House music was born in Chicago in the 1980s. And it was to the Windy City that all eyes – and ears – turned to once again a decade later when the bastard offspring of Frankie Knuckles, Ron Hardy et al began making waves across the city and beyond. This is the story of Chicago’s second wave of house producers – Cajmere, Derrick Carter, DJ Sneak, and co. As one of the scene’s key players, Boo Williams, tells Ben Cardew: “It was like a new way to start this thing all over again…”

For dance music fans in the 1990s, the names of two US cities were burned into collective hearts: Detroit and Chicago, the twin pillars of innovation, funk and soulful party starting. Detroit meant techno: The Belleville Three, Jeff Mills and titanic noise, while Chicago meant house and in particular the second wave of Chicago producers like DJ Sneak, Cajmere, Boo Williams, Ron Trent, Roy Davis Jr., Felix Da Housecat, Paul Johnson and Glenn Underground, who came barrelling out of the Windy City in the early-90s, bringing a tough, grinding groove to the soulful disco house template established by first-wave producers and DJs like Ron Hardy, Armando, Lil Louis and Frankie Knuckles.

Chicago house music had long been warmly received in the UK: Farley “Jackmaster” Funk and Steve “Silk” Hurley both scored ‘Top of the Pops’-bothering chart hits in 1986 and ‘87, while the acid house scene played out to a soundtrack that was heavy on Chicago. But Chicago’s second wave arguably had a greater impact on international dance music than its first. Sneak, Cajmere et al might not have equalled the mainstream chart success of their successors – although there were the odd hits, like Paul Johnson’s inescapable ‘Get Get Down’ – but they found a rabid audience in Britain, in clubs like Manchester’s Bugged Out!, Leeds’ Back To Basics and London’s Ministry of Sound, while British DJs like Luke Solomon, Huggy and Basement Jaxx took the new Chicago sound and ran with it. 

In Germany Ian Pooley and DJ Tonka brought Teutonic funk to the new-wave Chicago groove; in the Netherlands Djax-Up-Beats label gave Chicago producers a welcome home; and in Paris Daft Punk were intently keyed into Chicago, with their debut album ‘Homework’ almost a homage to the new Chicago sound. That classic French Touch idea of filtered disco samples and swinging beats? Pure Chicago second wave.

The influence of second-wave Chicago continues today. Brilliant though they are, early Chicago house hits like Farley “Jackmaster” Funk’s ‘Love Can’t Turn Around’ are simply too ponderous for most modern dancefloors. But a DJ Sneak disco number – all street-wise swagger and irresistible groove – will have no problem sending a 2023 party into filtered overdrive, while Beyoncé’s chart-topping ‘Renaissance’ album reads like a homage to second-wave Chicago, with Cajmere, Luke Solomon and Chicago-born DJ Honey Dijon among the production credits. In many ways, second-wave Chicago is underground house music today, for those who don’t want to take up the deep house noodle or pledge their allegiance to New York garage; it’s house music in two-day old clothes, that hasn’t cleaned its teeth, a little rough and ready, maybe, but always ready to charm, with its battered heart on its sleeve.

What makes this success even more impressive is that Chicago, at the start of the 1990s, was in steep decline as a house music force, enduring slow strangulation at the hands of various musical, cultural and economic factors, including labels’ shady business deals, a lack of club spaces and the inexorable rise of hip hop.

“The people who were purveying that kind of dishonest business practice, continued to practice their business,” says DJ Heather, the Brooklyn-born DJ who made a name for herself in the 1990s as one of Chicago’s best DJs. These nefarious economic practices were not exactly uncommon among the labels who helped birth the first wave of Chicago house music, with more than a dozen artists suing Trax Records in October 2022 over alleged unpaid royalties. “Subsequently it was like the open secret,” Heather continues, “well, this person isn’t so awesome. But I will go ahead and sign with them because this is an option for me. And then over time, it just kind of got dead.”

