Politics aside, no one thinks Mayor Bloomberg is cool. And yet the 70-year-old billionaire’s final State of the City speech today was dubbed “bouncin’” by the New York Times (also not exactly cool, but still) and “bananas funky” by a political reporter (I know, I know) because of its soundtrack. The relatively hip appearance, somewhere between a bar mitzvah and a Brooklyn Nets game, was thanks to local D.J. Whitney Day, who’s played two parties for the mayor’s office previously. “They wanted to not exactly have a party, but a celebration,” she said of today at the Barclays Center. “To liven it up and give it an extra oomph — bring a Brooklyn vibe to it through the music.” That’s how the mayor ends up walking out to a song about a stash house.
“I gravitated to some more urban, hip-hop, Brooklyn-based, reggae, soulful-style stuff,” said Day, who, along with Jay-Z and the Notorious B.I.G., dropped in some Stevie Wonder and “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye. “Stuff I thought everyone would enjoy.”
Even Bloomberg? “I don’t know what Mayor Bloomberg’s style of music is, exactly — probably not that,” she said. “My only concern was really to play stuff that was PG in terms of having curse words in it.”
Day promised there were no “subliminal messages” for the mayor in her set, although she admitted some songs “could be interpreted in different ways.” Like, after twelve years of Bloomberg, “Finally” by CeCe Peniston? Day giggled, “It actually wasn’t.”
