The Black Madonna Brings Her Message of a Better World to Club Space With Honey Dijon

Fifteen years ago, Marea Stamper and Honey Redmond were just two DJs hustling to hone their reputations and getting in Kentucky bar brawls for standing up for their beliefs.

But today, thousands of dance music fans have grown accustomed to screaming their new names — the Black Madonna and Honey Dijon — in packed clubs and fields around the world. They are among the most beloved and well-respected DJ/producers presently working and often receive top billing on festival and event lineups.

“The very first time that Honey and I played together, we didn't know each other back then... [We] might have exchanged a few words that night,” Stamper tells New Times by phone from her former home base of Chicago, where she’s visiting for a brief pause from the madness of nonstop touring. “To make a very long story short, my ex and I were stopping — there's really no other way to say this — a hate crime against someone who was a gay guy, or a guy that was perceived to be gay.”

Underworld's Karl Hyde on Moving Beyond Trance and "Getting Off" at Ultra

There's a 2007 episode of the BBC Two program The Culture Show that closes with Underworld performing its seminal 1996 hit, "Born Slippy .NUXX" in an anonymous English field. While his longtime creative partner Rick Smith and Underworld touring member Darren Price fiddle away at the monolithic mixing board in front of them, band frontman and lyricist Karl Hyde writhes in tight-fitting jeans and a tee better suited for a lanky, angst-ridden teenager than a 50-year-old Englishman. With the song and show winding to their inevitable conclusion, Hyde begins prancing about, hopping over a dalmatian and rattling off a series of non sequiturs: "We live in a field! We come from Essex! I wasn't always like this, you know!"

The Tao of Lee "Scratch" Perry

To call Lee “Scratch” Perry a mad genius is to do him a disservice, because it implies we’re somewhat comparable to him. Creatively, the reggae innovator and dub creator does not occupy the same realm as the rest of us: He has pushed his sounds — and in effect, the possibilities of recorded music — so far into space that they scarcely resemble anything human. As the self-proclaimed "Upsetter," Perry has been upending the accepted boundaries for how music ought to sound for nearly five decades, having thoroughly redefined both the role of a record producer and the noises they can conjure.

As it is on record, so it is in conversation. Perry is known for having a unique way with words, and talking with him can sometimes feel like navigating a maze that’s also an ever-changing puzzle, with a blindfold on, while you’re really, really stoned. Speaking with New Times in advance of his and Subatomic Sound System’s South Florida shows at Respectable Street and the Ground this weekend, Perry touched on his consumption habits, godliness, and the eternal nature of the Upsetter, all in his inimitable style and cadence.