WRITTEN BY JEREMY BISPO – UNABRIDGED / AS YOU LIKE IT FOUNDER AND FOR·MA·TIVE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
Norma Jean Bell’s I’m The Baddest Bitch (In The Room) (Moodymann Mix) was my gateway into deep house and Detroit house music, long before I knew Bell was from Detroit, or even what “deep house” actually meant.
I first heard Moodymann’s mix on Chicago underground hero Traxx’s mixtape Unknown Musical Structures Part 1. I picked up the cassette in 1998 at Thomas Trouble’s Trance & Jungle Factory. At the time, I’d only recently warmed to house music through Stardust’s “Music Sounds Better With You.” I still considered myself a techno head. House was for someone else. Someone older. Someone with different influences.
All these years later, I can still hear Kenny Dixon Jr.’s sample of “Sweet Tears” by Roy Ayers. I can hear the saxophone lifting me out of my doldrums. I feel the warmth and the vibes of a day in the park at a Sunset Sound System event.
Isn’t it funny how a song can instantly return you to the way you felt the first time you heard it? I’m not even sure I’ve ever heard this track played at a park party, but it always brings me back to that magical moment just before dusk—when the dust from the dancers begins to hang in the air.
Recently, at the Making Time Festival in Philadelphia, I told Melvin (Traxx) that he introduced me to Kenny, and Kenny introduced me to him. He laughed and said he still has all the records from that mix, saving them for the right occasion.
AYLI was lucky to host Melvin back in 2011, very early in our run of events. He was that important to both my story and the AYLI story. His set sounded nothing like Unknown Musical Structures Part 1 or 2, but by then I wasn’t expecting that from him anymore.
Melvin introduced me to both Chicago house and Detroit house, and—just as with Jeff Mills’ Live in the Liquid Room mix CD—I was never the same again.
Every artist that came after, Doc Martin, Derrick Carter, Danilo Plessow, owes their place in my musical DNA to the first time I heard Norma Jean Bell sing, “I’m the baddest bitch in the room,” and I believed every word of it.
I’ve been honored to get to know Kenny a little over the years. He remains one of my biggest influences, and the person who introduced me to the music of my friend Marcellus Pittman.
On Sunday, March 8, Kenny and Marcellus will perform together for a very special extended five-hour set at 7th West in Oakland, CA.
I’ve been to several of Kenny’s legendary backyard BBQs during Movement Festival weekend. Now it’s our turn to give him a nod—and to give the Bay Area a taste of what’s good in Detroit.
Whatupdoe.
