Kimyon Huggins | Artist & Curator

DJ, artist, and curator Kimyon Huggins joins Rodney Veal to trace his journey from Dayton to New York’s underground club and gallery scene, and back home with a global vision.

Learn more about Kimyon online: https://www.futureisnowx.com

Follow Kimyon on Instagram: @kimyon333

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Kimyon Huggins, Rodney Veal, Promo, Ad

Rodney Veal  00:09

Hello, everyone. My name is Rodney Villal. I'm the host of Rodney Vills Inspired By. And today we are going to have a conversation with someone who, whose title is DJ, but I think it's he is much more than a DJ, I think he's a creative force. He was born and raised here in Dayton, Ohio, but has scaled to

Kimyon Huggins  00:27

born in Lansing, Michigan, but been in Dayton since I was 823 823

Rodney Veal  00:31

So fact verification, that's awesome, and so absolutely right. He's like transplant today in Ohio at eight, but you know, we claim you, because once you're here for a while,

Kimyon Huggins  00:47

claim y'all too, we claim each other, we claim each

Rodney Veal  00:50

other, and so what's really exciting about that is the fact that he's like I said, he's more than a DJ, and he's being, he's been bringing art and music and culture and people together as a calling and a mission, and that's who he is, and so I'm super excited, because I've gotten to know him, and I've got to, we're gonna talk about one of the events that he's bringing, he's bringing to Dayton, has brought to Dayton, and we'll continue to bring to Dayton, crossing our fingers, because not even, we're turning

Kimyon Huggins  01:16

things on, we're not just, you know, bopping in, this isn't, this is, this is more one and done, you know, this community building.

Rodney Veal  01:23

Absolutely. So I'm going to introduce you to Kimmy and Huggins. Kimmy, welcome to the podcast. Thank

Kimyon Huggins  01:29

you very much for having me, Rodney. It's a pleasure to be here to just share with the local crowd, you know, folks, what what we've been doing, what Dayton inspired me to go out and do it, and come back,

Rodney Veal  01:42

absolutely. And it's

Kimyon Huggins  01:43

here,

Rodney Veal  01:43

absolutely. What does we want that story out there? So I am always a proponent of, we don't always become the thing that we claim that we wanted to be when we're children. So I always want to go back to, like, childhood. Did you ever, in a million years, think that DJing and art would be your thing?

Kimyon Huggins  01:59

Well, like we touched on a little bit in our previous conversation, I don't really feel that it's presented as an option for artists, for people to be artists. It's not, it's like a doctor or a lawyer, an architect, a cop, a firefighter, you know, or my family's business. It's never really offered. It wasn't offered to us as kids in the 80s. I can only speak from my own experience, and like what was happening around me. No one's parents were professional artists in Dayton, Ohio.

Rodney Veal  02:32

Yeah,

Kimyon Huggins  02:33

we had them all, they're all here, but here, but like, not that wasn't my world, right? My mother, so my mom was director of civil service for the city of Dayton from 1983 to 2002 1024 I think. Wow, so she was the highest unelected official in the city government as a black woman who was brought in to get the cronyism out of the city government, and she did it, and she fought every single day with people sitting in these positions of power, but that was, that was my, you know, I did not have my father in my life, so my mother was my everything,

Rodney Veal  03:10

and so, yeah, so

Kimyon Huggins  03:12

she was, she was in the paper fighting with the mayor, fighting with the police chief, you know, doing the right thing, right, her history too, just to speak on my mother's legacy. She went to Bennett University, Bennett College in Greensboro in 63 I think, 6364 She was there, so she was getting arrested, sitting at the lunch counters, marching with Martin Luther King, and that whole scene. So she went from there to Michigan State, where she was working in minority student affairs, and then she got the job in Dayton as the director of civil service, so you know she's always been this pillar of integrity and doing what's right, and also a leader of our community in a position of power that was under attack for her whole tenure, her

Rodney Veal  04:05

whole tenure, and so

Kimyon Huggins  04:06

time, so

Rodney Veal  04:07

yeah, we, and that is, that's what we got

Kimyon Huggins  04:09

here, and that

Rodney Veal  04:10

is a, that's a solid foundation. I mean, that, that kind of prep you for seeing the world in a different lens,

Kimyon Huggins  04:17

I think that her, you know, and I went to Our Lady of Mercy, I went to CJ. I think that the beauty of Shamana Julianne High School was the diversity, right?

Rodney Veal  04:28

Yeah,

Kimyon Huggins  04:28

and the real breadth of, like, demographics - socioeconomic demographics were very vast there. We had friends that were in the projects, we have friends who were in million dollar Tudor mansions in the south of town, right? Right, and we all hung out, and then that made our, you know, area our stomping grounds, if you will, a very broad swath of the area, right. Yeah, so that's really where I think that that's where I recognize my. Social network, you know, being interracial and, you know, racially ambiguous before Obama was, was crazy, right? But you know, I found that in my maturity, that was that's why we're here, that's why we're born into this body this way, right? We get too deep or esoteric, but our mission is to be ambassadors of humanity, and say, "No, no, I'm a human, I'm black, I'm white, I'm Jewish, I'm Native, I'm all of that, I'm all that, but I'm not one of them, and I'm bigger than the sum of my parts, just like all of us as communities, bigger than the

Rodney Veal  05:38

sum of our parts, and we.. and it's a way of a lens of it's a, it's a, it's an operating manual in many ways of how you navigate these spaces and kind of come to the places on the journey, because you have to have the kind of operating system to be got

Kimyon Huggins  05:54

to reach to reach people. How are you reaching people? Yeah, you meet someone and connect with them, because that the connection is what makes the longevity, yeah, like the want of a continued conversation, right? Because another conversation, multiple conversations make a relationship, make a friendship, or whatever. And then,

Rodney Veal  06:13

and it leads to not

Kimyon Huggins  06:14

interested in talking to somebody, then you just don't, right?

