When Mark Ronson started writing His debut memoir for a few years, he roughly underestimated commitment. “It ate my life,” he says Amount By “Night People: How to Be DJ in the 90’s New York City”, an electric reminder of its days as a DJ at NYC’s club playground. “I have rejected production plays to the left and right and whatever it is, but I am proud of it in the way it is as good as I could have done it with my whatever, my writing talents.”
Ronson may play Coy – at 50 years he is remarkably humble for someone who is halfway to an ego and performs at Super Bowl – but “night people” explains why. Before producing canonical records with Bruno Mars and Amy Winehouse, he had humble beginning as a teenager who discovered the art of deejaying, wrapping discs in cabins over the city and building his name one club show at a time. “Night People” is written with a sense of clarity and above all appreciation for the pedigree in his musical career, a plan for the records that he would inevitably produce and the dynamic impact he would leave on pop culture.
Currently, Ronson in the campaign Blit for “Night People”, September 16, is via Grand Central. He originally thought to release a single to coincide with the book drop and created an album powered by samples and flips of discs from the 90s. But in the end he doubled “night people”, a reading that makes you nostalgic for a time you may never have experienced.
Below, Ronson breaks a handful of the 245 songs called in the book which was the key to his creation.
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Redman, ‘Time 4 Sumansion’
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Redman’s record was an absolute monstrous record at that time in New York. Even how it sounded was just so heavy. It was just a monster. And so when I went to the record store and got my turntables I had money to buy four 12-inch. And it was one of the ones I got.
After a month of trying to teach myself at home, I found a child who used to go to my school, an older child who came over and learned how to DJ. He was like, no, you have to have two copies of the same record. This is how you exercise to scrape and go back and forth. And it’s amazing that I was so green that I didn’t even think about it myself. And then I went back and bought a second copy of “Time 4 Sumaksion.” It was the first record I learned to mark two copies and do doubles and that kind of things.
Funny enough, as much as I love that record, there are other records by Redman like “Can’t Wait” and “Da Rockwilder” that I really love more and play recurring. But “Time 4 Sumaksion” is just something that I always just resemble my first trip to the record store.
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From soul, ‘ur
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I had done some demonstrations in my home studio that had a Mackie 8 channel mixer, which is not even a home mixer. It’s like something you would have in a fucking blues bar to mix the band and a little digital eight track on my MPC. And this guy, Ian from Tommy Boy, came to the clubs. I got all my first production gigs because I was in the clubs where people wanted to hang out and were like, oh, let’s ask the child playing the cool parties if he strikes. And he offered me, “You want to remix the next de la single?” And I was just like, my God, I can’t believe it.
I had this loop of this group, Lowrell, which I thought would sound cool and it worked. And then he asked me who I wanted to mix it. I didn’t know anything about mixing engineers, hardly knew what they were doing. I just picked up a Wu-Tang record and on the back it said “Mixed by Carlos Best” and I was like, I should get the guy who did Wu-Tang and did not think that as much as I love Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang sound is absolutely nothing like my own production.
So it came back and sounds all the raw and fucking wu-tang and it was simply not really for the song. I know the remix definitely never came out and I don’t even know if De la Soul even knew I did, but it was a good lesson too because I had it to sound better in my house.
I wish I (still had the remix). It is probably on a DAT band that is at the bottom of the East River. I’m angry that I didn’t hang on to any of the old demonstrations and things. When you move all these apartments so many times you just become like lost socks in the laundry, do you know?
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Bobby Caldwell, “What you won’t do for love”
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It was one of the songs I never heard grow up. I’m sure there was something that was on R&B radio if you grew up in America or something. But some of the records that I remember heard at 18 or 19 and although it is a slow jam and it is such a beautiful song as you can claim is a little soft, I was just so taken with it. And it’s so strange that you ask me for right now my two and a half year old daughter is also obsessed with it. And you know, she knows Joni Mitchell and Chappell Roan, but to hear a two and a half year old little girl say: “Play Bobby Caldwell” … My friends have been over when she said it and they are like, did your damn daughter just Bobby Caldwell said? As if she has obviously been touched by this song as well.
It was an example of one of these discs that you play at the beginning of the night when doors open, because you just have to like to clear your soul and get ready for the night ahead, or it is the song you play at the end of the night when people have the last slow dance.
