Your Sauce Is Your Sauce: A Night with NoahG + StevieWorld of FreeWifi in NYC
Written by Ryan Yursha
NoahG is supposed to show up at Beverly’s—a hallway-sized watering-hole-and-art-gallery combo in the Chinatown neighborhood of Manhattan denoted by an eponymous pink neon sign whose glow spills into the bar and mixes with the blue light emanating from the lounge area to create a purple haze of sorts—at nine tonight.
But right now, the 24-year-old event producer and DJ from Danbury, Conn. is sitting on his bed in his three-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights, a neighborhood in the middle of Brooklyn. He’s hunched over a chest-high pull-up desk, his spindly legs crossed beneath him, smoking a spliff and working on an eclectic mix comprised of Rap, R&B, Dancehall, and Dembow that will be streaming on DubLab, a Los Angeles-based non-profit internet radio station. The half-set sun lingers over the tallest of the buildings that peek through the window behind Noah, and it illuminates the swirling smoke hanging at eye level in front of the terra-cotta-potted houseplants that adorn the sill. He has just surpassed the one-year mark as a resident of New York.
The door opens and Steve Reyes ducks his blonde-dreadlocked head beneath the frame, surveying the room. “This is how you livin’ over here,” he remarks. Steve just pulled up to Noah’s place half an hour ago, having made the two-hour drive from Meriden, Conn. to represent one half of the two-man DJ duo FreeWifiUSA alongside Noah, who styles himself NoahG, and two other New York-Based DJs, HeyTonii and Chronica, at Beverly’s tonight. WifiEverywhere, the creative collective that serves as the umbrella under which FreeWifiUSA, Noah, and photographer-and-DJ IkeGotJuice work, is responsible for curating the aesthetic tonight. Honey Bunz, they’ve dubbed it. They’ll be slinging the sticky-sweet pastries from behind the mixers into the wee hours of the morning. Free Vibes. Free Honey Buns.
“Yo, you know that our Traktor…” Steve pauses for dramatic effect, “everything erased.”
Noah interjects, hanging on the first ‘e’ of “everything,” his head tilted skyward and his hands outstretched, as if awaiting a blessing, to express his terror-by-proxy.
“Back up your fuckin’ folders,” Steve replies, adopting an almost fatherly tone as he crosses the 12-by-8 room to sit next to Noah on his bed. They’re both between 6-foot-3 and 6-foot-4, but Steve’s defensive-end-like frame has the effect of dwarfing Noah’s, which would vaguely resemble Moby’s if he was more fashion-forward, had a hairline, and you stuck him in a taffy stretcher.
“I lost all my folders, track collections… Do that, it’s very important. Time Machine your shit if you can, bro, biggest advice I can give you. Time Machine your shit. Because that broke my heart.”
Noah nods in agreement. “So if the bread comes out nice tonight,” he says in Steve’s general direction, “I’ll slide you some.”
“Well are you expecting it to be?” Steve asks.
“I mean, if it could be a couple hundred dollars and I could give you a little something,” says Noah. “I’m a little fucked up right now.” Noah worked at Dover Street Market, a purveyor of high-end clothing on Lexington Ave. in Midtown Manhattan, until he was let go earlier this year. He has a hand in the resale market for clothing and shoes, but it’s becoming more difficult to scoop up luxury streetwear as his connections grow more distant. He’s done some modeling too, including spots for Australian fashion label Ksubi and conceptualized independent garment label Demuerte, and a fashion week party in collaboration with a local atelier is in the works . The name of the game is “mining connections.”
“Happens to the best of us,” Steve says.
“Nah I’m not trippin’,” Noah replies. “Everything is moving forward, everything is progressing.”
“He’s really developed a whole lane for himself…He espouses the importance of finding one’s own lane and identifying one’s own “flavor.”- Stevie of FreeWifiUSA
“Nice lil’ diggs you got here,” Steve says to Noah before looking over at me. “This is the first time I’ve been down to his new place.” Noah moved here from a cramped loft in Bushwick back in November, which explains the lack of furniture. Noah and Steve have the bed and I’m seated in a metal folding chair across the desk from them, but the short walk to the living room would reveal that, other than a wireless router, the only accoutrement to the bare hardwood is a life-size cutout of The Joy of Painting’s Bob Ross.
“An upgrade for sure,” says Noah. “My bed’s made… I’m a different man. I got plants.” He gestures to the pots behind him. He forgot to water them today. Aloes are resilient, though.
“So you’re gonna go on first, you said?” Steve asks, shifting the focus back to the task at hand.
“Yeah, we gotta go over a little bit earlier. He’s gotta meet Mark,” Noah answers, motioning lethargically to my real estate next to his bedroom door.
“The bartender?” Steve asks himself. “He loooooves Future,” he says, his eyes widening and his voice exuding excitement upon making the connection. Steve has only been behind the boards at Beverly’s a few times, but Noah has been there sporadically since July. I inquire about drink prices, but Noah doesn’t know. Mark hands Noah free Modelos at his discretion as he waltzes to and from between the bar and the glass-door beer fridge adjacent to the makeshift DJ booth.
