For as long as non-Chicagoans have been listening to footwork, the form has been presented as something of an outsider art. Early reviews, circa Planet Mu’s Bangs & Works comps, threw around descriptors like “alien.” There’s certainly a learning curve when it comes to acclimating to the intensity of the sound, with its reckless polyrhythms and chaotic sampling techniques. In fact, it’s easy to imagine that sense of inaccessibility was exactly what a lot of early adopters liked about the music; it’s fun to belong to an exclusive club. As the Teklife crew has spent the 2010s on an evangelical mission to spread footwork’s gospel worldwide, there’s been some concern that the genre’s increasing popularity might iron out the unorthodoxy that made it so thrilling. If anything, the opposite has been true; footwork’s evolution hasn’t been linear so much as it’s expanded in a dozen fractured directions, creating a fascinating composite of what footwork can be.
The late DJ Rashad’s Double Cup is commonly understood as the genre’s crossover moment—a work that proved footwork could transcend the dancefloor functionality of its origins and flourish in the full-length album format. But the movement hasn’t seemed to shake that outsider status in the same way that, say, dubstep once did. I wonder if that’s in part because of the way it continues to be framed as an anomaly within the dance-music underground—understood as a niche concern rather than placing it within the broader spectrum of electronic music at large, even as guys like DJ Earl release songs with Oneohtrix Point Never. That should change with Still Trippin’, the long-awaited debut album from Teklife’s youngest member, DJ Taye. More than any footwork release to date—Double Cup included—it offers a vision of just how naturally, even gracefully, its signature sounds can live in the world. Taye makes it look easy for footwork to coexist with more popular styles without sacrificing its hardcore essence. His album is at once beyond footwork and of it completely—a case for the form being strengthened, not diluted, by the push and pull of influences over the years. And in that sense, it is a tribute to Rashad, who knew that before anyone else did.
Taye is not the first footwork producer to incorporate their own raps into tracks, a tradition that extends back to early-1990s ghetto house, but he is pretty easily the best at it, having originally gotten into music as an aspiring MC and rap producer. “Trippin,” with arpeggiated 8-bit synths that sound like how the beginning of a mushroom trip feels, might be the biggest formal leap for Teklife since Double Cup—not just for Taye’s Three 6 Mafia-inspired bars, but the overall structure. With verses, bridges, and choruses, the track takes the outward shape of a pop or rap song but remains undeniably footwork; that’s partly because of how Taye treats his own vocals, warping and chopping them to correspond with the hyper-technical drum programming. But while the album’s rap-oriented moments head-fake towards more traditional song structures, they’re complicating them, too. “Get It Jukin” lets Chuck Inglish’s verse breathe, drums riding low in the mix before climaxing into a percussive fireworks display. This is not the simple halfway point between two genres, but a rap song understood through the framework of footwork; the “hook” is not the words, but the rhythms, which communicate for themselves.
Lest you think Taye had abandoned the straight-up works, there are songs like “Truu” or “Bonfire,” two DJ Paypal collaborations that ground Still Trippin’s fusion experiments in the raw energy of footwork as it existed a decade ago, in basements and at Battle Groundz. A third Paypal collab, “Pop Drop,” might be the strangest juke track I’ve ever heard, warping a familiar Dance Mania tempo into increasingly unpredictable patterns, like a game of Bop It played on an MPC mid acid trip. “Need It,” with Teklife mainstay DJ Manny, doesn’t sound like any footwork song you’ve heard before; over stuttering breakbeats, a delirious acid bassline, and subtly encroaching dubstep wubs, a chipmunked vocal sample splits into two parallel paths in real time. It’s a feat that it all manages to remain legible, the track’s constantly moving parts at once informing one another and getting out of each other’s way. In a sense, the footwork element lies in the construction that could only come from a dancer’s perspective—an intuitive sense of rhythmic grace that transcends songwriting logic.
Years ago, listeners often responded to footwork by asking questions: Was it meant to be functional rather than formal? What setting was it meant to be heard in? How the hell do you dance to it? Still Trippin’ begs a different question: Why isn’t everyone rapping or singing over footwork beats? It represents not a shift in how footwork should sound, but an expansion of how it could sound, bigger than Chicago but Chicago to the core. And it makes early concerns about accessibility seem petty. One thing way cooler than membership in an exclusive club is making the world as weird as you want it.
