Lyan LeFlore talks about being on the right side of the velvet rope in New York City—and why St. Louis rocks
By Stefene Russell
Photograph by Pete Newcomb
Her parents, poet Shirley and musician Floyd LeFlore, were prominent members of St. Louis’ legendary Black Artists’ Group; family friends included James Baldwin and Julius Hemphill, Sonia Sanchez and Lester Bowie. It’s no wonder Lyah LeFlore has found herself on culture’s bleeding edge. Her first job, with Nickelodeon (then a tiny, unknown network), led to gigs as an associate producer for New York Undercover and Uptown Entertainment, whose record label launched Heavy D, P. Diddy, Jodeci and Mary J. Blige, just as hip-hop hit the mainstream in the early ’90s.
“My social life was my professional life, and vice versa,” she says. “It was really a time. When people say to live it out in your 20s, I absolutely did—I’d work on TV projects at the office by day, and then, at 6, it was, like, is it a premiere party tonight, an album party or ... ?”
Some of those experiences filtered into Cosmopolitan Girls, a novel she co-authored a couple of years ago, but life behind the velvet rope is the full-on focus of her latest, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life (Harlem Moon, 2006). Though she’s “partied at Clive Davis’ annual soirees and hung out at white-linen parties in the Hamptons,” LeFlore says her heroine, Destiny Day, is pure fiction, an amalgamation of people she’s known on the glitzy New York music scene; the book’s about what happens “when the lights come up and the last jam is played.”
So—when she’s home on one of her frequent visits to see her parents—what does St. Louis have to offer a gal who’s partied with P. Diddy and Mary J.?
“People here don’t just stand around and check out other people’s outfits,” she says. “They actually get up and dance! In fact, the problem is getting ’em to sit down. In New York you’re either in a dive or someplace superexclusive. You can be fabulous everywhere in St. Louis.”
Mix Picks
Stevie Wonder, “All I Do”
Afrika Bambaata, “Planet Rock”
In Deep, “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life”
Junior, “Mama Used to Say”
Mary J. Blige, “Real Love”
Tom Browne, “Mo’ Jamaica Funk”
Shannon, “Let the Music Play”
The Clash, “Rock the Casbah”
David Bowie, “Let’s Dance”
The OJs, “For the Love of Money”
Cultured Clubs
Café Eau (Chase Park Plaza, Kingshighway and Lindell)
Indigo Lounge (822 Washington)
Gary’s (601 N. Grand)
Toast Time (12781 New Halls Ferry)
The Loft Jazz Club (Morgan Linen Lofts, 3124 Olive)
Copia Urban Winery (1122 Washington)
609 (609 Eastgate)
The Formula (1204 Washington)
