Best of Philly Spotlight: DJ Robert Drake’s Been Throwing the Best Parties in Philly for More Than 20 Years — and Shows No Sign of Stopping
Let this South Philly man-about-town entertain you. It’s all he wants to do.
DJ Robert Drake / Photograph by Linette Messina
Depeche Mode works every time to trigger the endorphins that make people want to dance, Robert Drake will tell you. So does Erasure. Also, New Order.
Nobody knows better than Drake — who, as a five-year-old, would take his little portable record player and his dad’s vinyl to play radio DJ and spin tunes for his mom — how to choose a song, how to pump up a crowd. Not that his crowds ever really need much encouragement: Spend one Saturday night under the glinting light of the disco ball at Drake’s monthly Sex Dwarf dance party at the Divine Lorraine’s Broad Hall — exclusively 1980s New Wave tunes — and you’ll see exactly what’s kept this party going for 22 years now. It’s what keeps Drake, 62, going too.
“It’s joy,” he says. “People are there for the joy of the music.” Not for him, he insists — just for the tunes, and for the fun. How refreshing is that? In an era of the auteur DJ, the artiste DJ, the DJ who disdains requests and despises the familiar, Drake is a respite. A throwback, in the best way. A fun-loving, ’80s-obsessed master impresario with a tinge of Philly in all his vowels. (He grew up here, after all, raised in the Great Northeast.) “If I can reach into my barrel, play a track, and see it work — if I can see smiles on the floor and know that however hard someone’s life might be, they’re right there in that moment, finding some relief, some joy? Well, that’s the ultimate high for me.”
Of course, Sex Dwarf (named, if you’re wondering, for an obscure 1981 Soft Cell track) isn’t Drake’s only high, or his only gig. Ever heard of Philly Loves Bowie Week, the citywide series of Bowie appreciation shows? He co-founded that. Know WXPN’s “The Night Before,” the 32-year-old 24-hour Christmas music countdown on Christmas Eve? That’s Drake too. (His idea, his voice, his musical selections.) He’s on air on XPN every Friday with his 20-year-old ’80s-focused show, Land of the Lost; he’s also produced the station’s award-winning Kids Corner since 1988.
After all this time — all these listeners, dancers, fans — the magic of playing radio DJ has never worn off, he says. Nor has the delight of sharing the music he loves. In fact, he’ll even still happily DJ your party or your wedding — so long as you’re into a little Depeche Mode.
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Published as “Picture This: Music Man” in the August 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.
