Hot 97 old-school DJ Mister Cee has been arrested and charged with soliciting sex from a male undercover cop in Brooklyn. According to the Daily News, Mister Cee (real name: Calvin LeBrun) was taken into custody after he solicited sex from a man who he thought was a prostitute at Madison Street and Broadway in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The 46-year-old DJ/producer, who has worked on records for Notorious B.I.G. and Big Daddy Kane, was issued a misdemeanor and released on his own recognizance. This isn’t Mister Cee’s first brush with the law. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to committing a lewd act after getting caught receiving oral sex from a man less than half his age inside a car parked on a Lower Manhattan street. Mister Cee will answer questions about what went down on Funkmaster Flex’s show on Monday.
Last week it was announced that Global Spin Awards, a new ceremony honoring DJs, will take place on November 19 in New York City. Reads a blurb on GSA’s website: “Actors have the Academy Awards…Recording Artists have the Grammy’s…And Now…DJ’s have the GSA’s!!”
Good idea, we initially thought.
GSA is the brainchild of Shawn Prez, an employee at Bad Boy Records. He told to the New York Post that “GSA is not about the hip-hop community. It’s about the DJ and their music. Award shows like these would help get awareness to what influence DJs have on social culture.”
However, looking at the list of nominees, I’m not so sure I agree with Prez’s statement not being only “about the hip-hop community” — a scan of GSA’s list of nominees clearly gives dance music DJs gets short shrift.
Out 200 nominations in 42 categories, only a handful of the DJs affiliated with electronic music are in the mix. Some of the nominations seem entirely random, such as nominating Daft Punk for Dance DJ of the Year. Aside from creating a mix for Saint Laurent’s show during Paris Fashion Week last week, the reclusive French duo rarely DJ and haven’t toured in ages.
While every publication (including BS) is guilty of typos, there are several on the list of nominations — specifically the spelling of dance music DJs Paul Van Dyk, Armin van Buuren and deadmau5 — on GSA’s site. My guess is that they are likely the result of the organization’s unfamiliarity with EDM (we’ll table our issues with the list of nominees for another day):
While Global Spin Awards promise musical diversity it’s also interesting to note that only hip-hop DJs — Funkmaster Flex, Kid Capri, Sway Calloway, Clinton Sparks and legendary DJ/producer Marley Marl — were present at the kickoff press conference. Big Shot didn’t receive an invitation to cover the press conference, and judging by the dearth of coverage on EDM sites we’re going to assume invites weren’t extended much beyond hip-hop press.
Honoring DJs is unquestionably commendable, but saying you’re paying homage to all DJs is quite another.
In the future, let’s hope the organizers cast as wide a musical net as possible and solicit help when paying tribute to DJs beyond their own personal comfort zone. After all, we all get by with a little help from our friends.
DJs regularly take to Twitter to express their feelings — to promote an upcoming release or show, vent or share thoughts or be a little silly with their followers. With Forbes (a business new and financial publication that’s become obsessed with DJ culture) recently publishing its list of highest-paid DJs (see below), we thought Twitter would be awash with commentary — both positive, negative and indifferent — from DJs.
Well, we scoured Twitter looking for opinions on the aforementioned topic and came up empty.
Aside from a congratulatory tweet from Dillon Francis and retweets of the article by Addison Groove and Funkmaster Flex, even the most opinionated jocks were silent on Forbes‘ list. Even more curious was that not one DJ had a word to say about DJ Pauly D of MTV’s Jersey Shore fame earning an estimated $11 million.
Perhaps the old proverb is true after all: when money speaks, the truth is silent.
Forbes’ List of Top-Paid DJs
1. Tiësto: $22 million
2. Skrillex: $15 million
3. Swedish House Mafia: $14 million
4. David Guetta: $13.5 million
5. Steve Aoki: $12 million
6. Deadmau5: $11.5 million
7. DJ Pauly D: $11 million
8. Kaskade: $10 million
9. Afrojack: $9 million
10. Avicii: $7 million
