I will say is a
Speaker 1: good thing. I think Also, they're two completely different types
Speaker 1: of house, which I think is another part of it.
Speaker 1: But um, you know Beyonce's ballroom House, Drake is more
Speaker 1: i'd say, like tropical, a little bit more UK on
Speaker 1: a piano ish but yeah, afrobeats it like it's it's
Speaker 1: a little bit different. But um, I enjoyed both both
Speaker 1: go up in the club and that's what matters to me.
Speaker 1: So um, that's what I'll say. Yeah, I agree that totally.
Speaker 1: There's just two different albums. I mean, Drake is very
Speaker 1: much as House has a cross the Black Atlantic, as
Speaker 1: I said, you know, as house has moved its way
Speaker 1: through the UK, through South Africa back up through Toronto
Speaker 1: first exactly. Really I think that's what it is and
Speaker 1: and it's you know, so it has that kind of
Speaker 1: modern feel where Beyonce I think, even when she's not
Speaker 1: making house tracks on the record, she incorporates a lot
Speaker 1: of the sort of bravado and self love and perseverance,
Speaker 1: those themes that are so um particular the house music.
Speaker 1: She really embodies those in the album. Even though you
Speaker 1: could say like break my Soul and that let the
Speaker 1: last song, the samples Kevin ab and Rene like those
Speaker 1: are the most housey songs I feel even on tracks
Speaker 1: like he did and stuff like that, you get the
Speaker 1: feeling of house and so yeah, I love that. I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's fantastic. All right, Derek, what
Speaker 1: say you? Final word? Well, uh, I I don't like it.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Two of my absolute best friends in
Speaker 1: the entire world, one of whom I started label with
Speaker 1: and one of whom I've been best friends with since
Speaker 1: I was seventeen, wrote and produced some of the things
Speaker 1: on the Beyonce album Honey, and my ex Classic Classic
Speaker 1: Music Company partner Luke Solomon. Uh did Alien Superstar and
Speaker 1: then they did that other one of the other songs
Speaker 1: as I forgot the name of it. So I give
Speaker 1: them credit for um entree into this kind of uh
Speaker 1: this this different world being present and being um seen,
Speaker 1: being in these places, presenting this music and having something
Speaker 1: to do with a large amount of shine. Honey is
Speaker 1: my is my best friends since we were you know, forever.
Speaker 1: It's great for them, I think, and it's good for
Speaker 1: a community to see black people be black people unabashedly
Speaker 1: and deal with um black producers and have a sense
Speaker 1: of this pipeline of this music. It's it's started here
Speaker 1: and it's come through I think there's a place for it. Um.
Speaker 1: I find that often it's not to my taste because
Speaker 1: it's it's created and made for someone who isn't me. Apparently,
Speaker 1: you know, it's made for someone who listens to the
Speaker 1: radio or has a uh much uh. They're incursion into
Speaker 1: music is a lighter and often, um, it doesn't come
Speaker 1: fraught with the kinds of issues and problems that I
Speaker 1: have had to go through and currently deal with regarding music.
Speaker 1: My music experience is it's heavy a lot um And
Speaker 1: so what you say, it's essentially like taking if we're
Speaker 1: gonna go back to food again as an analogy, if
Speaker 1: you cook this the home way, and you've used everything
Speaker 1: in your kitchen and it's a home cooked meal and
Speaker 1: you see a more mass produced version of it that
Speaker 1: is still flavorful and decent and does the job. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. But if you grew vegetable, then raise the animals,
Speaker 1: and then you know all these sorts of things like
Speaker 1: I grew the vegetables, I've helped to raise these animals.
Speaker 1: You know, I I feel like I have Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: a bit precious about it, but I can be a
Speaker 1: bit precious about it if I want to, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's my place in that. And I respect them,
Speaker 1: and I I am happy that you know, they're putting
Speaker 1: a little shine on things and that they're able to
Speaker 1: cast uh some of the music in a different light,
Speaker 1: particularly as you know, Retro and oh be honest, spring
Speaker 1: by House Music and Drake spring House Music. I mean
Speaker 1: the Drake album has had a large part of the
Speaker 1: production by Black Coffee, who, like you know, I've worked
Speaker 1: with DJ with we did a party here at Chicago
Speaker 1: a couple months ago. Uh. These are these are people
Speaker 1: who are in the community, So I like that they
Speaker 1: are also getting shine. It gives you a a you know,
Speaker 1: if you could see it, you can be it kind
Speaker 1: of thing that positives these people in a place that
Speaker 1: offers you know, this is something available to you too, honey.
Speaker 1: Being trans is you know, one of the absolute first
Speaker 1: trans people to ever be on like the Billboard Top ten.
Speaker 1: Uh as like you know, a producer or something like
Speaker 1: these sorts of things. So there's a place for my
Speaker 1: appreciation for it is not in a critical place. I
Speaker 1: feel like the corona of it, the corona of it
Speaker 1: is is amazing. Yeah, it's net positive for the genre.
Speaker 1: It's net positive for the people who have been tintoes
Speaker 1: down in that culture, even if it's not something that
Speaker 1: you would run with. This is a terrible analogy, but
Speaker 1: it's the way a lot of stand up comedians feel
Speaker 1: about tiktoker's and internet comedians and they going land that
Speaker 1: ain't comedic. Hey, if it's bringing asses to the seats
Speaker 1: and these people are going to comedy clubs and helping
Speaker 1: keep comedy clubs open, I see them as net positive
Speaker 1: for the genre. We could talk for years about this,
Speaker 1: but I thank you all for giving me almost an
Speaker 1: hour on this topic. Thank you all so much for
Speaker 1: going beyond the scenes with us today about house music.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you for having us nice watch The
Speaker 1: Daily Show weeknights and eleven ten Central on Comedy Central
Speaker 1: and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has
Speaker 1: been a Comedy Central podcast