Dam-Funk Fader cover story

• Felipe Delerme
• Fader
• October 06, 2009

Excerpt from a feature article & interview with Dam-Funk in Fader #64. Story by Felipe Delerme, Photos by Jason Nocito.

Riding north up Arlington Avenue toward a downtown rehearsal studio, Dam-Funk points out a dark, thin stream of smoke billowing high above the San Gabriel Mountains - a sign of what will, a week later, be declared one of the largest wildfires in Southern California history. The last time his Leimert Park neighborhood endured any type of cataclysmic fire damage was during the Rodney King riots of 1992-the point when a decade of gentrification boiled over and South Central burned. Almost two decades later, "South Central" has officially been renamed "South Los Angeles," and this particular area is rich with afrocentric boutiques and soul food restaurants, home to popular jazz den The World Stage and birthplace of Project Blowed's influential hip-hop open mic night. Dam-Funk's street is the picture of suburbia, rows of single-family homes with Spanish tile roofs and children bouncing unsupervised across well-manicured lawns. And yet for the past four years, Dam (pronounced "dame") has lived quietly among them, burying his unique prowess deep within the community that inspired it.

It's an eerily comfortable 90-plus degrees as we drive, but Dam expresses concern for the crates housing his life's treasure and their ability to withstand the inevitable warping this kind of heat brings. Back in Leimert Park, packed into a one-car garage behind his house, is a colossal record collection spanning decades of his objectively soulful musical interests, dense with early '8os funk and boogie. Also in the garage are turntables, recording equipment and vintage synthesizers, yet something is definitely missing. Three weeks ago, Dam tracked down and bought a vintage keytar, which he's since mastered. Most recently cast as visual gag in Snoop Dogg's retro-tourist "Sensual Seduction" video, the keytar is Dam's latest joy. Later in the evening, during the rehearsal for Master Blazter, the band he's recruited to blow out his entirely self-produced compositions, he fingers the instrument as he sings through a vocoder, effectively altering time and space. Behind pitch black sunglasses, under one red light bulb in the single- room practice space, he looks like he fell off the back of one of the album covers he has filed somewhere deep in his vault. Dam has become a god of funk.

Read the rest: Fader – Dam-Funk Redefines Borders

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