Female DJs of color run Atlanta’s nightlife. Here’s how they make the party pop.
It’s 9 p.m. on a mildly warm Thursday night and Portrait Coffee is transforming into a space that‘s hard to describe but harder to leave. For the past three hours, the West End coffee shop has hosted a confluence of gaming, community and music.
Outside, some attendees socialize, while others are engaged in an intense game of chess — all to the tunes of Atlanta’s DJ Mikkoh, who’s playing an indelible mashup of SZA’s “What Do I Do” and Ghost Town DJ’s’ “My Boo.’
Inside, prompts (with questions such as “How would younger you encourage the you today to find more joy?”) cover the wall. The night’s thesis becomes more apparent.
The event, the launch of a new series titled Recess, aims to foster connection by encouraging participants to embrace their inner child.
“We’re trying to tap into this practice of play,” Mikkoh (who created Recess with Portrait Coffee co-owner Marcus Hollinger) said. “It’s this creative social experiment to explore joy, play and collective healing. I think when everyone makes this commitment to return to their selves, the natural outcome is being able to harmoniously cohabitate.”
Mikkoh is one of many female DJs of color who’ve helped shape Atlanta’s nightlife by prioritizing a shared vision for communal belonging and acceptance.
And, they tout the city as a space where their careers can thrive.
“The real work starts in your local community,” Mikkoh said.
Forming community
Mikkoh, whose real name is Sharon Yedam Kim Oh, immigrated with her family from South Korea to the United States in 1994, settling in Gwinnett County. She began DJing 20 years later, after immersing herself in the city’s rave scene while an engineering student at Georgia Tech.
For her, the niche environment represented “a freedom to break from what was expected of me,” referring to her scientific pursuits.
“I think it’s important to pursue art because it lends inspiration and structure to the labor we have to do in being an active member of your community,” the 35-year-old said.
For the past decade, that mission has guided her rise as one of Atlanta’s premier DJs, from her rave roots to forming a collective of local female DJs in mid-2010s. At the time, Mikkoh said, she was one of just a handful of women of color in the scene, along with DJ Hourglass and Princess Cut. Mikkoh is empowered by today’s growing number of Atlanta female DJs.
“I feel like the girlies want to see the girly DJs,” said Mikkoh, who DJs full-time along with running a production company. “Because it’s us in the room, it creates dance floors that feel safer than they have been in the past.”
While stats on female DJs, especially for those of color and not in the EDM space, are scarce, recent Career Explorer data says women comprise 32% of DJs in the country. Though the scene remains male-dominated, there’s still a sizable contingent of female DJs in Atlanta, said Cayla Parks, aka Cleotrvppv (pronounced “Cleotrappa”)
“When I’m looking at lineups, it’s at least one woman, if not more women than men, in my opinion,” she said. “It’s almost like, if you don’t have a woman DJing, that was your choice. You decided not to reach out.”
Cleotrvppv began DJing in 2015 while attending Kennesaw State University, where she studied psychology. The 29-year-old from Augusta garnered exposure in and inspiration from Edgewood’s creative community. It was there, specifically at the now-shuttered dance club Sound Table, where she met members of Player 99, a leading collective of DJs and other creatives in Atlanta.
Since deciding to DJ full-time in 2024, she has booked roughly three to five gigs each week. Last summer, she created her own event: URL, a party honoring hip-hop’s blog era in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Cleotrvppv’s favorite musical era.
“You’re not in the party, you’re part of it,” she said of URL. “It brings you back to a point in your life where maybe you were misunderstood and you were figuring yourself out, but the music was just so good. It helped you get through those steps and woes of life.”
As a Black woman in nightlife, Cleotrvppv said she often encounters people who don’t take her work seriously, with some constantly approaching her during a set: “A lot of disrespectful people don’t understand that we’re on the clock.”
But she finds solace in the tight bond she has with fellow Atlanta female DJs like Smartt and Bomb Jahlaam, with whom she regularly hosts events.
“Atlanta is just rooted in culture and community,” Cleotrvppv said. “You meet somebody, and you have a friend for life. I think women see that, and they feel seen.”
