Fat Beats Pop Up This Weekend

Helping to celebrate the pop-up shop and in-store will be DJ Spinna, DJ Evil Dee, and Rich Medina, in addition to a number of surprise guests throughout the day. Recreated to capture the atmosphere of the original retail stores, the event will give hip-hop heads an opportunity to come together, celebrate, and support independent hip-hop once again.

This past September marked a somber moment for hip-hop fans worldwide, when Fat Beats Records closed the doors of its final two retail locations in New York and Los Angeles. Since opening in 1994, hip-hop fans have traveled from far and wide to visit the iconic Manhattan and Los Angeles stores, in addition to locations in Atlanta, Amsterdam, and Tokyo, all of which had been shuttered in recent years. At the time of the closing, DJ Premier, who helped celebrate the store's final send-off, said, "The closing of Fat Beats is just like one of my friends passing away. They promoted vinyl at its highest degree for the culture of good music and that makes it more difficult to say goodbye."

For Fat Beats Records found Joe Abajian aka DJ Jab the closing of the final two locations was a bittersweet moment. Sad to shut down the stores, in doing so Abajian knew it would allow Fat Beats to embark on new and exciting opportunities, including the Pop-Up Shop at the label and distribution company's Brooklyn Warehouse. "With Fat Beats Brooklyn," explains Abajian, "I wanted to give people the physical hip-hop experience that you got when visiting one of the Fat Beats stores."