“HOW DID THEY KICK ME OFF STAGE IN KANSAS CITY FOR PLAYIN HIP HOP…I’M A 25YR LEGEND…THIS IS SOME BULLSHIT,” Jeff Townes–known to you, me, and others as DJ Jazzy Jeff–Tweeted in the early hours of the morning after being told to vamoose from a gig in Kansas City’s downtown Power & Light District for daring to play outré tracks like “Just A Friend.” Or so subsequent Tweets in his stream claimed!

I MEAN I WAS PLAYIN SHIT LIKE JUST A FRIEND…ITS A HEINEKEN COMMERCIAL FOR GODS SAKE…AND 3000 PEOPLE WERE ROCKIN…WTF MAN

SORRY KC…I HAD SOMETHING SPECIAL PLANNED…

KC LIVE SUCKS…THEY SAID THEY WANTED TOP 40…LOOK AT THE TOP 40 LIST JACKASS

ONCE AGAIN I’M SORRY TO KC…

The Power & Light District–which some locals had renamed “the Power & White District” for imposing a few dress-code restrictions that seemed expressly designed to keep out the hip-hop crowd last year, a sobriquet that was revived in an Okayplayer thread on the incident–disputed Jeff’s claim, saying that it wasn’t what he was playing, it was the decibel range at which he was playing the music that got him removed from the VH1-sponsored gig:

“The sound technicians were exceeding the acceptable levels of the sound system and we ran the risk of blowing speakers,” Stephens said.


“Our production staff asked them to turn it down a half-hour into the performance. … They refused, so the show was halted to adjust the sound. We invited them to start again and they refused.”

Jeff Townes [Twitter]
Jazzy Jeff booted from a club in KC for playing hip-hop [okayplayer; HT ?uestlove]
Controversy reappears at P & L District [Kansas City Star]