Family and Friends Mourn Loss of DJ Smalls

By Journalist Ms. Jones

NEWBURGH – Newburgh lost a true legend on Monday, July 24th when Kenneth Dwayne Rayford, more affectionately known as DJ Smalls, DA Smalls, Smalls, or Dwayne, passed.
“He came up after us… He also gave me the courage to come out. Seeing a little dude like that gettin’ it in, youngin’… I saw him at 14 or 15. He had just started. He was hanging with Kid Nice and all of them… We started hearing him do his own thing… It was a little different.

He went a little harder than everybody else… His blends were more crisp. His cuts were there… All his CDs, all his mixtapes. Then he came with Kool-Aid and all of them with The Sealed Indictment Series… about the ‘hood… He was a great DJ… This is the first DJ we lost,” said Americo Sanchez, Jr. aka DJ Scorpio.

DJ Smalls loved music since he was in elementary school. When he turned fourteen, he used to take the money that his mom had given him to buy school clothes and catch the train to New York City to buy records and DJ equipment.

“We all learned from him. Just his style, we all picked it up… the hip-hop records running with the R&B records… His presence in the ‘hood… he was actually out in the public, in the park, in the clubs, in the spots… He had a following… He was in the business of playing music for everybody, making everybody have a good time… Without him there would be no us… We’ll keep doin’ it and passing it forward in his name,” said DJ Lenny Lewis aka Lenny Loose the Architect.

DJ Smalls was known for having a party anywhere and everywhere.

“He use to always get me in trouble because him and my brother [Chris Melvin] used to always beg me to plug up the electric so they could have a block party while my mother was at work. It used to make the power go out… After two to three hours, it would go out… [When my mom got home] she would ask what happened and I would say I don’t know, the power just went out. We would have to call the landlord to come because the circuit breaker was in the basement. Then we learned how to turn it on when it shut off,” said Tena Melvin.

If you saw the big crates of vinyl records, you knew it was DJ Smalls.

“I was always there to help him carry his records… lugging those things up and down stairs. He still had the records even though everything is digital,” said his cousin Kenneth “Kenny” Terrance Rayford.

DJ Smalls was also known for assisting churches with their equipment needs.

“Periodically he’d say, Rev., I got these speakers. The church need some speakers? I got this amplifier, I got this board… And he would bless us with those things… We really appreciated him for that,” said Bishop Jeffrey Woody.

“When he came to the church he could hear things that other people couldn’t hear. He could hear the sound in the music when the treble needed to be brought down and the bass needed to be brought up,” said Pastor John Borden, Sr.

Hundreds of people attended DJ Smalls’ Homegoing Service on Saturday, July 29th at the First United Methodist Church in Newburgh. It was followed by a repast at Mount Saint Mary’s Gym where all of the Newburgh DJs came out to spin. DJ Big Chris, Lenny Loose the Architect, DJ Odyssey, DJ Larry Love, DJ Nasty Nel, DJ Big Man, DJ Buttaman, and DJ Scorpio were on the “ones and twos” in memory of the Newburgh icon.

DJ Smalls memory will be kept alive with his mixtapes.

Daryl Johnson aka Chilly Dee, owner of Visions of UrbanWear in Newburgh has 10 volumes of DJ Smalls mixtapes. He gave them away for free on Saturday, July 29th. They are available for purchase.

“I love Smalls to the fullest. I’m gonna keep his music alive as long as I’m alive. I’m gonna be giving it away for free until I run out of copies,” said Joe Purvis of Hip-Hop Heaven in Newburgh.

“I used to have to remember DJ Smalls, Head Director, The Sound God Mecca Don’ around the house,” said TaKeya Rayford, DJ Smalls’ daughter. She would say it on the mic because that’s what DJ Smalls would call himself when he created mixtapes.

R.I.P. DJ Smalls, Head Director in Heaven.