Rodney Veal  06:18

Which is, which, Shea, which is, which you put you at a deficit, that I mean, it puts you at a stop. You are done, like there's a moment you're not done until you stop gaging. We

Kimyon Huggins  06:31

choose that, that's up to us.

Rodney Veal  06:34

And I think that's what makes the difference between art makers and creatives, is that we are, we're not done, we still trying to figure, like, we're like, well, what's this? You lift the, you go and you see and absorb here. Let me

Kimyon Huggins  06:47

show you, like, you're asking me questions. You know, people that are logically minded, and you know, up here, let's say they're up in their heads, over being in their hearts, they want to hear about, they want the proof, you know, like, show me that Jesus raised from the dead, you know, that kind of stuff. That's like, there's so much more going on than just that,

Rodney Veal  07:09

right?

Kimyon Huggins  07:09

You know, and your heart, you know, things, right? And that's the difference. It's like I'm in my heart, just acting from places of love, and, like, you know, listening to the channel that is open as an artist, we're channels,

Rodney Veal  07:23

yeah,

Kimyon Huggins  07:24

when you're listening, and we, you have faculties and the ability to express, that's when the magic happens. Absolutely.

Rodney Veal  07:31

So, so we had talked earlier, and the whole thing was, you talked about, like, the, the not a traditional pathway, yes, because, like, I'm not a connecting arts, and so you know, did you try to do the pathway, and then you realize it wasn't for you? I mean, I

Kimyon Huggins  07:48

look back at my expression, and, like, the trauma. My stepfather died when I was eight, that was one of the reasons we moved here, and I was very withdrawn, because he was, he was my everything, him and my mom, right. And so I drew a lot, I drew like I was doing like stuff with rulers. I remember painting like these elaborate drawings with rulers and triangles and coloring different shapes, and just expressing myself because I needed to, and that was giving me something that, like, talking to people was not resonating, right? People didn't understand, I didn't look like anybody, including people in my family, right? I look like Prince, right? He's the one who looked the most like me, right? My periphery, it's like, and that's how important his music was, too, right,

Rodney Veal  08:44

right, right. So

Kimyon Huggins  08:45

it's like my mama and my grandma also looked like us, and then Prince, right?

Rodney Veal  08:52

Yeah,

Kimyon Huggins  08:53

so I would wear, and you know, I'm a straight man, I identify as a straight man, but I would say that I'm definitely gender queer, and that was brought on by, like, I would wear my mama's, you know, thigh high boots, and it wasn't because I wanted to be a woman, it's because she wore those boots and ran this city, and so those boots were about power, not a gender, right, and then Princess got on panties and like a kerchief in a lady's jacket, but getting all the girls, I'm like, see, y'all are calling him whatever you want, but

Rodney Veal  09:32

but he's doing his

Kimyon Huggins  09:33

thing, and he's definitely getting more girls than you, right,

Rodney Veal  09:38

right, right,

Kimyon Huggins  09:38

so those things like I always like I got up and drag a lot, you know, and it was never about sexual sex, no, wasn't about sex, it was about presentation and non-binary gender roles, and what did that, right?

Rodney Veal  09:55

And more of a challenge internally for you versus dealing with the outside work. It didn't matter what the outside world thought of it, it wasn't you,

Kimyon Huggins  10:03

it was an expression, yeah, it was an expression, and so fashion as an expression, yeah, right, and I also like, I figured out that there were topless girls in Vogue, I'm in them, the Rite Aid on Salem Avenue, and I'm looking at this fashion, I'm like, this girl is pretty. Let me look at this, and I'm like, yo, this people know, like, the Playboys are over here, and I know I can't look at those in public. We have them at home, and they never demonize that. I was always allowed to look at the female form, it wasn't sex again, it was just the form. So I'm like, oh, wow, and I felt like I figured something out, and I had this secret, so I could like look at Vogue magazine and be seeing like naked girls, and nobody cared, that was what it was about. I'm like, this is great, but fashion, and then also I can look back and be like that expression in that exposure to high fashion at that age was super influential,

Rodney Veal  11:08

which also, too, it puts it because it represented a world that wasn't this world,

Kimyon Huggins  11:13

that's right,

Rodney Veal  11:13

you know, saying like I know, which I completely understand, like, and so you kind of knew, and so, but when you, when the, when the moment came to make the shift, like, you know, when what was it like when that first opportunity to DJ, like, first opportunity to kind of, like,

Kimyon Huggins  11:28

you know, like, no, that's, we talked a little bit earlier about the trajectory from, like, my original nightlife experience was at the Odyssey, at the Odyssey one and under club, right, not 21 and up, 21 and under, right. And so just feeling that, that, that format, and being a child of MTV, and like all of our music, and like they played the same playlist every week in like the slow jam section, and like they would flip a couple, but it was like radio programming, you know, format, and they kind

Rodney Veal  12:02

of knew their, they knew their audience, right, and so, and

Kimyon Huggins  12:04

it worked, but like that's where I needed to be, and my mom always said that just tell Kimmy what he needs to do in order for him to be in the streets, because he needed to be in the streets, and I felt like that I would say from 15 to 45

Rodney Veal  12:20

wow,

Kimyon Huggins  12:20

you know, I needed to be at the function, whatever that was to me at the time, and at the, in those early days, it was the Odyssey,

Rodney Veal  12:29

and it

Kimyon Huggins  12:30

became, you know, doing high school parties, like in the later years, when you can drive, it's a different thing, you can do house parties, whose mom is out of town, let's roll with party, right, and then that with like this giant, you know, radius that we had from the CJ Bot school student body, body,

Rodney Veal  12:48

because they were from L walks, like we talked at Trotwood, Trotwood to Springboro, yes, yes, Bellbrook,

Kimyon Huggins  12:54

Lebanon, even, yeah, what I mean, like very

Rodney Veal  12:57

different, yeah, so

Kimyon Huggins  12:58

you know, then that was high school, and then in high school we started going to concerts,

Rodney Veal  13:03

yeah,

Kimyon Huggins  13:04

going to Hera Arena, I saw so many great shows at Hera Arena, and then going to Riverbend, Lollapalooza, I went to all of those, and like those experiences were formative, right, and I understand, like just being in a big concert with a bunch of people with, you know, cutting-edge music of the day, you know, of your generation, you know, and so that, that ran its course. It's like, but that the way I got to New York, at, I was at Lollapalooza in 94 and I met Mario Sorrenti, who is a renowned fashion photographer.