Ron Trent, the Chicago DJ and producer who launched the key second-wave label Prescription in 1993, says that many important early house producers had left the Windy City by the start of the 1990s. “You had so many of the pioneers who had moved on with their careers in the industry and not really having a presence in Chicago,” he says. “Around the same time, Frankie (Knuckles) and David Morales had established (New York house label) Def Mix; and the stores and the industry here are also changing over. There’s this new wave of house music being really pushed for by New York as a matter of practice, New York Underground.”

“Hip hop took kids out of the house scene when the radio stations went off air in February and March of 1989,” Chicago DJ Derrick Carter explained to journalist Frank Broughton in 1995. “I was working at Importes, Etc. (a legendary local record store) and someone ran into the store and said: ‘I was just listening to the radio and WBMX is off the air!’ The whole store went quiet. We knew we were making money off house being big on the radio. Out of the store alone, we could sell 1,500 to 2,000 copies of a big local record. In those days you could sell 5,000 locally. Now kids are happy to sell 1,500 to 2,000 in total.”

But as the house music baton passed, temporarily, to New York, a new wave of Chicago DJs, producers and labels were waiting in the wings. “What was starting to come to the forefront was this younger, suburban rave scene,” Trent explains. “We’re talking about Derrick Carter, Mark Farina, Spencer Kincy (aka Gemini) and those who got influenced by Cajmere.” DJ Heather says that the new influx of DJs felt like a genuine new wave of house music. “Absolutely,” she says. “But also, very much aware of the common thread. Those waves were pushed up against each other. So, it was like a natural progression.”

Cajmere, aka Curtis Jones, aka Green Velvet, was a hugely important figure for this new wave, after returning to Chicago from California in 1991. “Cajmere and I were really tight – like, very, very tight, come-over-and-eat-dinner-with-my-family type of tight,” says Trent. “He was really honing in on his sound, which was totally different. He had his own thing… When he came back [from California] he had a big desire to make music, and Hula & Fingers offered him the platform to do so.”

Hula & K. Fingers, an R’n’B/house production duo from Illinois with credits for Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince and Kool Moe Dee, may not have made the same global impact as other Chicago house artists. But Trent says that the duo and their Clubhouse Records label were incredibly important in the second wave of Chicago house, releasing early records by Cajmere, Lidell Townsell and Trent himself. “They set up a studio and had equipment and all that kind of stuff,” he says. “I kind of joined the team and so did Cajmere and that’s when we started really cutting our teeth.”

One of those early Cajmere records on Clubhouse would prove pivotal in the Chicago house renaissance: the bubbling, quaking, kill-a-dancefloor-to-this-day, sing-along 1992 classic ‘Percolator’. “[‘Percolator’] was a track that everybody could play,” DJ Sneak told The Chicago Reader in 2012. “Not just the ghetto South Side kids, not just Bad Boy Bill on the radio – everybody came for that record.”

“‘Percolator’ became huge,” Trent explains. “He [Cajmere] had a good thing going, he created his own label, Cajual, and had his distribution happening. And so when Chez (Damier) and I decided to start with Prescription, our distribution was through Cajual Records.”

Cajual Records made its debut in 1992 and immediately hit pay dirt with yet another second-wave Chicago classic: Cajmere and Dajae’s ‘Brighter Days’, a brilliantly catchy house number that combined a soulful vocal with a rock-hard bass drum thump, a combination that would later typify the Cajual sound. It reached number two on Billboard’s Hot Dance Music/Club Play Chart. 

Early releases on the label were dominated by Cajmere – although Derrick Carter made his Cajual debut in 1992, with Ron Trent following in 1993 – but the label (and its harder sub-label Relief) would eventually welcome a who’s who of the new Chicago scene, releasing records by Spencer Kincy, DJ Sneak, Paul Johnson, Boo Williams, Glenn Underground, Gene Farris and Johnny Fiasco. In 1994, when Cajual released its ground-breaking compilation The New Chicago House Sound, no one was going to argue with its audacious title.

“Before Cajual was Djax (Up-Beats). I think I made my first record on Djax… But when Cajmere started doing Cajual records, it brought back that home feeling, a little bit,” Boo Williams explains. “It was like a new way to start this thing all over again, which inspired other labels to basically do the same thing. And it carried on going, started getting bigger and everybody started getting into producing then.”