Noah extends his hand toward Steve, as if to try and hold back the inevitable tangent. “So Steve actually taught me to DJ.”
“Yeah, Noah was hosting events, and he booked us to DJ at this place in Danbury and it was poppin’,” Steve explains. “And years down the stretch, he was living in New Britain and we both needed a place to live and wound up becoming roommates. So that’s when you officially started DJing, when you got your first gig…”
“Nah, I started before that!” Noah protests.
Steve looks over at Noah with faux incredulity. “Don’t let him tell you otherwise.”
“I definitely don’t mind shaving a year off my ‘experience,’” Noah says, escaping the fact-check with his ego, it seems, in tact.
“We kinda just show people how to DJ. Each one teach one,” Steve says, leaning in. The walls have ears. “But I feel like a lot of creatives are secretive with their shit, like it’s special and you can’t show nobody. It’s a level of insecurity. When you’re an artist a lot of people copy you or take things from you and you can’t really put your mark on it, stamp it, da da da,” he continues, gesticulating wildly.
“For a lot of people, that makes them feel a certain type of way, but I think the best way to be about that type of shit is: show people, teach people, let people do their thing. It’s way more fulfilling when you see someone like Noah out here. He’s really developed a whole lane for himself. People don’t wanna tell you what kinda paints they use, what program they use, what app they use to edit…” Steve trails off. He espouses the importance of finding one’s own lane and identifying one’s own “flavor.” Noah is getting to work building a hectic dembow rhythm toward its inevitable drop.
“You’ve gotta be confident enough to know that your sauce is your sauce, and that it can’t really be recreated just by giving people the ingredients. They still gotta cook, they still gotta put that shit together. That’s a big fact. Look at this boy, cookin’ right now,” Steve says, nodding in Noah’s direction as he transitions seamlessly into Tyga’s 2014 club hit “Make It Rain.”
“I been goin’ craaaaazy,” Noah says, cheesing. “I was telling him,” he points at me, spliff in hand. He’s been waving it around, unlit, for the majority of our conversation. “DJing and shit, that’s like a high. It’s more than just playing music. Like, when you really rocking a crowd, and everyone’s vibing with you. That energy…”
“It’s definitely a drug,” Steve chimes in.
“It’s the best drug, I feel like,” says Noah.
“And you’re like this is why I do this type shit,” Noah says as he and Steve nod in agreement. “When people really be gettin’ jiggy and having fun with it, and you can see that… You’re creating the energy, the atmosphere, the vibe. It’s cliche, but you’re like God in a sense. Someone might meet their girl there, you know what I’m saying? You’re creating moments and experiences like that and people are just enjoying what you do to put food on the table—there’s nothing better than that.”
It’s about more than just music. FreeWifiUSA have carved out a spot for the collective in Connecticut—and Noah is hard at work at establishing a footprint in New York. He’s been pitching the WifiWorld experience, with an emphasis on plucking DJs from diverse groups of creatives to fill out the lineup, to bars and clubs in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side in an attempt to establish monthly residencies and build a following.
And, if all goes according to plan, it’ll be about more than just DJing, too. Noah, who, seemingly out of left field, cites WFAN’s Steve “The Schmoozer” Sommers and Tony Paige as childhood favorites and some of his more conventional radio inspirations, is preparing to pitch a sketch-based WifiEverywhere radio show to a number of local stations. He’s done a few guest mixes for online radio stations like NTS and Half Moon, but he wants something of his own. Something tangible. “I have like 70 radio stations that I need to reach out to,” he says, “and we’re looking for three to five stations to simulcast on.”
Noah wants to add a visual element to the show within a few months, if it gets picked up. Think Bodega-Boys-meets-Eric-Andre-Show humor with Action Bronson-esque camera work and green-screening. “Then we incorporate more content,” he says, “and try to go for thirty to forty five minutes. That’s where we start doing 106 & Park-style countdowns, shit like that. I wanna do a skit where we watch LeBron highlights and do reviews of rare chips. Steve has an idea for an HVAC-inspired skit. Anyway, once the show and the residencies are in motion at the same time, it’s gonna be dope.”
Steve, who I’ve discovered tends to drift in a more abstract direction than Noah over the course of a conversation, cuts back in. “We’re the last generation that knows what it’s like without the internet at your fingertips,” he says. “We weren’t born with iPads. Our angle on the DJing thing is like… very nostalgia-forward. I feel like we have that vibe, but we’re still super-duper futuristic because what we do is so rooted in social media and the technology we use.”
Using their respective instagram accounts as vehicles, WifiEverywhere drive their various marketing initiatives by dropping aesthetically pleasing, shareable content teased out of event footage, inside jokes, professional wrestling, and old Martial Arts films.
