Jubilee's 'Magic City 4' Compilation Is All Bangers and No Chill

If you’re looking for *da porty* this summer, let Jubilee be your compass. The NYC-by-way-of-Miami DJ/producer took peak club time to new heights in 2016 with her debut album After Hours, a collection of original tracks as chameleonic and universally throwdown-able as the late night sets upon which she cut her teeth.

That’s because Jubilee is, first and foremost, a DJ’s DJ, a mix alchemist culling seamlessly from genres as varied as acid house, dancehall, and trap to capture the quicksilver vibe of any given dance floor. Today, Noisey is pleased to announce the fourth edition of Jubilee’s annual Magic City compilation series, a freewheeling collection of new bangers commissioned from her favorite established and rising dance music ilk, inspired by the Miami moniker for which it’s named.

Magic City 4's got a little something for everyone: Drum ‘n’ bass, hip-hop, techno, acid house, 90s rave slime, pop deconstruction, and thicc house thumps, courtesy of both beloved and little-known artists from as far flung as NYC, Miami, Montreal, and the UK. There’s even a free download of Moistbreezy’s throttling new cut “Rush Hour” just for you ahead of the compilation’s release (through Jubilee’s longtime collaborators Opening Ceremony). The whole shebang will be available for free streaming and download on Jubilee’s Soundcloud page later this week. Together, it all works, thanks to Jubilee’s chef’s kiss touch, a fresh clutch of tracks to soundtrack the summer ahead, whether you’re a DJ digging for new underground sounds, or just a fan eager to sweat.

“It's so exciting to give DJs a whole album of songs where there's something for everybody on there,” Jubilee tells Noisey. “I love all of these songs so much, and then I can like personally email every DJ, like here's a giant grip of tunes. And also, this is so my sound, so it's good for me because I could literally play an entire night of all Magic City tracks at this point, which is selfishly fun.”

As always, Jubilee will be throwing one heck of a night out to celebrate Magic City 4. It all goes down June 2 on the rooftop of Elsewhere in Brooklyn with Jacques Greene, Nasty Nigel, and Magic City 4 artists quest?onmarc and Martyn Bootyspoon. Get tickets here.

We gave Jubilee a call to break down this year’s Magic City collection, and talk the lost art of the mix in the age of algorithms. Read on below for more, including the full tracklist for Jubilee’s Magic City 4, and be sure to cop the download and stream of Moistbreezy’s “Rush Hour” exclusively through Noisey.

Noisey: What inspired you to start putting these compilations together?
Jubilee: I've always been more of a DJ than a producer. So I started to put them together because there's a very specific sound that I like, and it was a project that I knew that a lot of people would want to make one song for, because it's just fun to have a theme, and nobody does not like Miami. In the beginning it was just kind of like, “When you think about Miami, make a song about that.”

How do you approach curating it?
Every year I try to get a few well-known people in, and a few new people who I'm just really, really into their sound. It's usually people from all over, not just Miami, who I know would want to go with that theme, but every year, not on purpose, there are a few from Miami. There have been a lot of New Yorkers, too. There’s two songs on this compilation that are these two guys from Florida. One is Dj Schreach, and the other is this guy Tre Oh Fie, who I love. They might not be that well known, but I feel like once people hear their tracks, they'll really want to look them up, which is kind of the point of the compilation.

How has the compilation evolved, sound-wise? Beyond the Miami theme directive, is there something you gravitate or shift towards year to year?
There's a bunch of sides of it. Some people choose to go a tropical route because of Miami, and then some people choose to go the freestyle route, like this specific one has a song that samples Diamond Girl. I let everybody do what they want and how they see Miami. Some of it will sound super dark and after-hours, and then other people, like one year, Ape Drums did a total dancehall riddim. Another year, Happy Colors did a total Latin house song. Everybody's take and style just comes through.

Let’s break down the comp a little. What stands out to you about it, whether it’s specific tracks or how it came out collectively?
I love the song by Dj Schreach featuring ShesCreams called "One-Two." It could be for the club at peak time, but it's also a soothing sounding song. It could be played n a quiet place or a really loud place. A really cool thing about a track is when it can be a total banger, or a total mellow song, depending on where you are.