Cajmere, Williams explains, brought a lot of artists together. “A lot of artists were doing stuff on Djax over there in Holland. When Cajmere started doing it, it was like we didn’t have to go over there to do music. Back home, here in Chicago, it all just branched out and started this new brand of music.”

In a 1995 interview with Jockey Slut, Cajmere said that Cajual “started a rejuvenation of house in Chicago”. “The Cajual thing, it made it seem like a real thing, it wasn’t just a couple of releases and then, you know, other labels started to take off too,” he said. Other important local labels in the second wave of Chicago house included Prescription, Sneak’s Defiant and Felix da Housecat’s (Belgium-based) Radikal Fear, while internationally Germany’s Force Inc, Canada’s 83 West and London’s Classic – a collaboration between Derrick Carter and UK DJ Luke Solomon – kept the Chicago flag flying.

The music these new producers were making was recognisably Chicago, bearing big disco influences, a soulful force and a marked musicality. But it was different, too: tougher, more no nonsense, deep, but unafraid of getting ugly.

“I wouldn’t say ‘aggressive’,” DJ Heather explains. “I would just say, an upfront style, where it was a combination of quote unquote ‘jackin’’ sounds but it could have elements of techno, of gospel, all these other things, industrial records, all these samples and layers coming together in a really raw form. Because, also, technology is changing, people are either able to get gear themselves or share pieces, save up for it, to experiment, that kind of thing; using stuff that is supposed to do one thing but making the best out of the mistakes to get the sounds that sound like another.”

Later second-wave Chicago classics include The Innocent (aka Derrick Carter)’s swaggering horn classic, ‘Theme From Blue Cucaracha’; DJ Sneak’s pitch-perfect filter disco number ‘You Can’t Hide From Your Bud’, Gemini’s bleepy, sleepy ‘Day Dreaming’, Paul Johnson’s itchingly addictive ‘Get Get Down’ and Roy Davis Jr.’s heavenly ‘Gabriel’, with Peven Everett.

Outside of Chicago, ears were pricking up. ‘Percolator’ and ‘Brighter Days’ were both big club hits in the UK, as was Green Velvet’s 1993 track ‘The Preacher Man’; DJ Sneak’s ‘Disco Erotica’, taken from his 1994 ‘Moon Doggy’ EP, was a dancefloor bomb; and Ron Trent and Chez Damier’s 1995 song ‘Morning Factory’ (a cross between deep house and Chicago soul) was hailed as a classic. By 1994, when Bugged Out! opened its doors in Manchester, the second wave of Chicago DJs were regular visitors to the UK.

“The first time I went to London, I played the Ministry of Sound. I never forget that man, because it blew my mind to go over there,” says Williams, of a trip he identifies as being in “94 - 95”. “When you get to the party and see all these people who knew me. It’s like, they knew! It’s like they just walk up to me the same way: ‘Hey, how are you doing Boo?’ It’s kind of crazy.”

“The second-wave kids had already heard – and were reading in magazines – about how house music was making an impact,” Sneak told The Chicago Reader. “They knew that door was already open, that the groundwork was already laid by all the pioneers. Between 1990 and ‘94, a lot of Chicago producers actually moved out of Chicago, went to Europe, went to New York, all these places, and were already spreading the word even harder. So, in ‘93, ‘94, ‘95, all these younger producers were like: ‘Now is the time.’”

Trent also mentions playing Ministry of Sound, which had opened in south London in 1991, inspired by New York’s Paradise Garage. “When I was coming over, Ministry of Sound had opened not too long ago. I played Ministry of Sound several times actually. It had one of the best systems. Larry (Levan) before he died had kind of christened it,” Trent says. “That was a very memorable moment for me: hearing music on the sound system, the reaction, the night, you know?”

Other nights were rather more varied during Trent’s first trips to the UK. “We had some other very forgettable parties. But that was more the flavour of it than some of the other aspects. Because when we were coming over, certain things hadn’t been developed. We were pioneering something of a new sound. And so we’re talking about younger promoters, promoters who don’t necessarily have the big money and that kind of thing. It wasn’t fully industrialised yet. So, the sound system may be OK. The turnout may be OK. We were literally tilling the soil,” he says.