I haven’t played it so much anymore because I’m a spoiled fucking DJ and I rarely play the end of the night anymore. Part of the fun with Deejaying since I quit the book is that I have gone out and played three, four hours sets and played from doors to doors. But I haven’t and I need to start reworking that song.
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‘All About The Benjamins’ / ‘Back in Black’
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(I debuted this mix on) Cheetah on a Monday night, after maybe tunnel Mecca with Funkmaster Flex on Sunday. Cheetah Monday was probably the biggest, coolest hip hop party in New York at that time. It was like Janet Jackson, Missy (Elliott), Mike Tyson, you are called it. Everyone came there and it was this fantastic audience.
It was really my friend Jules’ gig, but when he would disappear, he would let me play. And I heard AC/DC’s “Back in Black” one night in this second place called Spy Bar where they just played rock and roll and it was super ultra VIP. It was like fucking Leo and Trump and Mariah party in there. And I remember just thinking, God, this record is just so heavy and crazy and looking at all these people loses their senses, probably drunk and cooked to the gills, but just like getting crazy to listen to this song. I was like, I wonder if I could play this at Cheetah. And it almost became like an OCD type obsession. It was really crazy because I was still on my way up. To do something that I could have fallen on my face so much at that point in my career would really have hurt my position in New York.
But I developed this mix of playing “Benjamins” in the Biggie verse, (and then) switching to this rap metal version of “benjamins” that I did not really love, but it was Biggie’s verse with guitars. I knew people would continue to dance, and then right at the hit, (to go into “Back in black”) worked. And it was this wonderful moment because the audience went completely for it. Obviously it was gratifying because it was a big swing. And then after that I started to become much more experimental with my DJ sets and it paid off because it carved me this lane that made me a little different than everyone else did.
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The infamous large, ‘hypnotize’
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There are a lot (of Biggie songs to choose) because “Hypnotize”, which came out just a few weeks before he left, is bitter cute because it was obviously two weeks to play it where it was tragedy-free, do you know? It is just such a stonker. It was the 112 remix, “Only You”, which was just such a fucking club clamp at that time. Now, for me, I love to play “party and bullshit” and “incredible.”
It’s crazy to think that I was in a room playing music where Biggie stood and as I said in the book I don’t even know if he knew my name. I don’t care. He just came and he was partying while I was deejaying and it was enough.
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Jay-Z, ‘Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)’
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Jay-Z had New York on fire all the time. Something with “Hard Knock Life” when it dropped was just so crazy because it was slow and then it was just so off the wall with the “Annie” test that the brilliant brand The 45 king turned.
I remember when that song was played and everyone would sing along and it’s so loud, everyone’s voice is like sparkling off-key in the club. But that record really came ’98 at the time the club I played on Friday, life, was on its ultimate top. Jay-Z and Damon Dash were there most Friday nights and to see as Jay published at his table basically monitored the room, and then all these people were clinging to try to be somewhere near him and screaming this song at the top of their lungs was, you could have filmed the music video like any of these nights.
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Nikka Costa, “as a feather”
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Nikka, again, an example of getting a production game because of my DJ sets. Dominique Trenier, who had the label signed with Nikka and D’Angelo, came up and was like, “I got this white bride and I don’t know how the album would sound, but I want it to sound like your DJ sets: AC/DC, EPMD, Chaka Khan, Biggie.” And I was, good, bring her off the crib.
When we started that record I was a little beginner on the production and Nikka was very patience and we found the sound together, but she probably had to deal with some rough -sounding demonstrations. And when we finally made that record, it was really a bit of an accident. Nikka had come back from a flea market or something and she was like, I got a record today and chucked it against me. So I did what I always do, listened quickly through every thing until I found some notes that I hacked it and played it for her.
It was a mixture of all our influences, mine wanted to be DJ premiums and how the beat was hacked, and Nikka’s super soulful song and Justin (Stanley )’s fantastic baseline and even the guitars have this double track. It’s a bit Beatles but it’s also a little foreigner. As if I had some of my stepfather 70s rock influence.
Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes and these people I love came to me. They just knew me as a DJ. And they were like, you did it as the “Dun Dun Dun” thing. And I was a cool thing to suddenly be known for.
