There’s a moment DJ Paulette describes from early in her career that tells you everything about how she became who she is. Standing on a podium in a Manchester club, she heard DJ Tim Lennox drop Kevin Saunderson’s Inner City “Pennies from Heaven” track again and again, on repeat. It was a moment that reoriented everything: what records she would collect, what DJ she would become, what life she would build around the music. Having now remixed that track herself due for release on Armada Music, she has gone a full creative circle.
That career has taken her from the Hacienda’s legendary Flesh nights where she became one of only two women to hold a monthly residency there, following by residencies at Brighton’s Zap Club, London’s Heaven and Ministry of Sound, and then on to Paris and Ibiza before she returned to Manchester, the city she was born in and still calls home. Along the way she has played Warehouse Project, Glastonbury, Drumsheds, Glitterbox at Hi Ibiza, Defected in Malta, El Row, Kaiku in Helsinki, and Blitz Club in Munich. She has done B2Bs with Jaguar, The Blessed Madonna, and Erol Alkan, with more lined up for 2026.
“I heard the DJ Tim Lennox play Inner City Kevin Saunderson on repeat — and that kind of set the tone for the record collection I was about to build, and also the career I was about to follow.”
— DJ Paulette
What’s striking about Paulette’s trajectory is the consistency of it. Dance music goes in cycles. Scenes shift, tastes move, faces fade but Paulette has navigated every transition with what her biography quietly calls “a keen talent for reinvention and replicating excellence.” She doesn’t chase trends; she occupies a position so grounded in taste and craft that the trends tend to orbit her instead. Her second Essential Mix aired on BBC Radio 1 in February 2023, more than two decades after most DJs of her generation had peaked. She held monthly residencies with Reform Radio and Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM, and currently produces a Global Residency show with The Radio Department for Apple Music. She’s a regular stand-in presenter on BBC 6 Music.
The awards keep coming (five major ones in three years alone) but it would be a mistake to read them as a valediction. Paulette is not winding down; she’s widening out. Her debut book, Welcome To The Club: The life and lessons of a black woman DJ, published by Manchester University Press, was met with critical acclaim on arrival in early 2024, and landed in paperback and audiobook in April 2025.
A second book is already underway. She sits on the Musicians’ Union’s Regional and Live Events Committees (North) and mentors emerging talent through shesaidso’s Power Up programme. She is a regular contributor to shows hosted by Craig Charles, Jamz Supernova, Eats Everything, and Afrodeutsche, among others. And in a gesture that feels less like recognition and more like permanence, her face now looks back at Manchester from a mural by Akse-P19 in Deansgate — the same artist behind landmarks honouring George Floyd, Ian Curtis, Marcus Rashford, and Victoria Wood.
It’s the kind of honour that can feel like a full stop. For Paulette, it reads more like a comma. February 2026 arrived with a nomination for the Emmeline Pankhurst Award from I Love Manchester, followed by Gaydio lifetime award in March. She now also hosts a monthly residency on Gaydio first Friday every month. Her diary for 2026 is already filling with the kind of bookings and collaborations that suggest a woman with plenty left to say.
For anyone trying to find their own footing in dance music, her advice is disarmingly direct — hard-won wisdom stripped of any romance about the struggle, and delivered with the matter-of-fact authority of someone who has actually lived it.
“Find a club. Do a living room party. Make it your own. Stamp it with your personality and keep doing it. It will sometimes fail. Don’t lose hope — do it again. Keep doing it.”
— DJ Paulette
There’s no algorithm for what Paulette has built. Just three decades of showing up, smashing sets, refusing to disappear, and — when the moment demanded it — reinventing entirely. Whatever DJ Paulette has planned next, one thing is certain, it will be as bold and genuine as she always has been.