Rodney Veal  13:38

Yeah, I know that name, because I follow,

Kimyon Huggins  13:41

he's he's the biggest, right? front row center seats, and this is the first time I can remember conceiving the VIP section that I did not have access to, right,

Rodney Veal  13:56

right, right.

Kimyon Huggins  13:57

Here's the, here's the bend in the front, and then the VIP seats, and I'm like, okay, so I bought these seats, best you can buy,

Rodney Veal  14:08

yeah,

Kimyon Huggins  14:08

but they're not the best seats in the house

Rodney Veal  14:11

that to have access to.

Kimyon Huggins  14:12

So, how do you get those seats? Can't buy those seats, I don't think. So, I saw Mario Sorrenti, who I didn't know who he was, but you know we were all, you know, on psychedelics, just put that out there, 85% of the, the audience was the audience, the performers, and the audience, right,

Rodney Veal  14:37

it was a mutual psychedelic, everyone was was on

Kimyon Huggins  14:40

that level, right, and so I was, I was on the level. We'll just leave it at that. I have no, I have no shoes on, I had on a pair of shorts, no shirt, Fukushill necklace, little baby dreads, right, having the time of my life. And I see Mario having an even better time, I see this guy jumping on the. Stage with the Beastie Boys. I'm like, how come nobody's telling bro to get off the stage with the Beastie Boys? Nobody,

Rodney Veal  15:06

nobody.

Kimyon Huggins  15:07

He was like, yeah, yeah, taking shots, jumping off the stage, like walking on all the rows in the in the VIP section. I'm like looking for security to be like, come, you're nobody ever came, sit down, yeah, right, right. So the show broke. There's in between bands, and then I saw him in the, in the courtyard whistling for his friend. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna mess with this dude. So I was whistling, and he was looking around, and we're mentally altered. So I messed with him for like 15 or 20 minutes, and then he realizes that I'm messing with him, and then he looks at me, and it's like friends from another life meeting this time, right? And he's like, "Hey, man, what's up? He's like, "I'm doing this thing for Stussy, and we're taking pictures of people that I'm meeting on this tour, and you won't get any money, but you'll get some free clothes, and I'm like, I saw this guy on the stage with the Beastie Boys, he's probably telling the truth. So I said, okay. And then they came literally to Stouffer's Plus, with Stouffer's Plaza, right across the street from where we're sitting. Five days later, they came, they said, We're at Stouffer's Plaza, come downtown. And so I came down, they stayed for two weeks. They told me they had been to like 15 cities, and they had stayed a couple of days. They stayed a date for two weeks. They left and came back for a third week, and they said, "Come in, you are a New Yorker, and you don't know it, because you have not been. So next summer we want you to come visit us, and so his photo assistant was this guy, Frank Buscarello. Frank is now like one of the top makeup artists in the business. He does, like, you know, the Italian Vogue, like Mario. When he had time, he doesn't have time anymore, but he was doing, like, four, you know, Italian Vogue

Rodney Veal  16:59

American editorials

Kimyon Huggins  17:00

a year, right,

Rodney Veal  17:01

and well, folks, this is one of the things that I was, Vogue is a global brand, and there are global editions of Vogue, just clarification with the Italian Vogue, is

Kimyon Huggins  17:09

the most avant-garde, oh, because it was,

Rodney Veal  17:12

yeah, that, because the editor at the time was there's a documentary in her, go see it, yes, I'm just saying, so he

Kimyon Huggins  17:19

invited me in the following summer, the summer of 95 I went to New York for the first time, and I hung out with him, and like this crazy group of people, you know, including Mark Ronson and Simon Rex, and you know, he was dating Miller Jovovich, you know, not to name drop or whatever,

Rodney Veal  17:37

but yeah, but that

Kimyon Huggins  17:38

as a kid, right from Dayton to New York into the thick of it with like supermodels and like the top photographer then and now that I remember going to New York for that first week and then they just took me to all these places like just like fanfare red rope, all of that shit stuff, right. And then driving out back to Dayton, and feeling that energy dissipate, and like being like, I need to figure out how I, how,

Rodney Veal  18:15

how do you get back to that energy,

Kimyon Huggins  18:17

throwing parties, making money,

Rodney Veal  18:19

yeah,

Kimyon Huggins  18:20

going to New York, getting broke, coming about,

Rodney Veal  18:22

and just you were doing the cycle, because you want you there's a different, and I know that energy, that's a different energy. New York is a different energy,

Kimyon Huggins  18:31

it's there's no place like it, no,

Rodney Veal  18:32

none, right?

