Justice and Mos Def Rock the House

Bowery Ballroom hosts The Fader and Cornerstone dance party until the wee hours of the morning!

Justice at The Fader/Cornerstone party, above.

On Monday night at 9 p.m. (nine p.m.!), a line formed amid the detritus on Delancey, outside of Bowery Ballroom, where guests waited for Justice and Mos Def to take the stage. Patiently in queue, Diplo and DJ Khaled waited while PR types passed them on the way in. A couple who looked suspiciously like Steve and Devon Aoki—after a few shots of liquid courage, we realized our mistake, and managed to creep them out all in one go—sighed in the basement corner. Two bloggers debated the merits of getting entries picked up by Gawker: "They only gave us an extra hundred hits! And, they made fun of us real bad!"

White Williams was up first, and tried to ingratiate himself with the crowd through intermittent conversation between songs. Unfortunately, the tracks weren’t strong enough to carry the weight of his loquacious chaffing. We were bored. And drunk. And then, at around 11 p.m., Justice took over. In anticipation of their astronomically hyped live shows, dancers started shaking and smokers started partaking. Despite their best efforts, the French duo provided a lackluster set punctuated by easy crowdpleasers like “We Are Your Friends.” CMJ, this was not.

Mos Def, above.

Mos Def came on at 1 a.m. (one a.m.!), at which point the venue was almost empty. His was a combination of articulate, literate rhymes, and rap nostalgia. At some point during the set, actor Luis Guzmán happened upon the party, and we took off (this is more of a non sequitur than anything). It’s not that we didn’t enjoy ourselves, simply that our expectations might have been set too high. It could have been the party of the year, but turned out to be a rather pleasant Monday night. —Nick Haramis

Photography by Dorothy Hong