With his new EP and parties like Silk, the San Francisco DJ honors house music’s roots while looking towards its future.
DJ and event curator Malik Bey recently released his debut EP, ’SCOOBIE.’ (Courtesy of Malik Bey)
As a DJ and event curator, Malik Bey spends a lot of time thinking about the Black lineage of electronic music — house music from Chicago, techno from Detroit and Jersey club from Newark. That idea of musical influences passed down like heirlooms is at the heart of the San Francisco artist’s debut EP, SCOOBIE.
He named the project after his mom’s childhood nickname, and chopped up and reworked samples from classic house songs. “She would always just play these club songs in the house when we’re getting ready or when we were cleaning the house on Sunday,” he says. “Before it was house music, before it was club music, it was my mom’s music.”
The result is a nostalgic yet forward-thinking set of tracks that pay homage to house music’s soulful roots, with heavy, club-ready production elements that evolve it for today’s omnivorous dance floors. “I don’t want to produce in a genre,” Bey says. “I want to produce in a feeling.”
Originally from New Jersey, Bey has called the Bay Area home for almost a decade, and he’s emerged as a force in the local electronic music scene. He’s the co-founder of two popular parties, Make Room and Silk, both of which highlight Black musicians and DJs. He’s also a talent buyer at the Midway, a massive San Francisco nightclub where he’s booked major artists like Zack Fox and Skepta. He runs rootWORK!, an online radio show highlighting dance music from the African diaspora on HydeFM. And he’s opened for big-name artists including Prospa, Jayda G, Purple Disco Machine and RuPaul. Bey’s next Silk party on Dec. 5 features sets from buzzed-about New York DJs shekdash and Anastazja.
Bey’s efforts to bring Black artists to the forefront couldn’t feel more timely. With the recent death of techno originator Juan Atkins, conversations have been unfolding on social media about how Black electronic musicians routinely get sidelined even as the genres they created become global commercial forces.
“With Silk, I just saw a need to be like, hey, I think there’s a lot of Black electronic DJs who are misrepresented in the space, or like not even being represented sometimes,” Bey says. “All of my homies are just kind of like, we feel the same exact way that you feel. … Let’s essentially just make room for our ideas or push the culture forward.”
With SCOOBIE, Bey takes listeners back to house music’s roots in Chicago’s queer, Black musical underground. The album opens with “BEGINNING!,” a six-minute track that flips Chuck Roberts’ epic sermon from Rhythm Controll’s 1987 hit “My House” (“In the beginning there was Jack, and Jack had a groove. And from this groove came the groove of all grooves.”) The stuttering sample, hard bassline and eerie synth give the track a hypnotic feeling prime for transcending on the dance floor underneath the strobes.
Other samples include Funky Green Dogs’ “Fired Up,” Cajmere’s “Percolator” and “The Boss” by Diana Ross, all songs Bey’s mom used to have on heavy rotation. The big vocals give the project a church feel, embodying how the dance floor is a place of spiritual communion, and tracing house music’s roots to disco and even further back to gospel.
Silk with Anastazja, shekdash, Shino Smoke, twoseven, Ecto, Paydayloan, Malik Bey and Lefty takes place Dec. 5 at a secret location.
