Imagine yourself, a rainbow…

Honey Dijon opens her momentous DJ-Kicks mix with this invitation, a mantra challenging the listener to release the present, what is, and to imagine. DJ-Kicks: Honey Dijon is an ode to the thumping dancefloors of the past, present, and future. Dancefloors have the power to unlock our most intimate, erotic, and embodied selves. These sacred spaces offer reprieve from the violence of the here and now, and Honey sees her role as the DJ akin to being “a facilitator of spirit through sound.” 

Dijon came of age in the southside of Chicago in the 70s, alongside house music itself. She credits her parents for giving her an early music education in the conscious music of the post-civil rights era (think Stevie Wonder, Donna Summer, Earth, Wind & Fire). However, it was not until she started sneaking into iconic clubs like Music Box and C.O.D’.s as a teenager, under her parents’ condition she keep good grades, that Honey was captured by the raw power of house music and began her journey to undoubtedly becoming one of the house music greats. 

Dijon is also an incredibly talented producer, having released two of her own albums Black Girl Magic (2022) and The Best of Both Worlds (2017) before being awarded a Grammy for her production on Beyonce’s Renaissance (2022). She bridges these two roles as naturally as she bridges the fashion and nightlife worlds, or the mainstream and underground. This versatility is expertly put on display in DJ-Kicks, where Dijon gives us a mix that is fit for commercial release or a sweaty warehouse on an early Sunday morning.

DJ-Kicks is Dijon’s first commercially released mix, coming at what may seem like the zenith of her career. Honey is an archivist as much as she is a music fanatic, and this mix displays her deep understanding of house music history as well as the contemporary. “I’m a huge fan of research. So putting this compilation together was basically going into my dancefloor experience and finding gems I wanted to present to people that they may not have been familiar with or that they didn’t even know existed,” she shares. Her selections span from Chicago classics like The Dance King’s “Climb the Walls” to acid tinged Keep on Climbing from the Netherlands’ Psychedelic Research Lab. More contemporary releases from Detroit’s Waajeed an unreleased track by Dijon herself hold their own and have a great synergy with the more deep cuts from the 90s, a testament to Dijon’s ability to weave together soul and groove, two elements of Black music that are indispensable yet practically impossible to define or mimic.