Kimyon Huggins  18:33

And so they were right, that was my place, it made in New York teaches you how to be yourself, right? Yeah, easier places to be than New York, but if that's your place, there's no place else to be, right? Right, that was my place, and so I ended up going back and forth for a couple of years, and then I got a scholarship, and I got an anonymous benefactor scholarship from a guy in Dayton that will leave anonymous, but he afforded me the opportunity to go anywhere that I wanted to go to school, and he was gonna

Rodney Veal  19:12

pay for a while,

Kimyon Huggins  19:14

and so I had this New York connection, and I'm like, NYU Music Business, let's go, let's go, they moved me there, and I went to school. I got a degree in audio engineering from the Institute of Audio Research, which was an associate's program, but many legends went to that school and got that little diploma. But you were more of a networking

Rodney Veal  19:36

because you were in New York, right? That's the.. so I was

Kimyon Huggins  19:39

there, and then I was interning for Roger Sanchez, who won the second Grammy in House Music. Yes, I was there. Frankie Knuckles got the first

Rodney Veal  19:48

one,

Kimyon Huggins  19:49

Roger Sanchez got the second one, and I was interning for him that year. Now the rub came when there were two NYU mass. Year's degree students from the Music Business Program, who had gotten their internship from the school in the same place I had gotten my internship from my network, and from my experience doing shows here in Dayton. I had, you know, I was booking a couple Chicago DJs, a couple of New York DJs, a couple of details every show, so I said I told I was telling friends, like I'm looking for an internship, and then my friend said, "Oh, you know, the guy who was managing casual records, so that's, you know, the percolator, so he has relief records and casual records. So his label manager, Roger, hired this guy, Jermaine Britton, so he was running narcotic records, Rogers label, and they said, "What, we can get you an internship there? So I got myself that internship from my network. These other two got their internship from their bachelor's degree, master's degree program at NYU, but obviously it's one of the best internships that you can get,

Rodney Veal  21:03

right.

Kimyon Huggins  21:04

So, I'm like, so I'm gonna go to school for five years to get the thing that I got before I even went there. It makes no sense, right? Like, who's already there? It created a dilemma, and like this, because I was also not allowed to throw parties or DJ. They wanted me to just be in school, and that made me physically ill, I got Bell's palsy. I was away from my whole family, you know, 23 years old in New York, bro. Like, it was.. it's not the same there. I'll just say, in many ways,

Rodney Veal  21:33

in many ways.

Kimyon Huggins  21:34

So, like, 12 million people and no one to talk to is real, right? And so, you know, I I was wondering what I was going to do. I'm like, how would I turn this down, like free rent? I was doing it for the rent and the access to the city, not for the education, right? And that also created a dilemma for me,

Rodney Veal  21:57

right,

Kimyon Huggins  21:57

for this person who was affording me this opportunity, right. Then I met this guy, Vicos, who's from Lima, when who was in New York as well, and he's like, 'Yo, Kimmy, what's up? When you're doing a party, man, let's.. this is my boy Rich. Like, 'Yo, this guy does the best parties I've ever been to. Use.. I said, 'I'm not really doing parties in school. He's like, 'Oh, well. He's like, 'If we put up the money, you want to show us how to do this, you still know all those DJs. Of course, I know all those DJs. He's like, let's go, and it's like that sparked something in me that enlivened me again when I got out of my head into my heart again, like feels right. So we threw a couple of warehouse parties, and then we got a residency at this little club, where we were flying people every week from Detroit to Chicago, and we did that for six months, and these were artists that all of the New York DJs were playing their music, but no one was booking them to perform, so now in New York, every weekend there's probably 30 Detroit acts. That was not the case when we got there, and I was encouraged by some talent from New York to come there and do the parties we were doing in the Midwest, because no one was doing that. So we got written up so many times that the top club started calling, and then I got a residency, like we did some parties at the Limelight with Peter Gation, was legendary, you know. Two years later, I got to New York at 23 by 25 We were doing the Limelight and Central Fly, which was where Roger Sanchez had his residency.

Rodney Veal  23:35

Okay,

Kimyon Huggins  23:36

so you work hard and you get places, that's what that's what I've figured about New York, right? People can pontificate and like be critics, just like here, but just imagine,

Rodney Veal  23:48

but but do the

Kimyon Huggins  23:49

scale, the

Rodney Veal  23:51

scale there, and also to feed on the ground, start running,

Kimyon Huggins  23:57

that's it, do the thing,

Rodney Veal  24:00

do the thing, nobody, nobody's gonna do it. No one's coming to your

Kimyon Huggins  24:04

house to get you. Do it, do it out there. Yeah, claim

Rodney Veal  24:08

that you claim you are right. Exactly. Show

Kimyon Huggins  24:10

me that you're that. I don't want to hear people can talk, and and people pontificate on when the perfect storm, and

Rodney Veal  24:18

never

Kimyon Huggins  24:19

money comes, and you know, after I get married, and just like,

Rodney Veal  24:26

just do

Kimyon Huggins  24:27

it. Why you're not doing things over and over, like, just do the thing. Yeah, go out in the rain, you're not going to melt, get wet, and do the thing that you claim to be,

Rodney Veal  24:37

yeah, right,

Kimyon Huggins  24:37

wanting to do. Wanting is not doing, doing is doing, yeah, talking is not doing, talking about making music is not making music, talking about throwing a show,

Rodney Veal  24:48

talking about dancing is not dancing, that's it, yeah, do the thing, do it, and then

Kimyon Huggins  24:53

you become the thing that you are doing through your actions, actions, and it keeps

Rodney Veal  24:57

it's like it just, it's like an. It's like an electric, electric vehicle hybrid. It just keeps building into itself. You get better and faster. No one

Kimyon Huggins  25:06

can take that away from

Rodney Veal  25:08

you, right? So

Kimyon Huggins  25:09

people, it's like people can talk, you know, around here like little piddly, like small town backed by like just why I name right? I don't care, because I'm doing things

Rodney Veal  25:21

right, and that, and that's talk

Kimyon Huggins  25:23

about it, because that means you're thinking about it. So, do you people like, let's shift away to talk about it, but let's do things together. I'm not here to talk, and then, and date on you, like, if you have that much interest, then come and be a part of what we're doing.

