Audio By Carbonatix
Technically, the doors to Travis Street’s Rio Room have been open for some time now, dating all the way back to the venue’s Super Bowl weekend festivities.
But, last night, as we reported earlier this week, the Headington Companies-owned spot (along with the Joule Hotel, PM Nightlife Lounge and other properties) celebrated its official grand opening — and in style, too, with DJ sets from DJ Lo Down Loretta Brown (the Serato-using alter ego of Erykah Badu) and Chromeo.
And it all came before a packed house, too — although, OK, maybe that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given that the venue’s capacity only rings in at around 300 people.
Still, it was packed, and with an interesting mish-mash of Dallasites, too — the hipster set, the sugar daddy crowd and, OK, some bona fide Dallas music celebrities, too.
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Right beside the DJ booth at the club and partying behind a velvet rope in a private booth, the Grammy-wining, Dallas-based, hip-hop superproducer team of Play-N-Skillz was partying away, having just returned to town from Los Angeles where they were wrapping up work on fellow superproducer David Guetta’s album, downing shots of tequila straight from the bottle.
Meanwhile, a few feet over in the DJ booth, Badu was proving her mettle — as well as maintaining her spaced-out cred. The Lady of White Rock Lake may still be honing her DJ skills, but, if nothing else, she’s a fearless sonic curator; it takes stones to open your set with Schoolhouse Rock‘s “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here,” only to follow that song up with, of all things, an Odd Future track. But, if only because of her oddball nature, Badu was able to pull it off before settling into a more comfortable vibe of classic Motown, ’80s and golden age hip-hop tracks. She sang, too — not for long, but she did offer up a verse or two of her song “The Healer” from 2008’s New Amerykah, Part 1: 4th World War.
Chromeo’s set, meanwhile, followed suit — the band, like Badu, wasn’t scared to play its own songs, as it did more than a couple of times throughout their night-closing set. P-Thugg started the night, but it was was Dave1 who took it home — and fittingly. Dave1, after all, is the brother of the internationally celebrated DJ A-Trak. Talent on turntables, clearly, runs in that family.
And the packed house — the space was almost uncomfortably crowded by night’s end — ate it up, dancing away with a constant eye kept aimed at the DJ booth.
Said Play-N-Skillz’s Play: “This is my new spot, man.”
