“Everything comes with intention from us,” Adam R. tells Boiler Room about his art collective Papi Juice, which bills itself as “a celebration of queer and trans people of color” and since 2013 has provided an oasis of inclusivity in the New York dance music scene. The goal, they say, is “trying to have everybody in our queer families who comes through those doors feel like the space is for them and by them.” That level of trust and support extends to the DJs they book, like UNIIQU3, Total Freedom, and Tygapaw, “just letting them know they can play whatever they want. Our community responds to your positive vibe and the joy that you bring to the turntables.”
In late September 2020, Papi Juice’s Adam R. and Oscar Nñ brought an especially positive vibe to the turntables at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens, home of the long-running Warm Up series. The occasion was a special collaboration between Warm Up and Boiler Room: eight hours of DJ sets to raise money for NYC Nightlife United, an emergency relief fund for BIPOC-owned businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Following sets from Eartheater, AceMoMa, and more, Adam and Oscar closed out the night with a B2B set designed to compress the full scope of the Papi Juice experience into a 45-minute window. That meant house classics like Stardust’s “Music Sounds Better With You” and CeCe Peniston and Steve “Silk” Hurley’s “He Loves Me 2,” but also pop edits (Sting’s “Shape of My Heart,” given a tribal house flip), low-lit R&B (The Internet’s “Hold On [Remix]”), and even fiery Portuguese batida (LiloCox’s “Vozes Ricas”). And though the venue was empty but for the DJs and crew—everyone, of course, wearing masks—the DJs did their best to bring the kind of energy that a real live Warm Up would have entailed. “I was like, I’m not going to let corona take this moment from me—I’m going to see people dancing in front of me!” says Oscar. To which Adam adds: “That was my whole thing, just overt joy. So much of this summer has been taken from us, I was like, no no no no. You’re not going to steal my joy.”