Honey Dijon – DJ​-​Kicks: Honey Dijon (Resident Advisor)

The legendary house DJ crafts an expertly balanced dance floor odyssey.

Honey Dijon started her career nearly 25 years ago in her hometown of Chicago. From house music’s inception, she lived and breathed the genre—and took any DJ gig she could get (even going so far as saying she would DJ out of a bathroom stall if she could on our 2023 RA Exchange). Her appetite for good music and new experiences led her to the house clubs but also new-wave clubs and white gay bars, where she’d absorb synth pop trailblazers like Depeche Mode. Nowadays, whether she’s banging out Lil Louis or delving deeply into the catalogue of Steely Dan, her encyclopaedic musical knowledge has made her one of the most prolific and recognisable DJs in the world, of any genre.

Not one to rest on her laurels, Dijon continues to impact the dance music community through both her vast musical influence and staunch social activism. As a vocal advocate for Black and trans rights, Dijon has been instrumental in decolonising house music, drawing the public’s attention back to the communities that invented it—and with style. She handed a Renaissance-era Beyoncé a queer reading list to ensure that the pop star’s album stayed true to house music’s Black and queer roots. She’s turned in authentic mixes for fashion shows (including an iconic collaboration with a purring Lady Miss Kier collab). After stints of living in New York and Berlin, she recently set up residence in London, where she deejayed from a booth fashioned into an literal pulpit with Radiant Baby Orchestra at Southbank Centre last year.

Dijon has also made a career as a respected producer, releasing two full-length albums, the most recent being 2022’s Black Girl Magic. While house music is her bread and butter, her production style is both boundary-pushing and immediately enjoyable, taking cues from contemporary R&B, techno, pop, ballroom and really anything that has contributed to the dance music landscape of the last 50 years. With these and countless other benchmarks behind her, some may think that a DJ-Kicks mix is overdue for Dijon. And yet, this jam-packed compilation arrives right on time.

DJ​-​Kicks: Honey Dijon gives us an experience crackling with the electricity of her live sets, which have taken a lifetime of experience to coalesce into perfectly balanced sonic feasts. What makes a Honey Dijon set such a joy to behold is, like some of the most astute house DJs, her ability to mesh hypnotic, ocean-deep grooves with unfettered ecstasy, all while offloading what feels like crate after crate of dusty deep cuts. Her DJ-Kicks clocks in at just under one and a half hours, but it feels like it could have easily gone for four or five more—it hits the peaks and valleys of a mammoth rave set with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker.

A historical base is the key to any Honey Dijon set, and as such, this mix begins with a steadfast tribute to the midwestern birthplace of house and techno. The mix picks up momentum with a staple of Chicago’s own, Guidance Recordings. The pulsing bass and circular synth melodies pound out a mesmerising beat on Charly Brown’s 1997 “Freaked Out,” which slowly creeps upwards like a rollercoaster ascent. From this moment on, Dijon never takes her black, patent leather heels the gas, each track bolstering the next. Johnny Dangerous’s “Dear Father in Heaven (Mr. Marvin House of Dreams Mix)” sounds directly lifted from the downward spiral of a bad trip, complete with down-pitched vocals and a driving, staccato synth that toes the line between acid house and old-school techno. Its hard edge ratchets the mix up yet another gear, and is proof that Dijon can tweak the mood almost imperceptibly towards one genre or the other while maintaining a fast grip on the mix’s overarching story.

As house music crossed over internationally in the ’90s, Dijon also moves the focus to Europe as the mix cruises into its middle portion. Hamburg-based producer Michi Lange’s “Brothers and Sisters,” which samples Heaven 17’s “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,” turns a synth pop classic into a slice of piano-tinkling beach house. “U R The Best Thing (Def Club Mix)” by D:Ream, a 1992 UK chart smash, crosses into full pop territory. Amid piano stabs of soaring female vocals, singer Peter Cunnah croons and preens like only an Irish pop star can—from a DJ with less clear intentions, it could come off as cheesy, but from Dijon, it’s a crown jewel of a track, the moment where her crowd-pleasing sensibilities and love of dance music history come together.

This mix isn’t all historical acuity, though. Another surefire harbinger of Dijon’s style is a playful sexuality that comes from asserting herself in a profession that so often overlooks Black trans pleasure. Two tracks on the first half of DJ-Kicks have the word “climb” in the title, a metaphor which reads as orgiastic. Psychedelic Research Lab’s “Keep on Climbin'” continues an exploration into acid, with gurgling synthesisers wrapped around sultry overlapping diva vocals. “Climb the Walls” throws a dollop of disco into one of the most minimal tracks on the record. Both tracks are certainly reaching towards something, which turns out to be the sustained explosion of Tedd Patterson’s remix of Buika and Kiko Navarro’s “Mama Calling.” An Afro-Latine roof-raiser, “Mama Calling”‘s punches of brass propel a drum stampede like a carnival float stomping straight through your head. Dijon uses Buika’s rich and soulful vocals to pull us in an unexpected direction, turning the mix from a somewhat heady dissection of house into a full-blown party.

Dijon’s ultimate flex, however, is her own track, “Finding My Way,” featuring British vocalist Ben Westbeech. That “Finding My Way,” with its passionate vocals, fist-pumping keys, and intricate drum patterns, sits so comfortably towards the end of this mix, is testament to Dijon’s production chops. The track sounds as much 1991 as it does 2024, and flourishes like its lilting flute breakdown set it apart from the record’s many four-to-the-floor moments. So yes, while we had to wait a while for Honey Dijon DJ-Kicks, it’s clear it couldn’t have really happened until now—when she has attained the same status as all the legends that make house music what it is today.