Chicago footwork producer Morris Harper, better known as DJ Spinn, had the best set at this summer’s Pitchfork festival. His early-evening slot on the fest’s last day overlapped with performances by reunited British shoegaze band Slowdive and electro-pop darling Grimes, but his turnout didn’t seem to suffer for it. The tree-shaded Blue Stage felt like a family reunion; dozens of friends and collaborators joined in, including Mano’s Treated Crew and hyperactive footwork dancers the Era. Cheered on by members of the Teklife collective, which he’d cofounded as GhettoTeknitianz in 2004, Spinn dove into a euphoric, high-energy mix—but hanging over the set was the melancholy awareness that DJ Rashad was supposed to be up there with him.
Next Life is the sound of a vibrant underground community responding to a life-altering loss. One of the best tracks, the sinewy, angelic “He Watchin Us” by Chicago producer Boylan (aka Nate Boylan), refers to Rashad in its title and carries him in its DNA, right down to a sample of his vocals. And Rashad appears posthumously on the pulsing collaborative cut “OTS”—even in death, he’s still very much part of Teklife. “Spiritually he never left,” says Traxman, aka producer Cornelius Ferguson. “There’s something about that damn music—I don’t give a damn where you at. The music is just timeless.”
Gant-Man on his contribution to Next Life, “Jungle Juke”:
I wanted to do something at 140 beats per minute that still had a footwork sound in it. There’s this track, an old disco track from Europe, like with just weird synthesizers—it’s called “Life Is a Jungle.” I always loved that loop. It’s a big song in the disco and Chicago house-music scene, but the older house generation.
I actually was going to put more into that track–this is the crazy part. This guy James [Imanian-Friedman], J-Cush, he was actually over at my house the time I made it, and we were going to meet up with Spinn and Rashad. They had a little outdoor event they were doing, and I was gonna get back to it.
Long story short, James wanted to start messing with the MPC, and he didn’t know that I had the LED switch off. He ended up turning the power of the MPC off thinking he was turning it on.
He was upset—he said, “Please don’t be mad.” Anytime somebody cuts a machine off when you’re recording or have recorded, it’s like you go through the roof. So what you hear of that track is pretty much just what it is–that’s from the machine being cut off. That was basically the conclusion; it started off from a disco loop and it ended with Jamie cutting my MPC off. Blessings that I recorded it–it was meant for me to make that track.
RP Boo started with House-O-Matics as a dancer, but within weeks he was DJing too, having caught Sloan’s ear with a mixtape he’d made. He was a resident House-O-Matics DJ for a few years, and recalls an incident at one of the group’s parties. “It was a big commotion,” he says. “Ronnie was saying, ‘Stop playing the music till we get order—that’s when I give you the cue to turn the music back up.’ This one kid just comes out of nowhere, but he’s standing over the top of my head—and I just seen a crowd of people—and he said, ‘Hey, can I get on?’ I was like, ‘Nah, who’s you? Who is you to just come ask me and I never seen you?’ Come to find out that was Rashad.”
Boylan on his Next Life track, “He Watchin Us,” which uses samples of Rashad’s voice:
That was the last vocals [Rashad] ever did in my house. I got about a 15-minute spread of those, so I got mad vocals I can still use.
He’s watching down on us, so that’s why I named it that. It’s kind of gentle, but it’s got a hard edge to it. The way the pads are it’s very gentle, but the way the synths are it’s really hard, and that’s the way Rashad was to me. He was real street smart, but he had a heart of gold. I wanted him to know, wherever he is right now, that we’re still thinking about him every day.
Rashad and Spinn’s single-minded interest in footworking made it hard for them to advance in House-O-Matics, whose other members valued expertise in all styles of dance. “DJ Boo, Spinn, Rashad, and a couple of others, they did real dancing just at our parties, because it was everyone in a circle, battlin’ each other, showin’ off—they did great with that,” Sloan says. “But when it came down to our shows, it was like, ‘OK, well, we’re takin’ you, you, you, and you,’ and they just wasn’t the chosen few.”
Boo’s track on Next Life, “That’s It 4 Lil Ma,” gives dancers a six-lane highway of pulsing rhythms to vibe with, and its stuttering vocal samples and syncopated drum patterns remain distinct even as they push forward as a mind-boggling whole.
The Web also connected footwork to producers abroad, whose fascination with the sound helped shine a light on it; in late 2010, London label Planet Mu released the watershed compilation Bangs & Works Vol. 1. It was a big year for Rashad and Spinn, who began touring Europe for months at a time, leaving that many more opportunities for the next generation of producers to gig in Chicago. “They just in the house making tracks, and then give it to us to play at the parties and stuff,” says DJ Earl.
Spinn on working with fellow Teklife producer Taso on “Burn That Kush,” one of his two Next Life tracks:
When I made “Burn that Kush” I was out in LA. The sample that’s in “Burn That Kush,” that’s a track that Rashad made some years ago, ’07 or something. I’m in CVS and I’m goin’ crazy, cats not knowing why I’m goin’ crazy. I’m Shazam-ing it, I got my phone up, I’m like, “Man, that’s that track, that’s that track.” And they’re like, “What’s goin’ on?” Soon as I got back to the studio over at Taso’s crib, he’s like, “What’s goin’ on?” I’m like, “Man, listen to this track.” And I put on the original–it was called “Burn That Bitch.” He’s like, “Ooh.” I’m like, “Yeah, bro, I had to do this one right here. This is the one for the comp, right here.”
