Published
Tue, Feb 7, 2023, 14:00
- Hill performed as Chocolate Star in the '70s and '80s.
Natalie Hill, a beloved DJ and member of the Chicago dance music community, has passed away.
The news was confirmed on January 26th by the Chicago Reader, which described Hill as a "pioneering DJ" on Twitter. Many Chicagoans have since taken to social media to pay tribute to Hill, signing off their posts with the hashtag #longlivemamahill.
A pillar of the local community, Hill began DJing as a teenager in the '70s, adopting the alias Chocolate Star from a lyric in a Bootsy Collins track. She became a familiar face on the city's DJ circuit, performing at the annual ChicagoFest event and later serving as secretary for a local record pool.
Despite stopping DJing in the '80s, Hill became something of a dance music matriarch. Her youngest son is ghetto house and footwork pioneer DJ Clent, who told the Quietus that he lifted many of the samples for his tracks from his mother's 5000-strong collection of funk, jazz, soul, disco and R&B records. Clent's son, DJ Corey, is one of the hottest prospects to emerge from the new generation of footwork artists.
Last Friday, February 3rd, Chicago Reader staff writer Leor Galil penned a tribute to Hill.
"There's a reason Clent's peers and collaborators—producers who shaped critical Chicago dance sub-genres such as ghetto house, juke and footwork—have a deep fondness for Natalie, who they call Mama Hill," he wrote. "I'm thankful Natalie entrusted me with her story, and thankful I could share it with Chicagoans, because she is an important figure in the development of Black dance music. I'm thankful my work gave me the opportunity to tell more people about her."
Read some more tributes.