In late November, Mister Cee, the prominent hip-hop D.J., unexpectedly announced his second resignation in little more than a year from Hot 97, the influential New York station where he worked for 21 years. He said he stepped down this time not because of the earlier disclosures that he had solicited transgender prostitutes, but because he could see the station evolving without him — incorporating more pop crossovers in its playlist, for instance — and he wanted to leave on his own terms.
“I can play anything, any genre of music, but I do feel that because of the direction that Hot is going in,” Mister Cee, 48, said recently in his first in-depth interview about his decision, “I might be the answer for now, but I don’t think I’ll be the answer five or 10 years from now.” Rather than wait for, as he put it, “that tap on the shoulder,” he moved on.
Less than a month later, he was back on the air, spinning strictly classic rap and R&B throwbacks on Saturday afternoons for Radio 103.9 (WNBM-FM), which began broadcasting in the New York area in July. While Hot 97 (WQHT-FM, 97.1) has always been known as a masculine, aggressive station, Mister Cee said, Radio 103.9 targets an older, more female audience whose members came of age during his prime hip-hop years.
At Hot 97, Mister Cee, once the D.J. for Big Daddy Kane and the executive producer of the Notorious B.I.G.’s debut album, “was the glue between the old and the new,” said Chris Green, the head of national radio promotions for Capitol Music Group, who has known the D.J. since the mid-’90s. But Mister Cee always knew he would eventually “make the transition to urban adult radio,” Mr. Green added.
Ken Johnson, the program director for Radio 103.9, said New York is the rare radio market where D.J.’s are still local celebrities and personalities. “Mister Cee is all about the people,” he said. “His experience with the people who listen to the music is invaluable.”
“His personal life is his personal life,” Mr. Johnson added.
In September 2013, however, it was more than that. Mister Cee first resigned from Hot 97 amid much-publicized incidents, including three arrests, of soliciting oral sex from transgender prostitutes, a taboo in an industry that has long wrestled with homophobic impulses.
In an emotional on-air interview with Ebro Darden, then Hot 97’s program director, Mister Cee admitted to some of what he had publicly denied for years. “What you did today in hip-hop is monumental,” Mr. Darden told him. “You have saved people’s lives today in a real way.” Mister Cee changed his mind and returned to the D.J. booth.
Then last month he decided to leave Hot 97 for good. “Nobody knew that I was going to resign that day,” said Mister Cee, born Calvin Lebrun. He hadn’t told a soul, he said, not even Funkmaster Flex, his friend and the only D.J. who had worked at the station longer. (Both the station’s on-air personnel and its management declined to comment on Mister Cee’s departure.)
Mister Cee’s co-workers found out the same way the outside world did: via an Instagram post uploaded at the top of his 12 p.m. slot that afternoon. T T Torrez, the music director at Hot 97, burst into the D.J. booth. “She had Flex on speakerphone,” Mister Cee recalled. “ ‘Cee! Cee! Flex wants to talk to you.’ I said I didn’t want to talk to him because he’d try to lure me back like he did the previous years.”
When 50 Cent called later to ask why Mister Cee had left so suddenly, “I said to him, ‘I can’t be on Hot 97 at 50 years old,’ ” Mister Cee said. “He said, ‘I get it.’ ”
There have been other changes at the station this year. Mister Cee’s departure followed that of Angie Martinez, a host with two decades at Hot 97, who left in June for the rival station Power 105.1 (WWPR-FM, 105.1). Just before that, Mr. Darden had given up his job as program director to host the station’s morning show. Karlie Hustle, Hot 97’s music director for three years, resigned in August.
Mister Cee had his own baggage. “I go to therapy twice a month,” he said, a process that he credits with providing some clarity about his sexuality and what he calls his addiction. He defends his behavior, but acknowledges, “doing it illegally was wrong.”
“Saying all of it was wrong is not fair to myself, and it’s not fair to the gay community,” he said.
Still, Mister Cee prefers not to label himself and uses a musical metaphor to explain. “It’s not that I don’t want to say I’m bisexual,” he said. “It’s almost like, you hear a certain record — is this a hip-hop record or an R&B record? I’m not so sure. I guess that’s where I am.”
Above all, Mister Cee, who still spins at clubs most weekends, is grateful to be back on the job. “There’s room for an old man in hip-hop, let’s not get it messed up,” he said.
But adjustments are necessary. With an older audience, “You have to be careful to not be as aggressive on the mike,” Mister Cee said in a follow-up interview after his first weekend oldies set, which mixed the Bee Gees and the Fugees.
“You can be excited, but you don’t have to scream and yell to get the point across,” he said. “You don’t have to be Busta Rhymes — you can be Jay Z.”
