What I’ve Learned From One Year of Attending Club Quarantine
D-Nice’s DJ sets have become an Instagram staple — and the source of some enduring life lessons
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On March 18, 2020, Derrick Jones set up some DJ equipment in his kitchen, went live on Instagram, and immediately began to change the world. That might feel like an exaggeration — just put it in your back pocket and we’ll revisit it later.
Jones grabbed some wine, started playing music, and just like that, the “Homeschool social distance dance party” was born. What followed was nine hours of digital festivities, virtually attended by the likes of Common, John Legend, and LL Cool J, in addition to thousands who prefer using their real names when they go to work.
When Jones picked back up that weekend, the party had gotten even bigger, with more than 100,000 fans in attendance at any given time. For this round, the list of celebrity visitors included Diddy, Steph Curry, Michelle Obama, Janet Jackson, Joe Biden, Mark Zuckerberg, and Oprah, all swinging by to check out the one-man show.
How exactly did this party get so huge? Well, Jones isn’t just a guy with a turntable and internet access — he’s D-Nice, a 30-year music industry veteran. You might remember him appearing alongside KRS-One in the rap group Boogie Down Productions (one of the all-time great names for a business venture, by the way), his part in the 1989 stop-the-violence anthem “Self Destruction,” or his 1990 solo hit “Call Me D-Nice.”
In the spring of 2020, the world reached a sort of collective cabin fever, the likes of which we’d never seen before and will hopefully never experience again. During those first terrifying moments of the Covid-19 pandemic, people also got bored all the time. The world was, safe to say, going through it. With the power of those two elements combined, D-Nice’s party (soon renamed “Club Quarantine”) was a massive success. It has continued regularly, albeit with smaller audiences, ever since.
