DJ Hesta Prynn: Every Trick I Used to Build a Playlist for 400 of the Smartest People in America

Okay, so I went to this awesome conference in Jackson Hole called Renaissance Weekend.

My friend Allie runs it and she invited me and a whole bunch of my awesome friends to attend this real like thought leadership, like the thought leaders of the thought leaders, like the thought leaders who actually have a thought, right? And all of the panels, there were lots of panels and there was something called a plenary, which I had to Google what that word means.

It means like a panel where every person speaks.

There were 400 people there and all the panels were super intellectual, like topics about, you know, America.

The whole theme was the 250th anniversary of America.

So like, what is the meaning of being an American? And then the president of the National Institute of Health would talk about it.

Or, you know, what's your vision for this country? And like a real for real NASA astronaut would talk about it.

And there were all these doctors there and all these people who built and sold companies and all these people from political families and in the government.

And I found myself there and my outfits were great.

I will say that I had some great outfits, but I felt really like a fish out of water because I was for sure the only DJ.

Madonna put out Confessions 2 while we were on this trip, and I felt like I was the only one who was obsessed with it.

I was like, imagine the Knicks win the playoffs, and you're the only one who knows that's what it was like.

And I wasn't sure really what I was going to talk about.

I felt like I was a little unprepared for this room.

But what I did was I offered to make the official playlist of this conference.

And it was July 4th, and it was the 250th anniversary of America, as I said.

So I said, I'm going to curate the playlist.

And everyone liked the playlist.

I'm going to show it to you.

But what was really cool about that was that when it was my turn to speak, I started to speak about why and how I curated this playlist.

And I thought I would share that with you.

So the question that they asked me on stage in front of 400 people, and I answered in front of 400 people, is how I'm going to start here.

They asked me, when did I feel most American? When did I feel most American? And so the truth is the time I felt most like an American, most proud to be American was the same moment.

And I told this story in front of all these people.

In 2016, you know, some not great things happened in this country.