In His 30th Anniversary Year, the Legendary DJ and Producer Turns the Tables on Himself Before Atlanta hip-hop had a megaphone, DJ NABS was the signal. From his mix show on V-103 to the launch of Hot 97.5, from Club Kaya's legendary Old Skool Sundays to the stage of the 1992 Dangerous World Tour alongside Michael Jackson and Kris Kross, NABS spent three decades as an essential architect of Southern hip-hop — spinning Southern artists on the radio before the industry acknowledged the South, moving crowds at… Read more
In the Lab 30 BLog
The ONLY DJ IN HIP-HOP TO TOUR WITH THE KING OF POP
In the spring of 1992, Arrested Development's Headliner made a phone call that set off a chain of events nobody saw coming. Manager Michael Mauldin — who was overseeing both Arrested Development and the newly exploding teen rap duo Kris Kross — needed a DJ and music director to take Kris Kross on the road with Michael Jackson's Pepsi-sponsored Dangerous World Tour. Headliner had a name: DJ NABS, a Durham, NC-born DJ he had been working alongside on the Atlanta University Center campus circuit, the same man who had already cut a turntable remix of Arrested Development's career-defining single "Tennessee." One recommendation placed a 23-year-old Southern DJ at the center of what would become a $100 million global touring operation.
she labeled the sound
In recognition of Women's History Month, NABS has something to say about the women who helped build The Lab Legacy.
Before the platinum plaques, before the industry co-signs, there was a group of women who believed in the lab before the lab had a name.
The Icey Girls were DJ NABS' first chapter — the young ladies who proved that what was being built inside those sessions and performances was real. Over forty years later, that chapter still opens the book. Women's History Month isn't a campaign here. It's a catalog. 🖤
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