24 hours with Raji Rags and Rabanne

As he gears up for a vinyl-only set at Hackney’s neighbourhood restaurant and listening bar, Bambi, for an event celebrating Rabanne’s new 1 Million Night Elixir, Raji Rags talks about formative clubbing connections and vinyl digging. 

In a sun-peaking South London flat, Raj is pulling out records in preparation for his set tonight. He’s going back to the Livin’ Proof days, recalling the years he spent throwing hip-hop parties with his friends across London. It’s rare he plays vinyl now, instead picking up records more as a collection of memories on his travels, pointing at a small pile of Bollywood records he picked up in Delhi and some Brazillian disks from Rio. “I’ve always been driven by wanting to share music with others, and finding connection through that.”

That instinct for connection sits at the centre of how he’s approached tonight’s set. For the 1 Million Night Elixir event, he’s looked beyond the brief, digging into Rabanne‘s deeper relationship with music and nightlife. Long before Rabanne became associated with after-dark energy through fragrance, Paco Rabanne himself was immersed in club culture. In 1978, he co-founded Paris nightclub Black Sugar in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a hub for young creatives, dancers and musicians. A few years later, he launched Paco Rabanne Design, a label championing Black French, Caribbean and African artists at a time when those scenes were often overlooked by the mainstream. That legacy of community, creativity and nightlife energy informs the mood of the evening.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Crack Magazine (@crackmagazine)

As the day goes on, we make a quick stop at Stranger Than Paradise Records, round the corner from Bambi, to do some more digging. “For me, music curation is a very personal experience,” the South London DJ says, “What inspires me is it’s something that you can’t explain. It’s like an innate feeling that music gives you, and that could be very cold, sterile techno music or very warm, beautiful, emotional gospel music.”

Tonight though, he’s going back to playing hip-hop, a deliberate choice that ties back to Rabanne’s roots. As things unfold, guests move through a space built around connection, a specially curated menu nodding to the notes of the fragrance, the music carrying the room forward, each element feeding into the next.