FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- North Carolina
A boy from Durham’s Walltown community, learned music at Bible Way Church, marched the sidelines at Durham High, and grew up to become the only hip-hop DJ in history to tour the world with Michael Jackson. His name is DJ NABS — and after 30 years away, he came home.
Youtha A. Fowler was born at Durham’s historic Lincoln Hospital and raised in the Walltown community — the same neighborhood where he first learned that music was going to be his life. It started with the choir and saxophone at Bible Way Church. It continued through Brogden Junior High and into Durham High School, where Fowler became drum major of the Marching Bulldogs and student body president. In his senior year, he and his younger sister J. Ra’Chel Fowler made history as the first and only brother-sister drum major duo in Durham High’s history — a distinction that still stands. The kid who would one day open for Michael Jackson in front of 72,000 people was, not long before that, leading his high school band down Fayetteville St. in Durham.
Fowler left for Atlanta in 1988, where he built a name for himself on the Atlanta University Center (AUC) campus circuit, working alongside artists, Speech and Headliner, who would go on to form Arrested Development and cutting a turntablist remix of their landmark single “Tennessee.” When manager Michael Mauldin needed a DJ and music director to take teen rap sensation Kris Kross on Michael Jackson’s 1992 Dangerous World Tour, a recommendation from Headliner landed the job in Fowler’s hands. MJ’s team expedited a passport through the Miami passport office. Two weeks of rehearsals at Crossover Studios in Atlanta. Then Munich, Germany — opening night of the Dangerous World Tour, June 27, 1992.
What followed was 37 shows across 12 countries over three months — Munich to Bucharest, June through October 1992. DJ NABS, performing under his stage name since age 15 in Durham, served as music director for Kris Kross every night, opening each show solo and holding the stage during wardrobe changes inside the duo’s 45-minute set. He stood in the front row for all 37 performances of one of the most elaborate productions in live music history — three-tiered stages, 65 trucks of equipment, two identical stage rigs leapfrogging city to city across a continent. At the end of the tour, when Jackson gathered his entire crew to personally offer his thanks, NABS was placed directly beside him for the group photo — arm around the King of Pop, in a picture that MJ’s team never released and that NABS has never seen, but knows exists somewhere in the world.
The Durham kid went on to become So So Def’s exclusive tour DJ in Atlanta, introduced Ludacris, who at the time went by Chris Lova Lova, to radio audiences as an afternoon drive personality on Hot 97.5, and released his own album on Columbia Records. When Michael Jackson passed in 2009, NABS created a tribute mix that went viral and launched the Official MJ Tribute Tour — five years of international touring, 2010 to 2015, through many of the same countries where he had opened for Jackson nearly two decades before. The world began calling him what he had quietly been all along: the only DJ to have toured with Michael Jackson.
In 2019, after 30 years away, NABS came home to Durham. He returned with a mission — reconnecting with family and friends, and beginning the work of documenting North Carolina’s hip-hop history. In 2024, he was invited to participate in the Durham Oral History Project, where he met photographer Steven Paul Whitsitt. It turned out Whitsitt had been Michael Jackson’s personal photographer for several years during the same era NABS was on the road with him. The two men who had each orbited one of the most iconic figures in music history, finding each other through a local history project in the city where one of them was born. Whitsitt photographed NABS as an artist the following year, and that portrait has since been used for promotion around the world — most recently when NABS performed at La Nouba in North Cyprus.
As Lionsgate’s Michael — the highly anticipated biopic directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jaafar Jackson as his uncle — prepares for its April 24th theatrical release, the cultural spotlight on Michael Jackson’s legacy is brighter than it has been in years. Amid that spotlight stands a man from Walltown who carried Durham with him every step of the way, from the church pews on Sunday to the stadiums of Europe. DJ NABS is celebrating 30 years of In The Lab. He is home. And North Carolina’s story of hip-hop history just got a little more complete.
DJ NABS (Youtha Fowler) was born at Lincoln Hospital in Durham, North Carolina and raised in the Walltown community. A graduate of Durham High School (now Durham School of the Arts), he is recognized internationally as the only hip-hop DJ to tour with Michael Jackson, having served as music director for Kris Kross on the 1992 Dangerous World Tour. He later became So So Def’s exclusive tour DJ, introduced Ludacris to radio on Atlanta’s Hot 97.5, launched the Official MJ Tribute Tour (2010–2015), and is the founder of In The Lab — now celebrating its 30th anniversary. He returned to Durham in 2019 and is actively engaged in documenting North Carolina’s hip-hop history.
Blue Ridge Collaborative is proud to support the work of DJ NABS as he documents and shares North Carolina’s rich hip-hop history. Projects like this not only preserve cultural legacy but also ensure that the stories rooted in communities like Walltown are recognized, remembered, and passed on to future generations.
To learn more about DJ NABS’ work and help bring this project to life, click here and consider making a contribution. Your support helps amplify stories that deserve to be seen, heard, and celebrated.
.png)