Luke Solomon, who did as much as anyone to help share the new Chicago sound in the UK, says that it took a while to catch fire. “I think Derrick Carter was a phenomenon that actually paved the way and potentially opened a lot of doors for the second generation,” he says. “We often put on all of these DJs very early at Space (a midweek house club in London’s Bar Rumba from 1995-2002) to smaller crowds and even struggled to fill the clubs – but I think as the labels around these artists started to grow it in turn boosted their profiles. 

“Predominantly this was Relief, Cajual, Prescription – all of which came out of the same hub. I think these labels really resonated as an alternative to the NYC sound that was dominating and the attention from NYC to Chicago in the UK started to shift. And then it just became an alternative fandom thing that we are so good at in the UK.”

Williams says UK parties were “a little bit different but it’s just about the same”. “That was like, man, this music has really influenced people!” he adds. “When I first started going over there I know there were other producers in Chicago, going over before me and all that. But when I started going over there, that’s when it really started getting good. Because around ‘94/‘95, that’s when house music to me was at its peak. Because it was fresh, everybody had a fresh mind, with that raw sound.”

Chicago’s music, Williams says, “influenced a lot of people”. But it was a two-way relationship: Luke Solomon met Derrick Carter when DJing in Chicago and the two became inseparable, setting up Classic Recordings to bridge the transatlantic divide, releasing music from UK house producers including Matthew Herbert and Nail, as well as Chicagoans like Derrick Carter, DJ Sneak and Gemini. 

Manchester’s Paper Recordings, set up in 1993 by a group of Haçienda workers, specialised in deep, disco-influenced house music that was very Northern English but also released music from the likes of Derrick Carter and Ian Pooley, while 20/20 Vision (created by Back To Basics resident Ralph Lawson), Nuphonic and Glasgow Underground Recordings helped to hold up a distorted mirror to the new Chicago sound, their music proving hugely popular with US DJs.

Solomon says that “the dots began to join and a transatlantic community began to form” between DJs and producers in the UK and the US. “There was a close-knit world of friendships between a few key people in the UK that built the bridges,” he says. “Ralph Lawson and Huggy, (Back To Basics promoter) Dave Beer and the Leeds crew were heavily supporting Chicago DJs – alongside me and Kenny (Hawkes, his partner in Space). It soon transpired that Chicago humour and the love of ‘having a lovely time’ was something that we shared with our Chicago counterparts.”

In France, meanwhile, a youthful Daft Punk were paying attention. As well as a Chicago house roll call on ‘Homework’ track ‘Teachers’, the duo’s Radio One 1997 Essential Mix and 1999 Essential Selection were packed with second-wave Chicago talent, including songs by Paul Johnson, Roy Davis Jr., Cajmere and Green Velvet. DJ Sneak remixed Daft Punk’s 1997 single ‘Burnin’’ and collaborated with the duo on ‘Digital Love’, while Daft Punk covered Sneak’s ‘You Can’t Hide From Your Bud’ on their 1997 Daftendirektour tour. Paul Johnson recorded for Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo’s Crydamoure label and Roy Davis. Jr released ‘Rock Shock’ on Thomas Bangalter’s Roulé, the two Chicago producers among a small group of foreigners to record for the Daft Punk imprints.

More importantly, the Daft Punk sound – particularly on their early records, with their filtered disco samples, punchy, swinging drums, melodic bass and simple vocal hooks – borrowed heavily from Chicago’s second wave. Daft Punk’s considerable success in turn sparked off a wave of imitators, both in France and worldwide, creating a slew of commercially successful house music that borrowed from Chicago via Paris. Global hits like Stardust’s ‘Music Sounds Better With You’ (the work of Bangalter plus Alan Braxe and Benjamin Diamond), Modjo’s ‘Lady (Hear Me Tonight)’, Pete Heller’s ‘Big Love’ and (less amusingly) Phats & Small’s ‘Turn Around’ meant that by the turn of the millennium, a diluted take on second wave Chicago house was one of the biggest sounds in pop music. (And, yes, New York’s Todd Terry and Louie Vega certainly played a role in inventing filter disco – but it was popularised by DJ Sneak.)

