Way back in the winter of early 2008, DJ Rupture, Matt Shadetek, & Geko Jones decided to fight the cold with a new NYC club night focusing on our shared interests -- party music from the Anglo- Franco- and Hispano-phone Caribbean, as crowded together & cranked up as NYC’s strong diaspora communities. A place were you could get drunk and lose your phone to the city’s best, boldest DJs. Thus was born Dutty Artz’ NEW YORK TROPICAL, a Brooklyn party series that lasted from early 2008 to summer 2009, a sweaty lab where the Dutty Artz sound was refined, a place were all sorts of folks rubbed up against each other on the dancefloor. Oh yeah, we hired a reggae soundsystem every night to make sure the bass was properly sensual. The momentum of these parties led to the creation of Que Bajo?! and inspired likeminded activity around the globe.

We decided to share the sound and spirit of those parties with this new compilation.

NEW YORK TROPICAL features a dozen party-ready jams (10 of these are exclusive to the comp, two others -- from Nguzunguzu and London’s finest female producer, KG -- were so hot we had to include them). Matt Shadetek & Lamin Fofana, fresh off their respective debut album and EP on Dutty Artz, follow up with some of their strongest work to date. Domincan sensation Rita Indiana gets a deeeep remix by Kingdom (we loved his EPs for Fool’s Gold & Nightslugs, but this Rita remix kills). There’s a new dream-pop-noise track crafted by DJ Rupture (he describes it as “fuckbuttonsy”), the kind of thing you drop at the very end of the night and the real lovers keep slow-dancing. Brazil’s Maga Bo connects Senegalese kora to a bumping beat while our homeboy from the Peligrosa crew down in Austin TX, DJ Orion, serves up a grimy cumbia instrumental guaranteed to rip your BBQ in half. Our favorite Colombian singer/force-of-positivity, the lovely Lido Pimienta, shines with a Sonora remix. We included slinky vocoder-cumbia from Baltimore’s Knight Magic and crunked out hi-speed merengue urbano from Puerto Rico’s La Ola Criminal ‘cause we snuggle up to the future like that. -- “liner notes” by Jace

NEW YORK TROPICAL. Joyful music for an expensive, shitty city with decaying infrastructure where DUTTY ARTZ lives & loves.