Honey Dijon

Honey ‘Fucking’ Dijon is a survivor. As a Black Trans female artist, she’s fought hard for acceptance. And to this day she continues to fight for the Black and Queer roots of house music to be celebrated. Her new album, ‘Black Girl Magic’ encapsulates all of this. But most importantly, it’s about love. Because, as she tells Tracy Kawalik: “The one thing you can’t kill is love”…

“I consider myself a professional athlete because there’s no way that I could do my job to the best of my ability if I wasn’t taking care of ‘the machine.’ I call it ‘the machine.’ It’s me, my physical being, and I have to make sure it is buffed, shined and in working order to do what I do. I like to show up and give 100%. I don’t just stand there and put records on like I do at home. I come from a school of DJing which is very physical and emotional. I like to connect with the dancefloor. When I end a set, it’s like I’ve had sex 50 times in two hours!”

From day one, Honey Dijon has been operating at maximal levels. As a DJ, she’s reached stratospheric fame while producing records and remixes for upper echelon stars like Beyoncé. She’s played a staggering list of pulse-racing sets, festival slots, and headline gigs from Glastonbury, Coachella, and DC10 to Berghain, Smartbar in Chicago and KOKO, and her influence grows with every show. All while keeping her focus locked on her mission to spread love as a multihyphenated creative, Transgender spokesperson and bring the dancefloor back to its radical roots.

When we speak, she’s gearing up for a move to London this autumn and working with the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat for her fashion line with COMME des GARÇONS: Honey Fucking Dijon. She’s proudly beaming about an upcoming four-day party she’s throwing during Paris Fashion Week at Badaboum called ‘Baum!’ followed by another in Amsterdam called Back 2 Black. She’s also curating a monthly residency at Berlin’s Panorama Bar called Jack Your Body featuring heritage artists and up and coming legends.

“I’ve always been one of these people who thought: ‘It’s better to have your name above the door than on the flyer.’ What I’ve always tried to do across my career is be a role model for female-identifying POC to own the narrative instead of letting someone else decide their worth. So, with my parties, I bring up-and-coming talent, more women, more POC and Queer people so that we can do that. Back 2 Black is about celebrating the roots of house music and being inclusive of everyone. I don’t think that when you’re celebrating one thing, you’re excluding the other. With house music, it didn’t matter what colour or gender or what sexuality you were. It was about the music. But I also want to make sure that people of colour are recognised as being the forebearers of this culture that so many of us around the world enjoy.”

Honey Redmond, aka Honey Dijon, was born in Chicago, raised on a diet of the Isley Brothers, Patrice Rushen, Phyliss Hyman, Shalamar, Donna Summer, George Benson, Marvin Gaye and a wealth of Black music thanks to her parents’ record collection. “Like every middle-class African American family, music was non-stop,” she says. “There was music when we went to the grocery store, music when we cleaned the house, family parties, picnics, BBQs; everything was music.”

She became the in-demand selector at her parents’ basement parties, unaware of what the future would hold. “They’d let me play records for an hour before my bedtime. I loved the vibration of sharing music with other people. It was instant gratification and an energy transfer that was so immediate.”

At the same time, her love affair with music was growing; she was also pouring over magazines and discovering fashion at her uncle’s tailor shop.

“Music and fashion have been integral to my development as a human being since I was a kid. I was just born to do what I do, and I say that with humility. I don’t say that with arrogance. It was just my path. A passion turned into a hobby, a hobby turned into a craft, and that craft turned into a career.”

At 13, Dijon got her hands on a fake ID without her parents knowing and started carving out a name for herself on the underground club scene. She cut her teeth and came to age during the birth of house music on the south side of Chicago as the genre was rising to a fever pitch. “When I started going to clubs, it was literally Black and Latin Queer culture and very underground,” she recalls, lighting up. “It was the beginning of a subculture. It was a cultural movement. That first memory of stepping inside was like a spiritual awakening. My world expanded. It was the feeling of excitement, fear, ecstasy, joy and freedom. It was pulseracing, thrilling. My love of fashion came from seeing how kids used to dress to go clubbing. Clothing was used as a language to tell people what music you listened to, what club you went to, and what record store you shopped at. You found your tribe through the clothes and the club scene, and I’d found mine.”

She became a club dancer, amassed a diverse collection of records and musical influences from new wave, acid house, Detroit techno and beyond; and formed a longlasting friendship with Derrick Carter, who became a mentor.

