Features
D-Nice on Boogie Down Productions, Launching Club Quarantine, Partying With Purpose (Pollstar Live Video)
–
D-Nice, a.k.a. Derrick Jones, is Pollstar’s well-deserving 2020 Artist Innovator and cover feature of our special Future Forward Innovation Issue. In this challenging year, his Club Quarantine hit stratospheric heights on Instagram Live drawing the likes of Oprah, The Obamas, Beyonce, Drake and President-elect Joe Biden among many others on his way to reaching 2.5 million followers and counting. But D-Nice’s pivot and runaway success wasn’t the first time he tried something new and different and found success after encountering struggles. In the three interview clips below, Jones gives detailed description of joining Boogie Down Productions and his mentor Scott La Rock, launching and building Club Quarantine and partying with purpose.
In this first clip, D-Nice, goes back to some 35 years ago to the mid-1980s when he was living with his cousin in the South Bronx and a random errand brought him to a homeless shelter. It was there, at the Franlin Men’s Shelter where he met the great DJ Scott La Rock and KRS-One of Boogie Down Productions who asked a 15-year-old D-Nice to join the group. Here, he discusses the late-Scott La Rock’s legacy, righteousness, finding fame at 15-years old and how he narrowly avoided becoming “D-Ice.”
In the next clip, D-Live explains in great detail how his tour dates dried up and Club Quarantine started and how in a matter of days its numbers blew-up from 200 to a few thousand to tens of thousands to 100,000 with A-listers jumping in and out. Also, how the great DJ Clark Kent inspired him to spin again.
In this final clip, D-Nice explains “partying with a purpose,” and doing the right for others which is the right thing for himself. This includes his work on behalf of a number of causes, including getting out the vote, raising funds for children, breast cancer research, HBCUs, The Apollo Theater and more.