DJing ‘for the girls’
Over a decade ago, DJ Exel, born Tiffany Gonzalez, moved to Stone Mountain from her hometown of York, Pennsylvania, to pursue more musical opportunities. At the time, Gonzalez, who is a lesbian, didn’t see many women in the scene, especially not those who were masculine-presenting.
One of the first gigs she booked was at Phase One, a former gay club in Stone Mountain.
“I do feel like masculine-presenting female DJs sometimes get put into a box, whereas (with others), it kind of seems like they get more diverse opportunities presented to them, which is unfortunate,” the Puerto Rican artist said. “But everything that could have been looked at as bad for me, I use it to my advantage.”
Around 2017, she met Brittany Hodge, aka Boss Britt, a prominent host in Atlanta’s LGBTQ nightlife, and the pair joined forces to host events.
Under their XXClusive Vibes brand, they throw events every week. The duo is a mainstay at Atlanta’s Black Pride, offering parties throughout Labor Day weekend.
“Most of our parties are for women (loving women).... when I do DJ some of these straight events, it’s a little more tense, more focused on who’s popping bottles and who’s spending money in the room, where I feel like DJing for the girls, it feels more free to just do what you want and have fun,” Exel said.
Or, as Bomb Jahlaam, asserts: “The girls are outside.”
Born Khadijah Salaam, the DJ and Georgia State alumna was raised in many areas throughout Atlanta. As a child, she sang in chorus and played the flute. But an internship at the esteemed Tree Sound Studios in Alpharetta fully piqued her interest in DJing.
She began her career in 2018. Since then, she’s performed two to four sets each weekend. Along with DJ Smartt, she has a monthly residency at El Malo cocktail bar in Reynoldstown and hosts Two Good Party, another monthly event.
“We definitely network,” the Midtown resident said about Atlanta’s female DJ scene. ”We’re gonna go to each other’s events. We’re gonna share each other’s events. We’re gonna support each other. We’re gonna try to help the next person.”
But she’d like to see more visibility for female DJs in the city, especially those who are lesser-known.
“I’ve created a pretty good brand thus far in my career, which I’m very thankful for. But it’s girlfriends of mine that I’m like, you know, I want that for them too.”
Shaping scenes
For Kiya Lacey, proving that she could cater to different audiences required convincing. The Tennessee native, who’s Puerto Rican and Black, began DJing in Atlanta four years ago, primarily for local female acts like Nnena and Jazzy Tha Rapper.
But when booking her own gigs, she found difficulty in finding spaces that understood her Afro-Latina heritage.
“I started getting booked less for opportunities,” the 30-year-old said. “And it’s like, I can do any genre that I want to do, but I feel like sometimes they make you pick and choose.”
For the past few years, Lacey has hosted events under her Fruta Mami umbrella. The brand initially started in 2020 as a pop-up fruit store. Now, it’s expanded to merchandise and curated events honoring her culture.
“I meet people from TikTok all the time now, (and) they’ll come to my gigs and they’re like, I didn’t feel like I could claim being Latina because I have an Afro, and it’s like there’s no skin tone definition, there’s no hair texture, there’s no nothing that can make you more or less of anything.”
DJ La Superiorrr, who is Peruvian, has faced similar hurdles. In 2016, she founded La Choloteca, Atlanta’s leading queer Latinx party. The brand was born out of the artist’s personal experiences with fellow DJs and what she terms “hetero men” in nightlife who made her feel small and isolated.
The situation made the 38-year-old double down on “keeping my culture alive” and creating a safe space for those who shared the same goal.
“I wanted to play more music that was queer-centered, that was woman-centered, that spoke about different experiences that weren’t all just reggaeton and sex and dudes getting it, you know,” La Superiorrr, whose real name is Josephine Figueroa, said.
Her message for women in nightlife?
“Remember our powers and our choice...we have to choose to hold men accountable, from the tiniest microaggressions to the more blatant (actions).”
About the Author
DeAsia is a music and culture reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She focuses on the intersection of arts, culture and diverse communities, as well as how emerging social trends are being expressed through the lens of the Atlanta aesthetic. DeAsia's work can be seen in Pitchfork, Essence, Teen Vogue, Elle and more.
