While attending Erasmus Hall High School in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the neighborhood of Flatbush transitioned to a predominantly African-American population amid white flight, the flamboyantly vanguard Levan (who dyed his hair orange nearly a decade before the ascendance of punk rock), was frequently bullied by his classmates.

[8] Eventually, he dropped out of high school and found assuagement in Harlem's longstanding ball culture as a dressmaker, where he first became acquainted with fellow designer and lifelong best friend Frankie Knuckles.

[8] He became infatuated with an idea of making the "music that would never stop" during a brief affair[9] with hippie DJ David Mancuso, who introduced Levan to Manhattan's burgeoning underground downtown dance culture.

[6][7] Mancuso was the proprietor of The Loft, a minimally decorated, members-only dance club (uniquely situated in his home) where "punch, fruit and candy" were served in lieu of alcohol[8] and music was processed by a state-of-the-art sound system.

While Knuckles was still trying to make his way in the New York club scene, Levan soon became a popular attraction at venues such as SoHo Place due to his "diva persona," which he had previously developed in the city's notoriously competitive black drag "houses".

Although owner Michael Brody—who employed Levan at the defunct Reade Street in 1976, where he "developed the techniques as well as the sound – the deep, dark bass, the queasy, dubby emotion that he would extract from records – that would make him a legend"[8]—intended to create a downtown facsimile of Studio 54 catering to an upscale white gay clientele, the new venue initially drew an improbable mix of streetwise blacks, Latinos, and punks after a disastrous opening night alienated the target demographic; according to West End Records founder Mel Cheren, Brody's former companion and a silent partner in the venture, "The sound equipment got stuck in a blizzard at an airport in Louisville, Kentucky.

Filling the void left by leading DJ/remixer Walter Gibbons following his conversion to evangelical Christianity, Levan became a prolific producer and mixer in the 1980s, with many of his efforts crossing over onto the national dance music charts.

One of the first dance releases to incorporate influences from dub music and an appended vocal-only edit, Levan tinkered with the song for nearly a year despite the looming bankruptcy of West End Records.

"[5] As beat-matching and ideological stylistic adherence became the norm among club DJs, Levan's idiosyncratic sets (running the gamut from Evelyn "Champagne" King, Chaka Khan and Deodato with Camille to Kraftwerk, Manuel Göttsching,[3] and British synthpop) elicited criticism from some quarters.

Unable to secure a long-term residency after a stay at the short-lived Choice in the East Village alongside DJ/proprietor Richard Vasquez and Joey Llanos, Levan began to sell his valuable records for drug money.

Dismissed as a relic in New York despite managing occasional appearances at the au courant Sound Factory, his popularity had nonetheless soared among connoisseurs of disco and early American electronic dance music in Europe and Japan.

[3] To the mutual surprise of both parties, he ended up staying for three months; during this period, he remixed and produced tracks for the club's record label and helped to tune the venue's acclaimed sound system.