Friends of The Rub – DJ Neil Armstrong and Rich Medina

For Summer of The Rub, and the first celebration of our ten year anniversary, we reached out to a couple of our oldest DJ friends, who should need no introduction for most die-hard Rub fans, but flattery will get you everywhere, so:

We’ve been a fan of Neil Armstrong since the late 90s, when we would go see his Fifth Platoon crew killing it at DJ battles, and he and I worked together at a now defunct hip-hop website and got to be friends. Neil’s themed “Originals” mixes took crate digging out of the Ken Sport era of “play 4 bars each of as many obscure soundtrack and library records sampled by the Beatnuts because that’s the only good part of the song” nerdism and into a much more fun composition / skills-based / narrative format. Edutainment, as the venerable Blastmaster puts it. His mixes and lives shows have been hugely popular in a lot of the same venues as The Rub’s. He and I played the Do-Over in LA together last year, and he and Eleven have done a number of shows together, but this is the first time we’ll all be playing together at an official Rub party, and I can’t wait to see and hear what he does. Oh yeah, and he was also Jay-Z’s DJ for a couple of years – so there’s that! In fact, his DNA of the Blueprint mixtape is a must-have for any fan of Jay-Z.

Rich Medina is another guy who has been at the very top of our scene since the late nineties, and similarly his crate-digging pedigree is world-class. Rich’s mission has always been to find funky music and bring it to the dancefloor. He is credited with popularizing Afro-beat in 2001 and has thrown legendary parties over the years at APT and Santos alongside Bobbito, DJ Language and Q-Tip. Most recently, Rich became the newest member of the Advisory Board for the Cornell Hip-Hop Collection, a very esteemed honor. Rich has played with The Rub on New Year’s Eve and at our holiday warehouse parties, and we couldn’t think of a better person to rock with outdoors on a hot summer day. Make sure you check his site and cop a mix or two to get you through the dog days of summer. His mix at APT in 2009 is one of our personal favorites, but his work on the “Afro Beatles” projects from a few years back is one of the cooler projects you’ll come across.

Be sure to check them both out tomorrow:

Dekalb Market
138 Willoughby St (@Flatbush Ave)
4pm-10pm
FREE
ALL AGES