Promo  25:39

I'm Bonnie Miles, membership coordinator of CET. Thank you for listening to Rodney Vales. Inspired by this podcast is a production of CET and Think TV, two local PBS stations. As PBS stations, the work we do online, on air, and in the community is supported by listeners like you. If you're enjoying the show and would like to support our work, please consider becoming a member at Cet connect.org or Think tv.org Plus, when you sign up to donate at least $5 a month, you'll get access to special members-only streaming videos on the PBS app through Passport. Learn more at Cet connect.org or Think tv.org

Ad  26:20

If you're enjoying this conversation, the art show, also hosted by Rodney Veal, is available to stream anytime from anywhere on YouTube or the PBS app.

Rodney Veal  26:28

There was a phrase I heard the other day, somebody said, 'Put the bags, put the fries, put the fries in the bag, just put the fries in the bag,

Kimyon Huggins  26:35

just do the thing, do the thing, do the thing,

Rodney Veal  26:39

and that's what, and that's why, that's what I thought was so cool about the fact that the journey is not, it wasn't a straight linear, that's which is another thing that people always get, it's like it's like it's gonna take you and spiral and stuff gonna happen and things are gonna go down, so you, but you still kind of still had a vision for like it can be bigger and more, I always, that's what came through when I first met you.

Kimyon Huggins  27:02

So, Dayton, when I was here, I felt a burning responsibility to bring world-class talent to our world-class city, right?

Rodney Veal  27:12

Yes,

Kimyon Huggins  27:13

Dayton was a lot more vibrant and thriving in the 90s than it is now, right? That's not a disc, that is an observation.

Rodney Veal  27:20

See, there it goes.

Kimyon Huggins  27:22

So, don't get caught up on my observation of the landscape that is not an emotional observation, that is a true. How do you transform things if you're not being honest about it? State that you're trying to transform it from into something,

Rodney Veal  27:37

right?

Kimyon Huggins  27:38

Right. We have to have a vision and know where we are to go somewhere from that place, right? So coming back here, you know, doing, doing the show in New York, right, has been a wonderful experience,

Rodney Veal  27:51

right. Talk about, let's talk, I

Kimyon Huggins  27:53

mean, well, I describe the show, we're slipping ahead to that, that's okay,

Rodney Veal  27:56

there's a conversation we can,

Kimyon Huggins  27:58

but you know, it's like, so after, let me go back to the story, the storyline, because this all fits directly in a chronological way. So I started doing multimedia events. We rose very quickly to the pinnacle in the dance music world, because we were doing something unique. We were presenting world-class talent that had not had a voice yet, that was newsworthy, so we got a lot of attention, a lot

Rodney Veal  28:24

of traction, because people had a lot of traction. Then that the

Kimyon Huggins  28:28

blueprint is now in use that we established. There's Detroit acts at almost every venue in Brooklyn, right? The scene moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

Rodney Veal  28:38

The

Kimyon Huggins  28:38

scene moved from Brook from Manhattan to Brooklyn, specifically to Bushwick. I moved to Bushwick in 1999 It was not safe to do parties there, right, but the culture was there already, right. The warehouse movement was there, and then the clubs came in after that, right.

Rodney Veal  28:54

It's always,

Kimyon Huggins  28:55

but you know, and then, so the multimedia thing came in. Yeah, around 2004 I started doing like gallery presentation things with this guy, Peter Weiss. Peter Weiss was basically in the office of Castor and Partners. Castor and Partners owns Red Bull, so there's the guy who found the Asian product, whose best friend was Castner. Castner did like Porsche and Coca Cola and Volkswagen in the 70s and 80s in Europe, right, top ad agency. So they ended up coming to New York and taking this office from this guy, Peter, who was a textile designer, who was his business was made obsolete by the NAFTA and free trade agreements, right? So he can no longer do manufacturing. He rented his building to Castner, so he is a brilliant artist. He started curating these shows. My friend was doing some graphic design for him. He's like, this guy's doing these crazy multimedia shows, but they're kind of hokey, and he needs like some young energy to like mix it up to. Like, kind of, it's not, it's like this, don't throw everything out that he's doing, but like, he needs some youth and vitality in the mix with what he's doing with his establishment approach,

Rodney Veal  30:09

right,

Kimyon Huggins  30:09

but still being like an avant-garde, like anti-establishment guy, right, so we started doing shows together, so like four 4pm to 4am like gallery presentation, you know, say 20 or a group show about 20 visual artists,

Rodney Veal  30:25

okay?

Kimyon Huggins  30:26

You know, performance art throughout the, you know, program, a jazz trio early into bands in the middle of the night, into DJs at the end of the night, right? So your grandma can come early, you know, if you like bands, cool, if you want to stay for the dance party, who also brought a whole three different cycles,

Rodney Veal  30:45

right,

Kimyon Huggins  30:45

of patrons, you know. So that was my multimedia presentation. That's that's when we started pushing the art and the music together,

Rodney Veal  30:55

right,

Kimyon Huggins  30:56

at a premiere presentation on both

Rodney Veal  30:58

sides, because

Kimyon Huggins  30:58

you know, you go in clubs and there'll be like paintings that aren't lit that are little, and it looks like a box when the lights go off, right?

Rodney Veal  31:05

Yeah, it's like you're like more

Kimyon Huggins  31:07

a crappy, you know, one speaker DJ set up in a gallery, right. So let's have both of the, you know, art and music

Rodney Veal  31:17

at the level

Kimyon Huggins  31:18

production level be premier.

Rodney Veal  31:21

Thank you. Right,

Kimyon Huggins  31:22

so that was that was our, our aim, and it was before, like this. It's like the expression of multimedia has has come a long way into 2026 where everyone's like, oh, I'm a painter, and I make music, and I do. So we were doing that, but it wasn't a trendy thing, right?

Rodney Veal  31:41

Right.

