February 23, 2025 | Nate Imig

DJ Femme Noir: trust your track record

From choir to Motown to the Milwaukee Bucks, music has always been in Tempestt's DNA.

DJ Femme Noir

"Trust yourself. You've got through every tough trial, tribulation and problem that you've ever faced."

As fans huddle inside the entrance of Fiserv Forum, there’s a collective excitement in the air. Tempestt Ballenger, better known as DJ Femme Noir, puts on her headphones.

For her, it’s showtime.

“It's pandemonium, honestly,” Ballenger says. “As a person who grew up in Illinois, like, Wisconsin sports fans are on another level,” she says.

Ballenger is one the official Bucks pre-game DJs and performs at home games throughout the season. As each game begins, it’s her job to hype up the crowd entering the arena for a Bucks win.

“I gotta match their energy. So it's definitely a good feeling up in the booth,” she says.

The atrium’s sound system, under her command, booms. And even if the jitters strike, before tens of thousands of excited fans, she knows she has a job to do.

“I definitely get nerves. I get nerves before any gig,” she says. “For me, it's always my routine of just telling myself that if it wasn't meant for me to have, I wouldn't be experiencing it. So it's like just fighting against imposter syndrome.”

“But if I wasn't meant to be in this space, then I wouldn't be here. So I just kind of step into that,” she adds.

This season is Ballenger’s fourth with the Bucks, and it’s her second season as one of the team’s resident pre-game DJs. It’s a prominent position, one she feels honored to share with fans.

“The longer I spend being a DJ, the more I just kind of recognize it's really just about being yourself and just having the courage to be vulnerable, and allow people to see you as yourself."

"And all my identities, being a Black, queer person, I walk into spaces, and I often don't see people who look like, or share the same experiences, I might have had,” she says.

For Ballenger, the Bucks gig, even without words, communicates something more powerful than hype alone – it’s about representation, strength and community.

And it is a familiar role for her; between pride events, bar parties and drag bingo brunches, she’s behind her DJ setup most days of the week.

This past summer, she says she especially loved performing at hometown LGBTQ pride celebrations around Wisconsin. She says beyond the Milwaukee and Madison metro areas, communities thrive, even if the population is less concentrated.

“It's beautiful to see that those events are occurring in those [rural] spaces. Because, I mean, a lot of us, we didn't grow up in bigger cities like Madison or Milwaukee. A lot of us grew up in those small towns with graduating classes of 50 people.”

“I see so many different LGBTQ families. And, you know, it's all so beautiful to see, because you're like, ‘Wow, like that life is possible.’"

"There's folks that don't think that type of life is possible for them, but it's like, ‘No, it's right here. Right in my backyard. It’s right in front of my eyes.'”

A heritage of music

Ballenger, 33, grew up in a proud musical family.

DJ Femme Noir

Her father was a choir director at The Greater Way M.B. Church on the west side of Chicago and shared his passion for music with her, and the rest of the family, at a young age. Her mother is a music lover, too, especially singers with big voices.

“She'd listen to Whitney. She'd listen to Babyface. She would go from Motown classics, to even Celine Dion occasionally. Just all over the board,” she says.

Growing up around that musical variety informs Ballenger’s musical taste today, both as a performer and as a listener. She says she’ll often channel her mom’s Motown favorites while cooking dinner or spending time decompressing at home.

And even if her public playlist doesn’t quite match her parents’, they beam with pride when they see her play.

DJ Femme Noir

DJ Femme Noir

“My parents are my biggest supporters. I couldn't be DJ Femme Noir without them. Like they come to my gigs and in t-shirts with my face on them,” she says. “But I just, I get so red. Like, I blush. My friends have even told me, like, ‘You are blushing so hard, dude.'"

Finding inspiration

Ballenger admits, with a laugh, she has been a part of Wisconsin and Illinois nightlife longer than she has been of drinking age.

She says she’d sneak into clubs to find community – or simply a dance floor – and drew inspiration from the queer performers she saw on the stages of Milwaukee’s gay bars.

“My first real example of like, overt, Black queer joy, it was Tempest Heat,” she says.

Tempest Heat was a beloved Milwaukee drag performer, famous for her acrobatic performances. She died in 2024, but she left an indelible mark on Milwaukee – and Ballenger.

“From the first jump split, I just, I fell in love. And I just did not know, like, that could exist in real life.”

Ballenger says she frequently tries to honor Tempest Heat as she approaches her art today, and she appreciates how music can create space for others to find freedom and purpose.

“My predecessors and the stories that they told me about, during the day, they were fighting like hell."

"But at night, when they had that time for themselves, they let all that frustration and worry and stress out on the dance floor. And they just sweat it out,” she says.

“And I truly give thanks every day for people like that in our community that continue to be that light. Even in their absence,” she says.

Persisting in a purple state

Ballenger says with each performance at Fiserv Forum, or at any gig around the state, it’s an opportunity to spread joy, even as Wisconsin’s political climate becomes more tense and polarizing.

“This is our community, you know, it's our world. And we have to just kind of be there for one another,” she says.

“We just have to do it together. And we're better together, far better together than we ever would be apart.”

She says she prioritizes self-care over self-doubt, affirmation over questioning, and feels the spirit of freedom drawn from those queer stages.

“I tell people, ‘You have got through every tough trial, tribulation and problem that you've ever faced. Trust your track record.’

"So for me, it's staying grounded.”