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DJ Nikki Beatnik
Interview & Words Phadria Prendergast
She’s promoted nightclubs with the hottest guest lists for 25 years, she’s started her own brands like ‘Mums That Rave’ and she’s spun at every kind of event you could think of from Glastonbury festival to parties for P Diddy to private parties for luxury Italian designer Giuseppe Zanotti - and that’s quite literally only to name a mere few. The only way do describe the British born DJ is legendary. Beatnik is also Kelis’s tour DJ who she also has a 20-year long friendship with. We sat down and had a transparent conversation about her 3 decade long journey and the effects the pandemic has had on the industry.
DJ NIKKI BEATNIK HAS BEEN DJing ever since she was 15 years old and was playing records on her grandfather’s record player at just four years old. By the time she was 6, she could play the piano and the guitar. At 7, she was scouted for music school and given a scholarship which she would attend every weekend which really started begun her path. At 11, she already had a specific music taste and would listen to Alexander O’Neal and Luther Vandross which developed into a love for Hip-Hop and House music. We laugh as she recalls sneaking out to go raving and jumping into random people’s cars who couldn’t even really drive. She reminisced on how she would watch DJs control the crowd and would wonder why there were no women. “I just remember thinking, this is what I really wanna do.” She saved up for what she describes as “the crappiest belt-drive” that she could afford, her father had built her speakers, she got a mixer and taught herself how to DJ.
Beatnik was 17 years old the first time she played in a club. A local DJ in St Albans was surprised that she knew all the lyrics to every song and asked her to open for him the following week. She has seen everything from the end of illegal raves to the current age of online steaming. “There were hardly any of us back then,” she states - referring to DJs who are women. There was usually only one token female DJ on the line up. “But now, there’s a lot of visibility for women in music,” she continues. Beatnik who is very vocal about not liking the label ‘female DJ’, also produces and would love to see other female producers on the rise. “We’ve got work to do there still.”
DJ’s create the culture. They’re on the frontline - club based DJs especially, so with all that has happened this year and the many changes and restrictions that have now come as a result of the pandemic, Beatnik has never seen a time before now where it wasn’t possible to hustle within the industry. She believes that the DJs that are under management and signed to record labels will be fine - the ones that brands know about anyway. However, the ones who have and will be the most affected are the “new kids” coming up as Beatnik calls them. The ones that are trying out different records in the clubs, making their own tunes and playing them. “Everything that Britain has come up with creatively, a lot of it started in clubs and a lot of it is driven by DJs. I feel like at the moment, we’ve got no help. We don’t really fall under the musicians union. So there’s all these different issues and things we have had to deal with.” DJs are very much entrepreneurs but they usually tend to fall under the radar in terms of respect levels and are disregarded help wise. Whilst the Recording Academy which is an American not-for-profit that stands for music makers and professionals and is well-known for the Grammys Beatnik has recognised DJs and their need for help, Beatnik stresses on the lack of any funding available for DJs within the UK. “So yeah, there’s massive changes all the time and I feel like DJs are probably better equipped to deal with this than most people because we are hustlers and entrepreneurs.
There’s no set route or path for DJs. Even for Beatnik when she started out, she knew that she was only ever as good as her last gig. “We have that mentality to keep changing and reinventing ourselves and coming up with new things, but how can you hustle and work when the whole industry is on its knees?”
For Beatnik, she has truly worked her way up in the industry so whatever came with it - the big names and countless celebrities, didn’t phase her because she knew she deserved to be where she was. “Even back then, it was very male-dominated. To go into a record shop and actually even get served sometimes was a challenge because it was like ‘boys club’, you know.” She started off promoting parties and raves whilst at university which then led to hosting her very own raves and day parties. She had always been quite entrepreneurial. From her own faves and day parties, she worked her way into spinning at clubs in London with other female friends. “When no one else was really giving girls a chance, we were female DJs, female promoters, female door staff - just all women running clubs.” It was at this point that the celebrities and big hip hop stars started to come for Beatnik, which became ordinary for the young DJ at the time. “Back then, it wasn’t about camera phones, it was more about vibe, so we definitely thought our friends were a lot cooler than a lot of these people that were coming to our parties,” she laughed.
Beatnik recalls her very first big party being Lauren Hill’s album launch party. “I can’t exactly remember because I forget a lot of this but I was consistent. I was running parties and DJing maybe five nights a week. I was also doing a full-time job at Ministry of Sound, so I had a lot of contacts and a lot of fingers in pies. To me, I had already grafted almost a decade to get to that point where I was in demand.” “I didn’t ever feel like I was overwhelmed because I’d already done so much work to get there and that’s the thing, if you don’t your hours of practise before you even step into the club, you should feel like you’re worthy to be there. So, I never really felt intimidated, to be honest,” she admits.
The way Beatnik viewed it all was that, she made music and they made music and for her, popularity didn’t equate to talent. “If you’re really grounded and you know what you’re good at, you look at the other person as an equal.”
Before Covid, over 50 percent of clubs had already closed in the last decade. Post-Covid, the question on the British DJ’s lips is, where are bands that are coming up going to learn their craft? Some of the best DJs she knows aren’t signed or have agents. “You can go on Instagram and YouTube and say you’re a DJ and maybe do a few gigs but how are you actually improving your skills? That comes from doing non-stop club gigs and having to come up against people that think you suck or you can see the reaction of the crowd. You can know that mix was terrible because they didn’t react to that. All that experience that comes through clubs is going to be lost.” Shoreditch, London was an area Beatnik deemed as one of the places to be 10-15 years ago but has since then, been gentrified taking with it many clubs and event spaces. “Where are people really honing their skills,” she asks, not believing that social media platforms like Instagram can really do that. “YouTube is great for showpieces and scratch videos but if we’re losing clubs, we’re going to have to admit that we will have to rethink this whole industry.”
Beatnik also doesn’t believe that the record labels are playing fair. “The bots will take you down if you are playing certain records that are published through certain record companies, but really, DJs are pushing your music out there. So why not give us the respect? We are helping those artists and new new artists that are coming through. We play things that music channels and radio stations wouldn’t play.”
Between March and September, she has had around 70 gigs with Kelis cancelled which doesn’t include her own gigs, events and parties that PR companies wanted her to host. For Beatnik, it’s confusing that we are being pushed to go back to work but aren’t able to be in a bar or club past a certain amount of people.
Beatnik believes that with social media, an opportunity has presented itself there to grow a following for the next generation of DJs and producers. She advises that they are always keeping an eye on what’s next and cultivate as many relationships within the industry as possible.