Kimyon Huggins  31:42

So I stopped working with Peter. We went our separate ways in 2011 I started Futures Now. The first one was in Detroit during the Movement Festival. I got a whole floor of a loft building from a friend, like referred from guys. You know, my Detroit connections are pretty vast, and so they got me this space. I brought four artists from New York, including myself, and we did floor to ceiling murals and installations. I brought like a bunch of 10 foot paintings, set those all up, and then we had a band from New York, and then we had Juan Atkins and suburban night and Boo Williams and Glenn Underground and Kyle Hall, so we had like three Detroit, three Chicago, and a band from New York, so that's, you know, kind of our music, music programming is consistent of Chicago and Detroit representation, so we represented it that way, and then they did multiple events in that space through the course of that, you know, festival weekend. The next one we did in Miami during our puzzle, and then in 2013 we did our biggest production in New York with about 80 artists in a three day presentation. We had Ralph McDaniels, famously a video music box, who's presented every hip hop artist in the world their first video, like film, has always been his show. So Showtime did a documentary on him about three or four years ago, I think. Nas produced it, so he did a VJ set. He interviewed me and the other producers for Video Music Box, so we're a part of that legacy as well. We had John Michelle Basquiat's band Grape perform one of a few shows that they've done since his passing in the 80s, and just from 21 year olds to 70 year old legends in that

Rodney Veal  33:41

show,

Kimyon Huggins  33:42

right. And so then we also have a live PA day, which, where we had all performances of live hardware of dance music, so that that show blew up, and there was a lot of people in that show that went on to do huge things. I'm not saying that I claim any of them, I'm saying some of them I definitely noticed their talent before they acknowledged the talent themselves, right, and I've had other people tell me that that was a launching point for their career, that the affiliation that happened with those artists in that context, in that time, because we had urban contemporary artists, street artists,

Rodney Veal  34:18

you had the mix, I mean, which is what it's supposed to be,

Kimyon Huggins  34:22

MFA guys and self-taught together, right? Because that is the landscape, right? That's what the world is made of, right? And it

Rodney Veal  34:30

should never be so vanilla that it's all the same.

Kimyon Huggins  34:34

Yeah, and the hierarchical nepotism that it's included in, just like that, the academia part of art is gross, you know, and people, I get ridiculed in that regard because I curate myself into my own shows, right? Am I supposed to wait for you to give me an opportunity to have an art career because that's the way you guys said it should be? Well, I've never. Done that. No, I've never waited for somebody to give me anything. I go and I get it,

Rodney Veal  35:06

none of the permissions. Just

Kimyon Huggins  35:07

so, so I've curated myself and other people who are self-taught endlessly into, into shows, and it's given us a place to, you know, leverage, because it's inclusion, it's visibility, it's exposure, right,

Rodney Veal  35:22

and it makes it, it makes for an experience that people may not have expected, because they, you know, a lot of times people go to things, they go, I see the thing with the list, like, okay, I know that that's what I, I know what I'm getting, but then there's a surprise of, like, I discovered something new, the

Kimyon Huggins  35:40

periphery,

Rodney Veal  35:41

periphery, they've discovered that there's layers, there's circles, and the concentric circles of experiences within an experience that you should be having, not having, because you were like denying yourself because you think you, because it's a, it's a whole thing that we're probably gonna have a conversation about tonight, about, sure, how do we keep that mix, and so right, and like I'm curious, very curious about how you, the idea to bring it back home, which is was that that was really what drew us all in, and that sure at Peter's Laboratory is like, well, the way that is stuff home, so

Kimyon Huggins  36:17

we did, so we did the one big show, and then the next year and then 2014 we did a show with Damon Dash's place, Poppington Gallery was a little bit smaller, about 50 artists, same multi day programming, you know, musical performances, then we started moving towards like doing a festival, right, and then the pandemic happened, and I met this guy, Peter Young from Hubcast media, and he was doing Beyonce concerts and Coldplay concerts, and Major League Baseball in Canada were basically his wheelhouse, and we met him through the United Nations, and he's like, you know, we want to do cultural programming in our platform. He didn't really have time until everything shut down, and he's like, 'Hey, yeah, okay, yeah. And so our thing, of like a festival, or you know, 50 100 artist group shows, we couldn't do that anymore. But I had my studio where we could do one artist at a time and a few DJs, so that's the Futures Now experience was born out of that necessity to continue the expression and the presentation in the curation and community that we had been fostering that needed to continue even in the midst of all the other things that were happening, so in October of 2020 we started doing a weekly show, and we did five years of weekly shows, 50 shows a year, so we've done 250 shows in New York, we've done episodes in Miami, we've done Detroit, but mostly in New York, mostly in Brooklyn, so we did a group show in December of 2024 in Manhattan in a five level building with this, this members club called the CX, that's this guy, Will and Tunde, like I used to play his warehouse parties, now he's got this membership venue, and he does programming for his, his members, yeah, and so he's, he goes like in places for a year or so, so this was the end of his run at this place, so he said we don't have any programming in December. It's a short notice, but do you want to do it? So I jumped on the opportunity. Was it a perfect - this is case in point - was it a perfect opportunity? Was it budgeted properly? And no, but we did

Rodney Veal  38:35

it right, right.

