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By Joshua Glazer   Photography by Phil Knott

01/02/08 :: URB 151

As a promoter, Roxy Cottontail may be the person most responsible for bringing the B'more-Philly eclectic party sound to New York City. As a DJ, she's touring the world and winning trophies. Now working to establish herself as a rapper-performer, the blonde bombshell continues to bring the girls and boys baskets full of hipster joy.

URB: You just won the Paper Nightlife award for Best DJ. You’re also an established promoter and an up-and-coming musician. Which is the most important to you?
Roxy Cottontail: I think making music is becoming more of an importance. I’ve been recording a lot, but, DJing and promoting is kind of paying my bills. So eating is nice, right now.

Eating, DJing, promoting. OK.
I do get paid for performing overseas a lot, so that’s really fun. It’s all important to me, although I’m getting a little bit tired of socializing.

Yeah, everyone expects musicians and promoters to be nice all the time.
Yeah, just with hosting parties and negotiating mostly. I love talking to fans and traveling—that’s great. But it’s more like, just clubs. I know it’s been great for me as a learning experience because I don’t know how much more fucked over you can get. Chasing money and getting double booked and the plethora of drunk people can ruin your night or week or month.

You started promoting parties first, correct?
Yeah. Promoting, booking DJs, kind of managing Hollertronix...I was just promoting them, booking them, overseeing all of that. I wouldn’t call it managing because I was way too young to even know what the hell was happening. After hanging out with so many DJs for so long, I was like, “You know what, I’m learning how to do this slowly but surely. And I have great music taste as well, so why shouldn’t I be DJing?”

That seems how a lot of people get into it now.
I did start out on vinyl. I’m not some halfway DJ, you know. I take pride in that.

And you got started in NYC?
I’m from Maryland originally, born in Silver Spring, then raised in Columbia. It’s in between Baltimore and D.C. so it’s kind of a great cultural place to grow up. I moved to New York to go to Pratt. My first-year roommate was a crackhead raver. That kind of turned me off from clubs. But my second roommate was [Motherfucker promoter] Justine D.

That sounds much better.
She’s such a positive role model; she does it sober, has such great taste and ethics, and she’s just a great business woman. So I lived with her for four years and I would promote her parties and she was kind of like, “Roxy, you’re so good at this. You’re such a natural social butterfly.” I started making a little bit of money and seeing how it worked.
     After 9-11, I moved to Philly. I started going to Hollertronix. And the party just changed everything. I think me, Naeem (Spank Rock), Plastic Little, Amanda [Blank]—it changed all of us, and it kind of lit a flame in every one of us. I was only there for 10 months but it turned out to be one of the best things to ever happen to me. Back then, Naeem wasn’t even Spank Rock. I miss those days a lot.

How would you say it compares to today?
The movement still continues. And I think that it has changed a lot, but now, it’s like everyone tries to replicate, I think, a sound that [Hollertronix] started. Flosstradamus is copying it but in a Chicago-style and it works great. It’s definitely not as new and fresh, but as long as the dances keep churning out it’ll be good.

Your weekly Monday nights, Sway, has been going for four years.
Yeah, four years. It’s been awhile.

What other parties do you do? Do you still do a ‘90s hip-hop thing?
Wednesdays at Room Service now. I try to travel on the weekends to throw shows and parties. Those are my only weekly things. But the Wednesday thing—like I’ve said before—I’m kind of getting a little bit annoyed with clubs. But Sway is one of the best clubs in New York and they’ve always been nothing but great to me.

I want to talk a little more about the music. Who have you been recording with?
I’ve been working with this dude Melo X, who is great. He started coming to my parties. I booked him to DJ. He remixed “Playmate,” the song I did with Armand Van Helden and that was really interesting. And then I asked him to make some beats for a mixtape I’m working on called Blonde Ambition. I asked him to make some beats for me and he’s killing it. And I’m working with Just Felix, and she does all house music with this electro disco funk thing going on. And then I just started working with Drop the Lime, you know him?

That dude’s crazy, I mean, musically. . .
Yeah, he’s fucking nuts. He’s on some hardcore techno, 150 BPM shit. I have to be like, “Can we try 130? Maybe 120?”

And all this music is destined for a mixtape?
It’s definitely going to be on a mixtape. The stuff Melo X is doing is really sample-heavy so it has to be on a mixtape. But the stuff that Drop the Lime and I are doing is all original. I definitely want to do a proper release with a proper label next year. But I think I have to prove myself more as an artist with the mixtape.

What’s the advantage to putting something out on a label at this point?
Labels really don’t matter because you can be an artist just by the strength of your MySpace page, which has shown me mad love. But with a label, you get that extra push from them and maybe listeners that wouldn’t normally know your stuff.

Are you going to sell your mixtapes? Or is it just a download thing?
No, no, I’ve always given away my music for free. I figure music is free nowadays so why not jump on that for a little bit. I don’t think I’m even going to sell Blonde Ambition because it’s so sample heavy that I’d probably get sued or something.

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