“I didn’t DJ in Chicago! Are you kidding?! My best friend was Derrick Carter! I grew up in the second wave of house music with some of the best there were ever to do it. I was around the DJ Sneaks, Green Velvets and Mark Farinas. I would try and play, and Derrick would say: ‘Get off my turntable. You sound horrible.’ When you have one of the best DJs in the world telling you that you sound like shit, you think: ‘Well, ok, I guess I can’t do this.’

Dijon made the jump to New York in the 90s, during the heyday of tastemakers Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, who diversified the genre. Not long after, she was introduced to Danny Tenaglia and independent dance label Maxi Records and found the courage to bless the decks.

Dijon remembers the difference between the two cities: “I wasn’t hearing music like it was presented in Chicago. It was borderless in Chicago. In my experience clubbing, you’d hear new wave with early acid and jack tracks, booty house, and disco loops. When I moved to New York, suddenly it was like you went to this club to hear ‘tribal house’, you went to this club to hear ‘deep house’, you went to this club to hear ‘vocal house’. I thought, well, that’s not how I like to hear music over the course of my night, so I just started DJing out of necessity.”

At the beginning, she turned to Chi-town house legends for guidance. “I used to have apartment parties in Chicago, and you couldn’t come to the party unless you brought something,” she laughs. “Derrick, Mark Farina and other heavy-hitters on the house scene would always bring mixtapes. I kept all those mixtapes, and when I started DJing in New York, I studied them with forensic attention.”

Dijon was making a name for herself, gaining traction in the New York scene, and transitioning simultaneously. While she was stepping into her power and the most authentic version of herself, her unique look and inability to be defined presented a series of obstacles.

“At that time, there was no visibility for Trans people, and the only places I could DJ were in gay clubs. But I wasn’t playing pop remixes. I was a house DJ. That’s where I come from. So, I wasn’t playing commercial enough music for the gay clubs, and straight promoters wouldn’t book me because they thought I was too commercial. It was really hard. From my upbringing, I always played genres across the board. Now that’s celebrated. But back then, it didn’t work like that. They wanted you to stay in your lane. If you’re a techno DJ, then you played techno all night. If you were a house DJ, then you played house all night. I never was that. “

She continued to hone her skills, clocked underground clout and eventually diversified her skills by teaching herself how to produce from her bedroom with a cracked version of Ableton.

On her come-up, she reflects: “I had to create my own space. And this is no disrespect to any other artist, everyone has their lane, but I was never this pretty thing that you could market or some blokey person that you could fit into anyone’s agenda. I remember a meeting with my manager before I met my current one, where they told me: ‘We don’t “I’m so happy that I never really took in other people’s limitations and instead just continued to persevere and do things my particular way. I felt like I’d already heard no a bunch of times, so I had nothing to lose. I can’t be put in a box. I’ve never been able to. There are no labels for me.”

know what to do with you. You’re better off doing your own thing!’ Looking back, all the things that made people tell me no are the things that make me who I am. I’m so happy that I never really took in other people’s limitations and instead just continued to persevere and do things my particular way. I felt like I’d already heard no a bunch of times, so I had nothing to lose. I can’t be put in a box. I’ve never been able to. There are no labels for me.”

Dijon kicked down plenty of doors so the new generation wouldn’t have to. By 2017, she released her debut album, ‘The Best of Both Worlds’ and had become a vocal advocate for Trans rights and awareness, speaking from her experience as a Black Trans woman DJ in dance music on television and at the MoMA PS1 museum in New York.

“Sometimes people don’t realise that no is the best lesson you can have. Because no one knew what to do with me, I had to make it happen for myself. I don’t rest on my laurels. I don’t think I’ve made it. I think I can still grow as an artist. The more I DJ, the more I make music. I think I get better at it. I still have a lot to learn. It’s not like it’s a destination, and I’ve arrived. This is a continuous journey.”

Her forthcoming second album, the cosmic masterpiece, ‘Black Girl Magic’, is a 15-track lesson in energy, attitude, healing, protest, community and most of all, a love letter from one dancer to another.

Having been a professional club dancer myself at the same age as Honey, the freedom of expression, sharp accents begging for hair whips, hip twists and wrist flicks or lava-like basslines, jazz and vocal breakdowns and sassy spoken word across the album strike a chord.