Alan Braxe, who became a key figure in the French Touch, says that Cajmere was an important inspiration. “To put it simply, it is the very strong emotional charge expressed in a very stripped-down way that makes this music very attractive,” he says. “This approach is very radical; everything goes to the essentials: emotion and energy.”

Overall, Chicago producers are happy with the global response to their music. “It makes you feel appreciated,” Williams says. “Because, I mean, you guys on the other side of the globe, and the way you took on the music… At first I didn’t think that people over there were serious because I thought you had your own brand of music. So, I was like: ‘OK, we’re on this side of the pond. And you’re on that side of the pond.’ And this sound somehow travelled all the way over there and influenced a nation of people to come together. It’s just amazing.” 

Trent, meanwhile, remembers the young Daft Punk coming to one of his parties. “When I moved to New York I had a space here that I opened up and I was doing events. It was called USG or Urban Sound Gallery,” he says. “One of my guys, he recounts when he first came to my place, they (Daft Punk) were freaking out and sitting around, soaking it all in. And we had no idea that these guys were soaking it all in so they can create this body of work that they’re doing.”

Not that this bothered him. “I have no problems with anybody getting inspired and then paying homage to what they were inspired by,” he says. “I think that’s great. A lot of people didn’t do that. And that’s where the industry gets fucked, if you will, because people don’t create the storyline, the narrative and the history. It’s always about me.”

Trent says he wasn’t surprised that Chicago’s second wave of house took off in Europe because Chicago had always been open to music from outside the US. “We had a desire to be in other markets that had been the basis of how we educated ourselves in music; the things that we appreciated, the music videos, the music we were collecting, especially on the Italo disco tip,” he says. “So those [European] markets were not markets that weren’t familiar to us.”

Added to this is the fact that Chicago was very much a party town, something that resonated in decadent Europe. “You lived for the weekend,” says Williams. “Chicago was like a party capital of music. So, every week, people go to school, go to work, do whatever they have to do. But no matter what was going on, you had to live for the weekend.”

In 2001 Daft Punk’s second album, ‘Discovery’, signalled a shift away from the Chicago house-isms of their debut and it wasn’t long before European dance music started to look to newer, more rock-influenced, forms of inspiration, resulting in electroclash and the Justice-inspired wave of Ed Banger (and ‘ead banging) house. Meanwhile in Chicago, the accelerated tempos and ultra-repetition of ghetto booty house eventually morphed into footwork, a style of music that owes a debt to classic Chicago house (and in particular Cajmere’s ‘Percolator’) without exactly recreating it.

But second-wave Chicago house never went away. Derrick Carter, Felix Da Housecat, DJ Sneak and Cajmere continue to be some of the world’s most in-demand DJs; Ron Trent’s 2022 album ‘What Do the Stars Say to You’ was widely hailed as one of the best of the year; Cajual celebrated the 30th anniversary of ‘Brighter Days’ in 2022 with a set of new remixes; and Boo Williams released an excellent new album, ‘Depths of Life’ earlier this year. And then, of course, there’s Beyoncé’s multi-million selling ‘Renaissance’ album and accompanying tour, which have helped to bring the Chicago sound to vast new audiences.

Luke Solomon says that ‘Renaissance’ was heavily inspired by Chicago house. “Primarily because of Honey Dijon and myself’s connection with Andrew Makadsi (Beyonce’s creative director),” he explains. “I think Beyoncé absorbed a lot of the history and music we were sharing, which was not just Chicago, also NYC and Detroit,” he says. “It was amazing to hear our DNA in that album – which naturally had a lot of its roots in Chicago.”

“I am just happy that I was born here, in Chicago,” Williams concludes, “because that seemed to be at the right place at the right time for everything – musically and everything. I was happy to be a part of it, man, and I’m happy to see that we’re starting to really grab this thing and hold on to it. It comes from ten people to 100 people to 1,000 people, or 10,000 to 100,000 people. And the list keeps going on and on, every year can be bigger. Because it really is something special.” 

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This article first appeared in issue four of Disco Pogo. Which you can buy here.

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