Kimyon Huggins  38:36

So we brought all those paintings that we had collected and done together for this five year run, and display them in this five level building, and we did panel discussions, we did performances

Rodney Veal  38:49

full on arts experience,

Kimyon Huggins  38:52

and people walked in and were enamored. It's very overwhelming and like empowering at the same time, and so we did showed all the paintings and had video installations of, you know, from the show, so we have at this point a couple 1000 hours of shows, and so we presented the digital and the physical work over a multi day experience, so we're glow, we're growing this this project globally. We really baked some things, like a lot of people are not selling the cake, they're selling batter, you know, and milk, but they got great marketing. What they.. we took the time to make the cake, right now we're marketing the cake,

Rodney Veal  39:40

and see.. and I saw the manifest thing, and got the thing that we

Kimyon Huggins  39:43

made, and

Rodney Veal  39:44

I saw the manifestation of the thing, that's right, and so my experience of it was like, yes, I was like, yeah, I wanted, because I met people that I didn't know,

Kimyon Huggins  39:55

that's right,

Rodney Veal  39:56

I heard sounds I needed to hear as a reminder. I mean, so I saw artists doing what they do, and there's something magical about the alchemy, the energy of all of those combined in a space, right? That says, okay, that opens up Dayton. All right,

Kimyon Huggins  40:11

and so Tamiko,

Rodney Veal  40:12

yeah,

Kimyon Huggins  40:13

Tamiko and I went to high school together. She was a fixture in the rave scene when we were coming up. She was at all of our shows. Her guy, Paul, was my sound guy, you know, Paul, who's helping us with all the shows, been my sound guy since the 90s, and he is a genius at what he does, right? Right,

Rodney Veal  40:29

and he's, they know how fails, so I'm just

Kimyon Huggins  40:31

saying, what

Rodney Veal  40:32

he's in, they know I'm just letting you know, that's

Kimyon Huggins  40:35

right, but he traveled, he will travel for work, he travels work, and he's Derma, shout out to Paul McDermott. Here we go, dude, right there. Yeah, and so Tomiko got a degree from, I think, the School of Art and the School of Drawing and Sculpture, which is Andy Warhol School. She got her MFA from there, and so she was there with.. we were together in New York for quite a while. She came back to Dayton, ended up staying, and she's like, "You need to move back. I said, "Well, I don't necessarily want to move back. I want to, I want to share what I've, my experiences and my network, and the things that

Rodney Veal  41:11

the things I think will

Kimyon Huggins  41:12

benefit this community, and the fact that not to run people out of Dayton, but you can go other places and win from Dayton, right? And you can also, we don't have to choose. It's like that's a few, like, "Oh, well, welcome back. I'm like, "I haven't really left, but like, I'm still here, and I'm here in a more visible way, and I'm here to help foster the next generations, to help people get out of their way, to stop talking about what's wrong, and to do things in the direction towards what you feel is right, right? Do an event, do a small thing, have a gallery in your living room, like whatever complaining is for the birds, though. Stop that, right? So, to me, goes like, well, let's, let's do the, and she's been watching this whole growth, you know, we've started a global organization.

Rodney Veal  42:02

Yeah,

Kimyon Huggins  42:03

I have a board of advisors that's got some really amazing heavy hitters on it, and you know, coming to Dayton and forming the committee, which is how I met you, and like that. Yeah, like let's get the thinkers together, let's get the people, thinkers of the

Rodney Veal  42:18

doers, the people who are the

Kimyon Huggins  42:19

doers, yeah,

Rodney Veal  42:20

and let's do right, because the thing is, what I notice about the people that have come together, we're not all doing this for self-aggrandizement. I don't give a shy, sorry, even I use the word, oh Mike, oh, you're gonna hate, gonna blurt me out, but it's, but it's, but we know we recognize the power of what that does, and I, you honestly, every time Tomiko and I would look at each other, and we're like, this is cool, this is cool, yeah, we got, we get it, we get it, so we're like out the way, let's just, let's figure

Kimyon Huggins  42:56

out what it is, not about a budget, not about the perfect story, it's we're doing this. Where's it going to be? Is it a thing, right? How much it costs will be determined a lot by where that space is, right. So, quite frankly, getting caught up on that, where is it going to be, not when or

Rodney Veal  43:16

if

Kimyon Huggins  43:16

where,

Rodney Veal  43:17

where's we

Kimyon Huggins  43:18

know when it's going to be. We've identified all that, right?

Rodney Veal  43:20

Yeah, and so,

Kimyon Huggins  43:21

so, as we collectively manifest,

Rodney Veal  43:24

yeah,

Kimyon Huggins  43:24

like Dayton's on a bedrock of quartz crystal, crystal amplifies things, good and bad,

Rodney Veal  43:31

yes,

Kimyon Huggins  43:31

be in your good mind, because you're all you're amplifying through the crystal bedrock, you're amplifying the bad things too, so please be mindful of that,

Rodney Veal  43:41

but yeah, manifest and amplify the good stuff, and so

Kimyon Huggins  43:44

that's it,

Rodney Veal  43:45

and so one of the things that you know you're proof positive that it's, it's, it's not about it's not about the, the accolades and all the stuff, because that gets in the way, it truly is about the process, it's about the, it's about the deep dive, the investigation, the way through, and the doing, and so would you say to someone like, and you're saying it, but I originally reiterate to people who, what would you say to people who would allow things to get in the way of them,

Kimyon Huggins  44:19

easiest thing to do, Miles Davis, in his autobiography, talks about how we're all our own worst enemies, right? We are. We sabotage ourselves, we destroy our own opportunities and success, and as much success I've had, I've had as many failures, if not more, right? But if you don't learn from your failures, you keep having those right. So concentrate on what you want, you know. Tell me what you want on your sandwich, not what you don't want on your sandwich, right?

Rodney Veal  44:53

Tell me what you want, because I.. because. That's what I hear all a lot with art, and I'm like, people telling me what they don't want to see in the art scene, like

Kimyon Huggins  45:06

don't put words, don't put truth to power by saying it,

Rodney Veal  45:10

right?

