The Grammy-winning New Yorker Hex Hector has remained as relevant as ever. Scan Hex’s discography and the credits are staggering: Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Donna Summer, Mary J. Blige, Britney Spears, *NSYNC, Anastacia, Enrique Iglesias, Jessica Simpson, and Aretha Franklin are just a fraction of the artists who have received Hex’s golden touch.
Hex Hector was born and raised in New York, and he was influenced by a broad array of sounds from an early age. “I grew up in two households, my immediate family’s and my grandmother’s,” Hex explains. “Music was always on at both households, especially my Grandma’s. I had a very hip grandmother, to say the least. I was treated to everything from Santana to Cal Tjader to Al Green to Tito Puente to Salsoul to the Rolling Stones.”
The post-disco rise of New York nightclubs like the Paradise Garage, the Roxy, and the Funhouse would provide the foundation for Hex’s burgeoning interest in dance music, as did radio shows by the likes of KISS-FM’s Shep Pettibone. Hex learned how to DJ, and through the late 1980s and early 1990s, he held residencies at legendary New York hot spots like the Tunnel, Limelight, Palladium, Sound Factory Bar, Nell’s, Club USA, and Danceteria. During that time, Hex made lasting friendships with then-pop stars and underground heroes Clivilles and Cole, who first got him into the studio, and a then-unknown club kid named Jennifer Lopez, who he would reconnect with years later on the blockbuster remix of “Waiting For Tonight.”
“It’s funny how life always comes full circle,” Hex says. “In the very early Nineties at China Club, I met a friendly, young, energetic girl. We became club friends, eventually exchanging numbers. This girl would always want me to put her and her sister on the guest list, [and] I always did. That girl turned out to be Jennifer Lopez. Now, ten years later, I wind up getting a Grammy for a song I remixed her, and appeared with her as her DJ on Saturday Night Live. I appreciate the fact that she never forgot about me after all those years.”
Hex’s Grammy win for Remixer of the Year in 2001 confirmed what a legion of enthusiastic club and radio supporters already knew: possibly nobody else was better at making pop stars matter on the dance floor, or making dance divas matter on the pop charts. He has not looked back since, unleashing classic after classic so often, it is easy to forget a few along the way—but not because they are forgettable records. Rather, there are so many that one’s mind becomes overworked trying to recall each one. It is that legacy that has defined Hex’s career, and which sets the cornerstone for where he is headed today.
Back to basics and back in business, it doesn’t take long at all to realize that the man is still at the top of his game. Hotter than a mid-August day. Hex Hector is here to stay, and our ears and feet will be all the happier for it.
