NEW YORK — What started as a stay-at-home show born out of the pandemic is heading to one of the world’s premier venues.
Hip-hop veteran DJ D-Nice is ready to light up Carnegie Hall and turn it into “Club Quarantine” on Thursday — when he’ll commandeer the wheels of steel accompanied by a 28-piece orchestra for a lineup featuring rap superstars Ashanti, Jadakiss and Slick Rick, alongside Grammy-winning gospel artist Hezekiah Walker.
“I’m pretty excited about it because I know that not many people from my kind of hip hop and R&B world have played Carnegie like that,” D-Nice, whose given name is Derrick Jones, told the Daily News. “For me to be able to headline Carnegie, let me not just say play because a lot of musicians play, play Carnegie Hall but being a DJ and being able to bring my vibe to that stage is honestly probably one of the highlights of my career.”
The 52-year-old Harlem native recalled what it meant to the hip-hop community when Jay-Z first played the classical concert venue in 2012.
“I was like, man, I never imagined being on that stage,” D-Nice said. “But I always wondered what it must have felt like to do it, and now I have my chance to do so and inspire someone else.”
Days after the world went into a coronavirus lockdown in March 2020, D-Nice played a nine-hour set he broadcast on Instagram Live from his apartment in Los Angeles.
Blending the then-new idea of social distancing with the power of social media, D-Nice’s first virtual music party attracted more than 150,000 viewers — including Michelle Obama, Quincy Jones, Oprah Winfrey, Missy Elliott and Janet Jackson — during its first day. Within a week, close to 1 million people around the world were tuning into Instagram to listen to his blend of music old and new.
“Club Quarantine” elevated the profile of the already in-demand DJ.
“I’ve been in this music industry now since 1986 and to now be a 52-year-old man with 8-year-old fans and 80-year-old fans is actually beautiful,” D-Nice said. “And it’s all based on music, bringing people together.”
“Here we are 2½ years later and we’re not quarantined, but we’re still dealing with the pandemic and still trying to find our way through it, but the one thing that’s big has been the love that people have shown each other in CQ,” he added. “So, it’s not me doing this. I’m just providing a platform and a space for people to listen to some music, and communicate with their friends. And that’s also what makes CQ special.”
For his uplifting and innovative pandemic-proof effort, D-Nice was awarded Entertainer of the Year in 2021 by the NAACP.
Soon after, he decided to take the show on the road — launching the first in-person “Club Quarantine Live” at the Hollywood Bowl last year, featuring The Isley Brothers, Sheila E., Common and Erica Campbell of Mary Mary.
Fresh off the heels of headlining the 2022 Essence Festival in New Orleans, the one-night-only Carnegie Hall event is envisioned for a larger scale. He’s been working closely with Igmar Thomas and his Revive Big Band to strike the perfect chord.
“Igmar is known for just being creative when it comes to conducting,” D-Nice said of the former music director for Nas and Lauryn Hill. “We are trying to keep every song that we chose to stay pretty close to what the song originally sounds like ... but just giving it new life, with live strings and live horns on top of it.”
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