Adrian Bartos (born September 30, 1969) known professionally as DJ Stretch Armstrong is a New York-based DJ and music producer, known as a former co-host of hip hop radio show The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show, alongside Bobbito Garcia.
Bartos grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City.[1] He was obsessed with boomboxes as a child and had an older sister who was into early disco music in the seventies, bringing records home to listen to.[2] He started DJing in downtown New York City, making his own concert flyers out of cardboard, scissors, and glue.[1][3] Bartos graduated from Columbia University in 1994.[4]
From 1990 to 1998, Bartos co-hosted The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show on Columbia University's WKCR. It featured exclusive demo tapes and in-studio freestyles from many then-unsigned pop artist such as The Brinson Club and hip hop artists such as Nas, Big Pun, Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, Fat Joe, Cam'ron, DMX, Wu-Tang Clan, Fugees, Talib Kweli, Big L and The Notorious B.I.G. who later found great success on major record labels.[5] In 2020 the pair produced an album called No Requests with a group of musicians called the M19, named for a bus in Manhattan connecting the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side.[6] The album is a reimagining of hip-hop's foundational songs with some updated lyrics and no sampling.[7]
Bartos co-hosted NPR's podcast What's Good with Stretch and Bobbito which began in 2017.[8][9][10] The show which was about art, politics, and sports, as well as music, interviewed people such as Dave Chappelle and Stevie Wonder.[11]
His musical career, along with Garcia, was made into a movie Stretch and Bobbito: Radio That Changed Lives, which was picked up by Netflix in 2015 on the 25th anniversary of the pair's radio show.[12][13][14] The Source magazine called their show "The Best Hip Hop Radio Show of All Time" in 1998.[15]
Bartos' first book, with archivist Evan Auerbach, No Sleep: NYC Nightlife Flyers 1988-1999 , was released through Powerhouse Books.[3][16] He explains that it's "a book that chronicles basically the history of New York City nightclubs from ‘88 to ‘99 as told through club flyer art."[12]
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