I really like the girl No Intimate made the song “Toxic Decay.” She's one of the Brujas girls in New York. I'm super excited that she gave me one because I don't know if she's put out a lot of music and I think she's really dope.

Everybody likes Star Eyes. She’s my best friend and I came up [with] her, so I'm glad she finally contributed a song, [“Ice Palace (Floor Drugs)”]. One time we were at the Ice Palace and cracking up because some people found a baggy on the floor, and they were like What is this? Who can test this for us? So of course she named my song that.

There's a lot of people that I'm really happy that I got to work with on this this year. Like Lauren Flax, she’s really coming into this acidy sound right now, after years and years and years of producing. The song just came out so great, and she's really coming into her own on house and techno. She's been doing this forever so it's really cool to have her on there.

AceMo is a really sick DJ in New York that I really like. And then there's people like M. Philippe, who just sent me this song for my BBC radio show and I was just like, “Oh, can I have this?” I really have no idea who he is. I just really like the song. This is always people that I'm really excited about and I love that they made this for me, and that they're excited about it. I feel like everybody's happy, you know?

The Moistbreezy track, “Rush Hour,” is nuts, in a great way. It’s definitely the most intense thing on there.
That song is insane. Insane. She sent it to me and I was like, Yooo! I'm super excited about it, she’s super sick. I played a couple shows with her last year and I just loved her. I'm excited to see what she does next. I had no idea what she would send me because some of her stuff is really mellow. This wasn't what I was expecting from her, but I was like, Whoa, I love that you sent me this.

But that's what I like about the compilation. I feel like people always have to have such a themed record, or everything always has to go together, but with me, people can just give me this rogue song that maybe they wouldn't have been able to put on one of their records. It’s fun to do some things crazy and different from what you usually do.

Is there an overall feel to this year’s compilation that you take away from it?
It's all for the club. There’s no chill factor to it. It's all nighttime club bangers. I like electronic music for the club. I always have, I've always done it that way, so like I want DJs to get these songs and be like, “Oh, I could totally play this out at night and it'll be for the dance floor.”

Because we live in such a playlist era now, how do you see the place or value of a compilation like this? Especially for listeners and fans?
It used to be really easy for DJs to find music on Soundcloud, and it's just harder now. Unless you're a big label on Spotify and iTunes, you can't find those weird songs anymore, or search for stuff that isn’t completely commercial. I know it sounds so dated, but even finding weird, cool artists on Myspace used to be easy, and now even Soundcloud is not good for that anymore because they change their policies every five minutes, and people aren't using it as much. Dance music is so hard to dig through now. Yeah, you can go on Juno and stuff like that, but there's no underground-sounding stuff on Spotify, and that's what everybody uses now. So for me to be able to give people a collection of that stuff could be helpful. Even for me, with my radio show on BBC, I obviously want to bring new stuff to the table, and most of it is through promos that are personally sent to me.

I feel like the only place that I discover that kind of stuff now is on mixes or radio shows, and even then you have to go out of your way to find out what or who it is. Or you hear it at a set when you’re out, but then you don't usually find out what it is.
Yeah! It's kind of cool because like we are back in the time of having to hear something on the dance floor, or having to hear things in a mix. It’s both weird and cool. I have mixed feelings about it. I miss pulled bootlegs and stuff, and that's really hard to find now. There's a couple of bootlegs on the compilations, but it's harder to find them because then Soundcloud rips them down or like whatever.

Magic City 4:
SingleWhiteFemale ft. Cooly G - "Feels"
Lauren Flax - "Work Dat"
Dj Schreach ft. ShesCreams - "One-Two"
Quest?onmarc - "Diamond"
Black Noi$e - "Fixate"
AceMo - "Just Waiting 4 U, Tonight (Ann Marie)"
No Intimate - "Toxic Decay"
Martyn Bootyspoon - "ISSALHOOQ"
M.Philippe - "Salt"
Tamiami - "Tunnel"
Moistbreezy - "Rush Hour"
Star Eyes - "Ice Palace (Floor Drugs)"
Anna Morgan ft. Thast - "Super Bad Bish"
Tre Oh Fie - "Neva Seen It"

Andrea Domanick is Noisey's West Coast editor. Follow her on Twitter.