Nate Blair Photo
Mo Niklz vending Mo Piklz.
New Haven hip hop scene stalwart DJ Mo Niklz is well known across the city, state, and country as a purveyor of hot beats, but in recent years he has become nearly as well known for his half sours, pickled pineapple, and yes, even beets. Seen most often on New Haven stages spinning tunes with accompanying video at dance parties and providing the sounds at live shows behind artists such as Ceschi Ramos and Sketch Tha Cataclysm, Niklz has added a new business venture to the mix: Mo Piklz. The pickled items began as merch being sold at live shows, have become a welcome addition to local farmer’s markets and other events, and are appearing next at the New Haven PRIDE celebration on the Green this Saturday, Sept. 17.
According to Niklz (a.k.a Tristan Levy), it all began with a Facebook post while on tour with Sketch.
“I was looking for a new merch idea, and I was thinking beer koozies or socks or something,” said Niklz. He posted on Facebook about it, asking for suggestions. “My old roommate commented … ‘Mo Pickles,’ and my friend Crystal chimed in and said, ‘if you promise to sell them at your shows, I will make you pickles to sell at your shows.’ And I didn’t have a reason to say no to that.”
Crystal was from Minnesota and the tour was going through there, so Niklz picked them up to sell at the next show. The response surprised him.
“I had no idea people were that involved with pickles,” he said. “People just came up and went ‘I can get pickles here? Oh my god!’”
Niklz began “playing around” with different recipes for his own pickles in 2015 and sold them at shows in Connecticut and on tour with billy woods and Open Mike Eagle. He even sold some while on tour with Ramos in Canada.
“They take their preserves seriously,” he said with laugh. “They’re really into it up there.”
He began with two types of pickles: original and medium. The recipes came out of trial and error — and personal taste.
“I started off just looking up three or four different online recipes, tried making a jar, and found there was an inedible amount of salt in these recipes,” said Niklz.. “I finally had to dial down the amount of salt to a reasonable amount, figure out a water to vinegar ratio, and any other spices and stuff I wanted to add to them. Selling at bars, people respond more to spices there, so the big seller at that time was my medium with a little crushed red and jalapeño in it.”
When the medium became his big seller, he decided to keep the spicy notes going with his next project, beets.
“I did hot beets, which was a complete pun,” he said, “which is kind of fitting. The pickles thing started as a joke pun merch idea, so the fact that I had hot beets for sale was the next one.” Those were made to sell at a Political Animals show, which was a Streets of Rage cover show, “so I thought it would be funny that I would make Beets of Rage for that show.”
From there he experimented with cranberries, green beans, and giardiniera. The cranberries sold well (and will be making a comeback this fall) but the other two did not sell as well, even though he thought they came out “fantastic.” And then he made the product that would become one of his current bestsellers: pickled pineapple.
“The hardest thing is trying to convince someone to try the pineapple,” said Niklz, who always has samples of his product available when vending. “I just have to dare people to try it, then they’ll go, ‘oh my god this is incredible.’”
He describes the flavor as a “Christmas‑y dessert type of thing,” due to the cinnamon, cloves, and allspice used in the recipe. “Once you bite into it, you’re really on a nice little magical adventure for your tastebuds there.”
Niklz noted that there is a “good eight seconds” of people experiencing the flavor. “It’s nice watching people try it because they all just go, ‘oh, oh my, ooh something’s still happening here. I didn’t expect that. Something else is happening here.’”
Pickled watermelon was recently added to the roster, but Niklz said it will only be around for a short time. He is planning on adding another seasonal item, pickled apples, in the coming months. “The ingredients that I use in the pineapple are pretty similar to an apple pie, so the apple was kind of an obvious thing,” he said. “I do switch it up a little bit, though, just to make the apple more traditional to apple pie.” A half sour pickle was also added recently and has become his other best seller.
Mo NIklz Photo.
A variety of Mo Piklz offerings. Yes, I have tried them all.
All of this pickle-related success has not deterred Niklz from his DJ career, which began when he was a high-schooler in Newtown in the late 1990s who, along with his friends, started getting into trance music
“We were really obsessed with how the DJs could transition,” he said. “We would listen to a mix for 30 minutes and be like, ‘oh, wait, there’s another song playing now? This is incredible.’ And then we would try to figure that out.”
Experimenting with trance and house music at first, he eventually started getting into hip hop after watching a film.
“I saw this documentary Scratch in 2002 or so and got really in love with that,” he said. “I could do mixing but also blend different genres of music and really manipulate the turntables any way shape or form and manipulate songs in very interesting ways.”
While living in Danbury after college, Niklz became a part of its music scene, including at Cousin Larry’s, where he met Sketch. He would also go into New York City once a month, networking and making connections there. He traveled to New Haven frequently, DJing MC battles at Cafe Nine, and going to the Acoustic Cafe in Bridgeport. He ended up moving in with Ramos in New Haven around five years ago.
Niklz has overseen shipping for Ramos’s Fake Four Inc record label since 2014, a job that benefits not only from his experience working for companies such as Fed Ex and UPS, but also his love of records and music in general.
“As a DJ I would never package something thinking that it might not show up there in one piece,” he said. During the height of Covid, “I think I shipped about 10,000 records out of my living room. That was a great job to have at that point in time.”