“You’d be surprised at how hard it is to find what we need to create the content we’re going for,” Steve says. “You’ve gotta dig for it like people used to dig for records. We’re digging for clips, content, music… so the DJing thing is just an aspect of what we do creatively. It’s one way we express the type of things we’re into. But the visual stuff is a whole ‘nother thing, and it’s cool that it all gets to meet in the ‘DJ world.’ The music and the art all kind of come together and creativity is like a common thread.”
“WifiEverywhere is this stream of cool, cultural, relevant stuff that we put out little glimpses of on social media,” Noah adds, “but we don’t really have a home for yet. Like, all the cool videos and shit is wavy, but it just stops at the DJ and event level.
“I’ll put it this way: it’s bold, but we’ve never been wrong,” Steve says, his tone growing more serious. “I was talking to Isa,” referring to Isa Abdul-Quddus, a former safety for the New Orleans Saints, Miami Dolphins, and Detroit Lions and a Florida-based associate of the Connecticut cohort, “and he’s like, ‘yo, it’s crazy because sometimes y’all be feelin’ like you not doing the right thing, but you’ve never been wrong—it’s just everything coming together and culminating at the right time.’ All the seeds we’ve planted are starting to grow. I think that’s how you gotta look at it. Planting seeds.”
Noah bows his head to indicate his tacit agreement. “Everything we’ve done has been mad simple, but wavy,” he says. “The core elements of what we do are solid. What I’ve noticed, being in the scene in New York for a year, is that when you throw a party or host an event, the four things that matter are: the lineup—so the music—and the visuals that go along with it; the marketing—what the flyer looks like, videos, promo-type shit; and the venue. All we need to do is worry about getting people in the building. We’ve had this residency at Beverly’s in Chinatown for three months now, and we’re working on putting something together at a bar in Chelsea.”
“And we can pick up other residencies along the way,” Steve adds, seemingly satisfied with Noah’s summation of the scene.
“Yeah, they’re gonna give us a nice check once a month,” Noah says. “This isn’t some shit where we’re gonna have to trip about coming up with stuff.”
Steve is quick with an addendum. “But we don’t wanna get stuck somewhere that’s not our vibe,” he says. “I’ve DJ’d spots where it’s like, ‘it’s lit! It’s just lit in here! We got maaad people!’ It’s not that fun, and it’s kinda where DJing gets a little weird and ego-driven. It turns into ‘you’re not Hartford enough, you’re not Jamaican enough, you’re not playing enough of this…’”
“It’s never enough,” Noah says, finishing another one of Steve’s sentences.
Steve jumps back in: “It’s never enough!” he exclaims in a shrill falsetto that causes me to envy his vocal range. “It could still get there, though. Because we have a niche. Our vibe, our branding, our aesthetic, and how we operate has always been a more niche, more curatable type of thing. And you know, deep down, people would rather go to something like that than like…” Steve takes up a defensive southpaw stance and ping-pongs back and forth between Noah and the wall. “I’ve seen raves and, like, the EDM shit, and that looks mad fun, but that’s not everyone’s vibe. I feel like our bag is curating a vibe, having the ability to be picked up by brands, and doing more art-centric events.”
“And that’s why y’all need to be emphasizing trying to make a stamp in New York,” Noah says in what Steve initially perceives to be an affront to his work ethic.
“Yeah…” Steve says before calling Noah’s intent into question. “Y’all? Us! That’s what we’re doing. That’s what you’re doing! That’s what we got ya for, kid! That’s what you’re for, that’s your job right now. Right now, you did a good job and it looks like we’re gonna see each other once a month—at the very least—for now. You’re tapped in, in cahoots with people in the scene out here. Welcome to the game, kiddo! We survive off this shit!”
“I know it's not the way to look at things,” Noah asserts, “but I feel like everything’s moving too slow.”
“You gotta come at it with a different energy,” Steve says, correcting Noah. “We’ve never been wrong, and that’s a bold and sacky thing to say, but we’ve never been wrong. And that’s how you’ve gotta think. When you feel like shit ain’t happening fast enough, like, da da da… that’s just ego getting in the way. I’m super excited.” Steve looks Noah in the eyes. “You’re our New York office, be that guy that leads this sector to water. You’ve gotta own that, feel that, be that. You don’t gotta wait up or look for anybody else to do something, you’re full speed ahead.”
The mood lightens as the last rays of sun disappear beneath the squat Crown Heights skyline. Noah, reinvigorated by Steve’s pep talk, is on the move. “We gotta get this man some food,” says Noah, grabbing my shoulder as he skates by me to grab a coat from the closet behind me. I haven’t eaten all day. Noah’s been back and forth to the kitchen more than a few times for Toaster Strudels. “You wanna go to the Jamaican spot or the Soul Food spot?” he asks me. It doesn’t matter. We still have to pick up Honey Buns, and we have plans to hit Cheeky’s for chicken sandwiches before we head over to Beverly’s.
We’ll be late, but Noah and Steve aren’t too anxious. It’s only a matter of time. Plant the seeds, water the garden, let it grow. Cook up in the meantime. After all—they’ve never been wrong.