Kimyon Huggins  45:10

Because words spelling, you are manifesting by things, you're manifesting things by saying them, whether you acknowledge your own power or not does not negate the truth of that

Rodney Veal  45:23

exactly, and that is where, and I, that's where we're in agreements. Like, don't tell me what you don't want, tell me what you do want. I see, you know why not. I'm like, well, I'll try once. I have done so many things as an art maker, where I'm like, you probably should have worn goggles when somebody's throwing paint at you, but you know what, you learn your

Kimyon Huggins  45:42

miss all of it. I had a good time,

Rodney Veal  45:43

though. Miss all

Kimyon Huggins  45:44

the shots you don't take,

Rodney Veal  45:45

right? And you

Kimyon Huggins  45:46

cannot sit on the sidelines and win. You must be present to win. You must be present to win.

Rodney Veal  45:53

Period. Yeah, do

Kimyon Huggins  45:54

the thing that you say you want to do. Don't talk about it, because talk is cheap. I hear what you say, and I watch what you do. I'm judging you by what you do, because people say all kinds of crazy things because of whatever circumstance led them to say the crazy thing. Oh, well, you know, I said that when I don't care. The president on down, I'm hearing what you say, and I'm watching what you do, and I'm judging you by what you

Rodney Veal  46:19

do or not, do,

Kimyon Huggins  46:22

and nothing, and silence. No response is also a response. Okay, yeah, no response is also a response. Listen to people when they tell you who they are, and they will show you very soon if you choose. Listen, if somebody shows you their behavior two or more times, that's who they are as a person, accept them for who they are, bumps and bruises, or move on, and if you don't move on, blame yourself for not moving on, because that person has as much control over your life as you give them. If you give them all the control, they'll have it all. A celebrity will stand on the pedestal and be famous if that's how you treat them, and if you treat them like a person, that's how they act. So people treat you how

Rodney Veal  47:08

to

Kimyon Huggins  47:08

have how you want to be treated, how they want to be treated. If you listen, that's up to you, and that will create a lot of strife in your life, right? Another one, don't be mad at people when they don't do what they say they're going to do, just be doing the thing that you want to do, and maybe people will stop and pause and help you and do and keep their word, but don't get caught up. I wasted years, I can, I can speak to the years I wasted waiting for guys who I've loved and respected as artists who didn't love and respect me as artist, right, but I was waiting for them to do the thing, and then, like, telling me in confidence that my talent was great, but people want you to do well, but not better than them. Okay, so I can't be mad at you for your guarding your position and your renown, or whatever, I'm not like that. I've always been shepherding the community, like, no, no, guys, come, because there's the king mentality and the shepherd mentality, which is more glorious, right? The king goes first, the shepherd goes last. Okay, which is more important, do Hmm,

Rodney Veal  48:24

I am so glad we had this conversation.

Kimyon Huggins  48:26

Yeah,

Rodney Veal  48:26

this is, this is, this is, this is what it's all about. And so, folks,

Kimyon Huggins  48:31

well, let's go back to the futures now. Just, we bring it back to the, to the Dayton part. So, we're gonna bring this entire collection to show to

Rodney Veal  48:42

show, and

Kimyon Huggins  48:43

we're going to bring some of these artists, including Al Diaz, who was John Michelle Basquiat's partner in SEMA, which was John Michelle Basquiat's first public work. He's been on the show about five times. He's going to come, we're going to do panel discussions, he's going to do some public work. Him and a few other people of his caliber that have been on the show, we're going to bring them. The reason we're doing the live stream once a month is to get 24 Dayton artists into the show, so we're presenting, and the magnitude of the opportunity for the Dayton artists is this: you are being grouped with international renown and iconic visionaries of the day, not that, not to negate what they're doing, but that is not an opportunity that is common here.

Rodney Veal  49:33

No. And then, and that provides that provides a vehicle for what it is, right? And that's why I think everybody that's on the committee, this meeting tonight, Israel is on board because it's for the opportunity for others, not us.

Kimyon Huggins  49:46

We're going to bring New York renowned and New York artists their work, their bodies, and then we're affiliating locals with that,

Rodney Veal  49:57

bringing them

Kimyon Huggins  49:57

international draw.

Rodney Veal  50:00

Yeah, well, the thing is, it's like it's like mixing water with the seeds and the planting of seeds. Yeah, it's not - you're not telling them what kind of plants gonna grow out of it, you just said I've planted the seeds, I watered it, go,

Kimyon Huggins  50:11

that's it.

Rodney Veal  50:12

And now it's on you. Yeah, so now it's on you.

Kimyon Huggins  50:15

So, I think another premise that is important to keep in mind is that we're not running into town and running back out of town, we are turning this on to stay on to continue to grow, right. And then, as this grows to other cities, it becomes this global network where people are a part of a global community, right. So, you can plug into the Detroit, the London Paris, absolutely right. So, that's that's what we're building towards. I think that it's extremely important. It's like to go from directly from Dayton to New York, and then from Dayton back to New York, or from New York back to Dayton, with what I've learned, right?

Rodney Veal  50:59

The pipeline goes both ways,

Kimyon Huggins  51:00

that's right. It's a thoroughfare, right?

Rodney Veal  51:02

Fair, yeah, going

Kimyon Huggins  51:04

both ways. So I am just.. I'm very happy to be back here in this capacity. I haven't done a show in Dayton. I mean, well, we've been doing these shows, but before that it was 1998 were the last show that I did. Yeah,

Rodney Veal  51:19

so having you back as a teacher, you're strong, man. I'm back. I was, I was like, "Oh, I.. I had my brain went someplace else last night. I didn't go to bed till midnight because, because I was thinking about things. That's right,

Kimyon Huggins  51:30

that's.. and that's the point. So, that is the point, not bringing downtown Dayton back to vitality by talking about how it's so dead, going to bring vitality through activity, right? So let's go, you arts organizations, all you folks, let's, let's, less meetings and more checks, like for the arts, let's put this money to work.

Rodney Veal  51:55

Yeah,

Kimyon Huggins  51:56

there's a lot of, there's a lot of funding and, like, you know, abundance in this community, right. Yeah, let's, let's put some of that down here.