“I still approach my DJing from the point of view of the dancefloor. I instinctively know where to go with the music. I know where to take it up and take it down. I know how thrilling that tension and release feels because, thankfully, I spent so many years clubbing. Dancefloors can unify people in a way that governments and religions can’t, and I stand by that shit 100%.”

On ‘Black Girl Magic’, she showcases her magnetism with collaborators of the highest order enlisting artists such as Channel Tres, Eve, Pabllo Vittar, Josh Caffé, Mike Dunn, and Dope Earth Alien. Shining a spotlight on a new generation of Queer people and people of colour to “keep this culture in the conversation” was one of the driving forces of ‘Black Girl

Magic’, alongside paying homage to her sonic lineage and how she first experienced the music of her hometown.

“We started writing the album in early 2019,” she explains. “But after 2020, the pandemic, then we had Black Lives movement, then Trump. The concept, the artists I worked with, and the meaning of the record took on a more personal angle. This album was created during a time when love was needed more than ever. So, this ‘Black Girl Magic’ is about love, self-acceptance and sexual freedom. They are still trying to take away everything in the world that makes it beautiful. But the one thing you can’t kill is love.”

As a producer in 2022, Honey Dijon has aligned herself with some of the strongest female artists of our time, including Lady Gaga, Neneh Cherry, Madonna and Beyoncé. She produced and co-wrote two records for Beyoncé’s charttopping ‘Renaissance’ and remixed lead single ‘Break My Soul’, all acting as a sonic masterclass in the history of dance music culture and an unapologetic celebration of Blackness.

“I got to put so much of myself into it. It’s a really deep record. I mean, she knocked it out of the park. Working with Beyoncé… she’s from another planet.“

Possessing otherworldly gifts herself, when asked what her proudest achievement is, she answers candidly: “Survival. I think the fact that I’m still here as a Trans woman of colour, that I didn’t get murdered or had to sell drugs or do survival sex work. That I can still get up every day and make a living from my craft. Not many people can make a living off their passions and what they love, and I’m lucky that I get to do that. So, I think my biggest achievement is just still being here.”

It’s a hard truth to hear and even worse to conceive that the reality of being a Trans woman of colour in 2022 still comes with a handful of demons and a plethora of toxicity. “The most personal song for me off the album is ‘It’s Quiet Now’. Every time I play it, I get super emotional. Luke Solomon wrote the lyrics of that song for me because of the pain I’ve endured trying to date as a Trans woman of colour. And the amount of shame and fear, toxicity and secrecy that you deal with. It’s about all the toxic relationships I was in and finding the tools to navigate out of that. It’s about knowing when to leave the table when love is no longer being served.”

One swipe through Dijon’s Instagram, and you’ll see her empowering trademark hashtag ‘Be the Thing That You Wish to See,’ advocating self-acceptance and the importance of not giving a fuck what others think. So how would she define that to the next generation of creatives following in her footsteps?

“Stop looking outside of yourself for validation because everything that you need is on the inside. You don’t need anyone else’s approval for your existence. We’re always told to look outside ourselves for validation, be that beauty, money, power, status, fame, or love. At the end of the day, you can have all the money to run away from things, but you’re still going to find yourself. People fall out of love, people change their fucking minds, and who are you if that happens. At the end of the day, you have to like yourself more than anyone else can like you.”

As the interview comes to an end, Honey excitedly talks about taking pottery classes when she gets to London, going to vegan cooking school, and learning silkscreen. She reels off the records she currently has on rotation which range from Eurythmics to Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac to Kendrick Lamar.

“When you do anything as a cultural person, you have to live life,” she concludes. “You can’t do it from an ivory tower. You have to walk the walk. I love being out in the world, experiencing different cultures, listening to different music, watching how people walk, talk, and move. I’m so honoured to work with artists that I love. You asked me earlier what I thought my biggest success was, and I said survival. Well, I always remember telling myself I just want to wake up every day and create. It’s the process that thrills me. The main thing I’m looking forward to in the future is the next album I’ve already started working on. As for the message I want to send, ‘Black Girl Magic’ holds a lot of inspiring, uplifting messages from powerful icons, but mine is that I’m a proponent of joy. When you hear my music, dance, fuck, party, drink, jump on your Peloton like I do, whatever. If I can make someone have a little bit of joy from my music, then I’ve done my job.” 42_DISCO_POGO