VITAMIN D: THE PHARMACEUTICAL GLUE

Daudi Abe
3 hours ago
6 min read

by Daudi Abe

Author Daudi Abe, KEXP DJ Larry Mizell Jr., and Questlove

In 2023, I moderated a conversation with producer, DJ, Grammy-winning musician, and Oscar-winning filmmaker Questlove in Kane Hall at the University of Washington. For me, the highlight of these kinds of events is often time spent in the green room waiting for the program to begin. As I, Questlove (who Chuck D called “the Quincy Jones of hip hop”), and KEXP DJ and event host Larry Mizell, Jr., chopped it up, Questlove suddenly asked if I knew Vitamin D and whether he would be attending. The question caught me off guard, and I responded, " Yes, I knew him and that in fact Vitamin DJ’d my wedding in 2018. “But how do you know Vita?” I asked incredulously, and Questlove listed several artists and projects in which their paths had crossed.

Even though I was surprised, I should not have been. Vitamin has built this remarkable reputation by blazing a supreme trail of creativity over the last few decades. As Larry Mizell, Jr. put it, “If one man were to represent Seattle in a worldwide hip hop Olympics, I can think of no better personage than producer, MC/DJ Derrick ‘Vitamin D’ Brown.”

Please allow me to share an excerpt from my book, Emerald Street: A History of Hip Hop in Seattle:

Vitamin grew up with deep musical roots as the son of Herman Brown, who played guitar with the Motown Records group Ozone. Although Vitamin lived in Los Angeles, he visited Seattle often before he and his family moved to the Central District in the mid-1980s. His cousin was Eddie “Sugar Bear” Wells of the Emerald Street Boys, a connection that led Vitamin to his first set of turntables at age thirteen. Vitamin performed at Garfield High School assemblies under the name D=MC2(squared), where he would emerge from behind his DJ equipment and deliver clever freestyle rhymes that brought the house down. His comfort in front of an audience came at least in part from a junior high experience acting in the Steve Sneed Rico Bembry-produced play Peer Pressure. Over the years, Vitamin has maintained this connection by occasionally directing musical theater.

By 1989, with his growing collection of equipment and his developing production skills, Vitamin converted the basement of his Central District home into a full-fledged studio. This recording space came to be known as The Pharmacy, “where Vitamin D became one of the most important producers on the Seattle scene.”

The experience of doing Peer Pressure not only instilled stage presence in Vitamin, but the money he earned allowed him to purchase an HR-16 drum machine he found in the Little Nickel want ads. His fascination with gadgets and technology at times led him to take apart and repair things like VCRs as well as boom boxes, which dominated the hip-hop landscape in the 1980s.

Freshman year, Vitamin met Bill “B-Self” Ryder, the eventual other half of their group, The Ghetto Children, and a line about “lyrical prescriptions” led B-Self to proclaim “Live from The Pharmacy!”

Throughout his career, Vitamin has made it his business to mentor younger and up-and-coming artists. This came at least in part from the barriers often put up by some gatekeeping elders when he was younger. For example, when, as a young teen, he wanted to “sync a drum machine and have a sample go at the same time on a Roland W30,” he was told it couldn’t be done. After Vitamin pulled it off, the elder doubter grudgingly recognized this special talent.

Regarding the long-time open-door policy of The Pharmacy, Vitamin told Converge Media, “It was always like that. From the start, anyone who wanted to be positive, sharpen their skills, and get into hip hop was welcome, as long as they respected my space.”

Vitamin’s vast array of credits includes arranger, audio engineer, audio production, executive producer, horn arrangements, keyboards, mixing effects, cutting, and piano. This expansive skillset has positioned him to offer unique levels of mentorship. In a KEXP survey of ten Seattle hip hop acts, each of them praised Vitamin as “the prime mover behind the city’s sound.” One example of talent from the Vitamin ‘tree’ is protégé Jake One. Jake has produced, among others, De La Soul, E-40, 50 Cent, Tupac, Cypress Hill, T.I., Pitbull, Ghostface Killah, Travis Scott, The Weeknd, Nipsey Hussle, Snoop Dogg, G-Unit, Rakim, Rick Ross, Wale, Drake, and WWE legend John Cena’s entrance theme “The Time is Now.” He is also a multiple Grammy nominee, most recently in 2022 for best rap song and best rap performance on J. Cole’s hit “my.life” featuring 21 Savage and Morray. When Jake created “Home,” his magnificent 2009 celebration of Seattle, it was Vitamin who had first verse honors.

One point to recognize and appreciate is the uniquely hip-hop phenomenon of producers without formal musical backgrounds. Vitamin, Jake, and countless others have emerged as self-trained, experiential musicians who descend from the earliest hip-hop DJs, who made something from nothing out of necessity.

Peter Abe, an Executive Producer on the 1996 seminal masterpiece Do The Math, recalled:

"Working with Vitamin D and the rest of the Tribal Music collective was a no-brainer. For years, I had been hearing about and listening to the songs they released in the only way we could back then, through word of mouth and by getting our hands on a physical cassette tape. I was always blown away by the quality of the music, so when the idea of releasing a compilation came up, I wanted to help out in any way that I could. Following the independent label model laid out by artists like E-40 and Master P, we felt that the only way to get the unique sounds coming out of The Pharmacy was to do it on our own."

In the time leading up to and following the 2020 release of Emerald Street, I frequently gave presentations on the topic. When I would share Vitamin produced the 2014 50 Cent song “Big Rich Town,” which served as the theme for 50’s smash hit cable crime drama series “Power,” there was always an audibly excited reaction that would ripple through the audience.

The recognition for Vitamin continued in 2025 with an Emmy award for his production work on the theme for “The Day With Trae” on Converge Media, and just last week, he and Tribal Music were among those honored during the “Roots, Rhythm and Rain” event in the M. Rosetta Hunter Art Gallery at Seattle Central College.

I have had the pleasure of collaborating with Vitamin on a number of occasions. Recently, he provided the live soundtrack for a presentation I gave about the history of Seattle high school basketball. This talk has aired on local television, but the music was removed due to licensing issues. While the content I delivered was fine, Vitamin’s brilliance carried the program. The full music version, which should be listened to with headphones, is a scoring masterclass of genre-defying, period, and subject-based material deftly cut up by two of the dopest hands in the business.

Of himself, Vitamin reflected, “I’m never afraid to make a musical connection, whether I really fuck with it or not, because I always learn from shit that I don’t fuck with too. To summarize, I like being the glue. Seattle’s glue guy.”

Super glue.