big daddy kane – Jason Toney

As the clock ticked to midnight, we were in Disney Concert Hall with the rest of “grown & sexy” Los Angeles losing our minds to Mike Phillips doing saxophone solos over Bone Crusher’s “Never Scared.” Nothing says you’re of a certain age like stomping the yard in one of the world’s premiere orchestral venues as a jazz saxophonist gets you hyped to a song that started fights in clubs 20 years ago.

We old, y’all. But much like Big Daddy Kane—who closed the D-Nice & Friends New Year’s Eve Club Quarantine Show and is well into his fifties—these knees still work, and we’re still out here getting the job done.

We are dancing in the aisles. We sing along loudly and off-key with Johnny Gill and Jon B. We canoodle to NEXT and Case’s hip-hop ballads. We get hyped to Greg Nice, En-Eye-Cee-Eee. We praise 90s icons in the building like Arsenio Hall, Yo-Yo, and the dearly departed DJ Clark Kent, whose turntables, kicks, and signature fitted cap were in a place of honor on stage.

I did not want to enter 2025 on my couch watching other people’s lives on our TV. Leaving 2024 behind required something tactile. I needed catharsis.

I am not so dramatic as to need to burn off the sadness, loss, and illness that were frequent in the previous year, but I longed to feel of and in the world. I wanted to feel the electricity of being alive.

I wanted to feel all the days of my big Gen X age and, instead of standing on the sidelines shaking my head, be in the thick of it shaking my ass.

We took public transportation to experience the holiday with our fellow Angelenos. We ran into Cadence of the LA Sparks Crew on the train there. I took that as a good omen. Was our favorite tumbler from our favorite team going in the same direction as we were? Yes.

As we returned home, downtown LA was filled with shiny, happy people. We got to pet dogs and laugh at kids up way past their bedtime while dodging our intoxicated neighbors as they navigated to their next destination.

Like us, I hope they all made it safely to their beds and opened their eyes this morning to a day of perfect winter weather in our fair city.

As I opened my eyes for the first time in 2025, I was immediately reminded that getting home safe and waking up is not guaranteed.

If we are so lucky as to wake up in this life, let’s face it directly.

I ain’t never scared.

At the end of a no-good, awful, terrible week of news, I was in an art museum doused in sweat. Jean Grae was preaching at the pulpit of her makeshift Church of the Infinite You in the lobby of The Broad. Ann Friedman happened upon us, and we shared hugs and hellos. I warned her I was a wet mess of perspiration. I then sat down on a bench next to the best people I know exhausted and blissed out, the tensions of the previous seven days rinsed out into my tee shirt and through to my arty button down.

I was grateful.

Early in Stretch Armstrong‘s DJ set on the EastWest Bank Plaza, he played Do Your Thing by Isaac Hayes. It’s the primary sample for the hook in Big Daddy Kane’s Smooth Operator. I turned to Tiffany and said, “Time for some Scoob and Scrap Lover moves.” She knew what to do. I assumed Stretch was going to move directly into the BDK classic, but he didn’t. Later though, he played almost the entirety of Ain’t No Half-Steppin’. Anna and I did the Kid n Play, and while we tapped feet, I felt a memory in my body.

My shoulders had released. My heart was beating vigorously in my chest. I was back in sketchy warehouses or under a freeway overpass. There was no air conditioning. Military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan had been in the news, or Dick Cheney had shot someone in the face, or California politics seemed crazy, or I had spent too much of my time arguing with racists in my blog comments and yet, here we were. Music blasting, shoulder-to-shoulder with the best-looking people in Los Angeles, and dancing through it.

I have not danced enough during the bizarro-land of the last two years. I have not shocked and delighted others with how much water can come from my pores and how well I can move. Last night, though, I remembered and I felt reborn. It wasn’t a path to forgetfulness; it was a release. We walked through the collections and found art that inevitably connected us to the news of the world at this moment but on that patch of grass, catching a rhythm to hey soul classics and iconic rap records, it was us against the world. We are still here. And we are dancing.

Let the church say, “Fuck yeah.”

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