Dayton DJ hanging it up after 36 years: ‘I feel like I am spreading a lot of poison’

Sirius XM Radio DJ and programmer says his parents could not keep him from the turntables, but the music itself is.

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Credit: Submitted

The Daytonian known to hip-hop fans as DJ Skno remembers vividly the day Mrs. Jones, the then security guard at Patterson Cooperative High School, got him busted.

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The preacher's kid arrived at the now demolished high school in the whack clothes his mother wanted him to wear planning to change into the fresh gear stored in his locker.

Instead he found Jones and his super strict mom standing there... waiting.

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“She took everything out of the locker,” Skno, the son of Julia and the now late Rev. Stanley G. Jordan, recalled. “We didn’t wear name-brand clothes like the other kids did.”

But Skno, the eldest of eight kids, said any hopes his parents had of keeping him from break dancing and the hip-hop culture were to be dashed.

They eventually came around, but it was not an easy road.

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He started DJing parties in 1983 and the following year, bought his first pair of Air Jordan sneakers with money from his co-op job.

After graduating Central State University, Skno made his way to the airwaves of a list of local radio stations that includes Mix 102.9 and  92.1 WROU.

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For the last 15 years, he has been a DJ and director of music programming for the CORE DJ Radio Show On Sirius XM Radio Shade45.

Skno says his parents could not keep him from the turntables, but now 52, he says the music itself is.

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He still plans to DJ events and “the right” parties, but says he will retire from his radio and mix show on Dec. 5, his birthday.

He calls it a “grown man decision.”

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Much of today’s rap music is about “making or selling drugs” or degrading women, especially black women, the forklift operator said.

Skno said he always attended church, but in recent years became a born-again Christian.

He says that has changed everything.

“I feel like I am spreading a lot of poison, and that is not the message I want to put out,” the recently married member of The Market Place Movement church said. “When I turned myself over to God, there are things I refuse to do anymore.”

He said he loves expressing himself while mixing music as a DJ, but the music industry itself has taken a shift.

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“The majority of these songs now have no creativity. Now the songs sound the same,” he said. “Noting is new about the music. It is boring now.”

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The decision has been a year and a half coming, he said, adding that he wants to spread joy.

“I just think music should have more of a powerful message,” he  said.

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He brought it back to the catch phrase he started using 36 years ago when he would sneak out of the house to DJ parties and hide clothes in his locker.

“I won’t DJ all parties, only the right ones,” he said.

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