FRANKIE KNUCKLES

Francis Warren Knuckles, Jr., AKA Frankie Knuckles (January 18, 1955 - March 31, 2014), was a beloved DJ, record producer, and innovative remixer who played an essential role in developing and popularizing house music in the 1980s and 1990s. He made history as the first House Music DJ to win the Grammy Award for Remixer of the Year, Non-Classical in 1997, and he was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in 2005.

Known as the “Godfather of House Music,” Knuckles was born in the New York City borough of the Bronx. While still a student, Knuckles began working as a DJ, playing soul, disco, and R&B at two of the most important early discos, The Continental Baths and The Gallery, where he worked with his childhood friend and fellow DJ, Larry Levan. He went on to study textile design at the State University of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology.

In the late 1970s, Knuckles moved from New York City to Chicago, where Robert Williams launched what became known as the Warehouse, a legendary gay club staple. When the club opened in 1977, Knuckles was invited to play regularly, which enabled him to hone his skills and style. The style evolved into a mixture of disco classics, unusual indie-label soul, the occasional rock track, European synth-disco, and all manner of rarities, which would all eventually become blended under Frankie Knuckles’ skillful remixing into house music, deriving its name from a shortened version of the Warehouse.

Knuckles was so popular that the Warehouse from 1977 to 1982 had to cancel its members-only policy and began welcoming a straighter and whiter audience. Knuckles continued at the Warehouse until November of 1982 when he started his own club in Chicago, The Power Plant. Knuckles’ sets typically featured his extended edits of a wide selection of tracks from disco to post-punk, R&B to synth-heavy Eurodisco. What he created every night laid the groundwork for electronic dance music and culture and mapped its future.

s Madison Hinton (born October 22, 1977), also known as Maddie, is an American reality television personality, actress, and LGBT activist. With the reality show The Ts Madison Experience, she became the first black trans woman to star in, and executive produce her own reality series. She has appeared in films such as Zola and Bros. She has been a member of the regular judging panel on RuPaul’s Drag Race since the show’s fifteenth season, following several previous appearances as a guest judge.

Madison rose to fame in 2013 after going viral following the release of a Vine clip titled “New Weave 22 Inches”. The video features her exposing her nude body. Madison was starring in adult films and running a successful production company during this time. On the LGBTQ&A podcast, Madison said she started doing sex work after being fired from multiple jobs for being trans. “I was hell-bent on me not being broke anymore in life. Me not having to worry about where I’m going to live, how I’m going to pay my bills because I came from that time of me having to really worry. And this was a place of security for me.”

After becoming a viral sensation, Madison signed a recording and media contract with Pink Money Records in 2014 and released her first single “Feeling My Fish” shortly after. In 2016, Madison released her debut album, The New Supreme,[6] and appeared with Ellis Miah and RuPaul on the song “Drop.” In 2021, she collaborated with Todrick Hall on the song “DICK THIS BIG.”

With World of Wonder, she starred in two web series, Wait a Minute and Lemme Pick You Up. In 2015, she released her memoir, A Light Through the Shade: An Autobiography of a Queen.

Madison has had roles in the movie Zola, and the upcoming romantic comedy, The Perfect Find, on Netflix. Janicza Bravo, the director of Zola, told The New York Times that she discovered Madison through her viral Vine video, watching it “maybe 20 times in a row...I became kind of obsessed with her.”

Madison appeared in Bros, “the first gay romantic comedy from a major studio.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie has a “historic all-LGBTQ principal cast.”