Niklz met Ramos around 2011 while DJing for him at the Freight Street Gallery in Waterbury, but “didn’t really know much about his music or his label.” When Ramos found out that Niklz was going to SXSW with friends Prem Rock and Willie Green, he asked if Niklz would DJ a special video set for his SXSW record label show, and Niklz agreed. The two have been friends and collaborators ever since, with Niklz also becoming a go-to DJ for Fake Four artists. SXSW was also where Niklz met billy woods, who became another frequent collaborator over the years.
Karen Ponzio Photo.
DJing for Ceschi at The State House in April 2022.
Niklz has DJed for and toured with numerous other acts, including Homeboy Sandman, Quelle Chris, and many other artists from Mello Music Group and BackwoodzStudioz, and has been involved with several recording projects, including with the band Vinyl Cape. He still finds the prospect of “being able to add something unique” to a record exciting, especially when he can “find a unique sample that has something to do with the song and find an interesting way to blend it into the track.” He cited the Ceschi/Siul Hughes collaboration “The Notion” as a recent favorite, where he used samples that were all Connecticut-based.
Another recording he is very proud of being involved in is the billy woods track “Wonderful,” featuring Aesop Rock and Homeboy Sandman, all of whom he was “honored” to be on a track with. “It’s probably my best DJ cutwork,” said Niklz.
His most recent release is DJ Mo Niklz presents They Who Control the Weather, by Armand Hammer. Released in November 2021 and featuring artwork by his friend Pacer, who is also from Connecticut, he calls it “a great dive” into their catalogue. “I’ve known them” — billy woods and Elucid, who together make up Armand Hammer — “individually and then as a group for a long time. They both make incredible music.” Niklz will be out on tour with woods starting Oct. 1, with a stop in Brooklyn on Oct. 2 to perform at the Shrapknel album release show before resuming the tour from Oct. 5 to 17.
Half Sours: as wonderful to look at as to eat
In the meantime he will be vending at more events in Connecticut. After Pride on the New Haven Green this Saturday, he’ll be at a Beeracks event in East Haven on Sept. 18. He’s been at the Cityseed market in New Haven one Saturday a month and the Black Rock Farmer’s Market in Bridgeport whenever he is not in New Haven. He has also vended at events at New England Brewing and OEC Brewery. Once he returns from tour at the end of October and finishes up farmer’s market season, he is going to focus more on getting his product into stores.
Niklz has found that the pickle business has given him a “nice non-threatening way to encounter people,” which was “a great change of pace to go out and “talk pickles with people” since the lifting of pandemic restrictions were lifted.
“I know people like pickles. It’s a thing that comes on the side of a sandwich or a burger, but it didn’t feel like anybody put much love or care into this pickle. The same ingredients can taste completely different depending on how somebody made them,” if they “took a little time and effort just to make them.”
Niklz puts that kind of time and effort into every detail of his product. “I feel like the crunch of the pickle is at least half the experience, just putting the detail to even the texture of it,” he said. “I’ll go out and try new stuff and I’m like, ‘oh, this is just white vinegar that I’m tasting, or way too much sugar.’ That was the whole pineapple thing. I tried some and went, ‘maybe I can recreate this,’ and in the form of recreating it I used much better ingredients and it’s its own thing now, so it’s actually way better than the thing I tried to recreate.”
Niklz also believes the pickling has “kind of rekindled” his DJ career, as he has picked up a few more opportunities while vending and networking for Mo Piklz. He had an event at Three Sheets in July where bartenders made custom pickle drinks using his pickle recipe ingredients and brine and he DJed a dance party. “It was a lot of fun,” he said. He will be DJing another dance party at Three Sheets on Saturday.
In addition to selling pickles, magnets, t‑shirts, and pickle earrings (made by artist Melissa Oliver) at the merch tables at the live shows he plays, he has been invited to sell pickles at other events at State House and Beeracks when he is not performing. “It tends to go over well,” he said. “People are always excited to see pickles. And it always gets a good response. People just really enjoy being able to get something different.”
Karen Ponzio Photo.
Pickled watermelon: all the yes.
Niklz is thrilled that he has been able to get out into the world as much as he can. He had high hopes for 2020, starting off on tour with billy woods and Elucid. “We did three incredible shows,” he said. “We sold out the Mercury Lounge” in New York, “then had a couple hundred people come out in DC and Philly. I remember thinking, ‘this is gonna be my year. Everything is coming together,’ and yeah, nope, not so much. And now I’m doing the pickle thing, and it’s great to hit the road with woods once again.”
I told him that it sounded like 2022 was his year. He mentioned having his tarot cards read in December and being told that good things are coming his way. “I don’t think it took much comparison to the other two years to be much better,” he said, laughing. “Obviously this year had to be better.”
After the interview was over this reporter was able to taste the pickled watermelon. As a big fan of all of Mo Piklz selections, especially the cranberries and pineapple, I was eager to give them a try. I am happy to report that, just like with the pineapple, there was at least eight seconds of oohs and ahhs, maybe more.
Niklz will be vending this Saturday on the New Haven Green during PRIDEfest and will be DJing a dance party at Three Sheets later that night. More information about vending events can be found on his Facebook and Instagram pages at Mo Piklz and more information about his music events can be found on his Facebook and Instagram pages for DJ Mo Niklz.
Pickled watermelon rind is one of my favorites, along with pickled green beans, pickled green tomatoes. I’m so happy someone is experimenting with new kinds of pickles, I can’t wait to try out the pickled pineapples! Where can we buy them besides the farmers markets? Can Edge of the Woods and Thyme & Season and Elm City Market carry them?