Miami bass is a subgenre of hip hop music that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s. The use of drums from the Roland TR-808, sustained kick drum, heavy bass, raised dance tempos, and frequently sexually explicit lyrical content differentiate it from other hip hop subgenres. Music author Richie Unterberger has characterized Miami bass as using rhythms with a "stop-start flavor" and "hissy" cymbals with lyrics that "reflected the language of the streets, particularly Miami's historically black neighborhoods such as Liberty City, Goulds, and Overtown".
Ghetto house or booty house is a subgenre of house music which started being recognized as a distinct style from around 1992 onwards. It features minimal 808 and 909 drum machine-driven tracks and sometimes sexually explicit lyrics.
Planet Mu is an eclectic English electronic music record label created and run by Mike Paradinas. The label started out as a subsidiary of Virgin Records then Paradinas set up the label independent of Virgin. After releasing intelligent dance music, the label moved to jungle and breakcore, and then grime and dubstep and later footwork. The label also releases the music of Paradinas under various aliases such as μ-Ziq, Kid Spatula and Tusken Raiders. It celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2020.
Shitmat is an English breakcore artist and mashup producer, one of several monikers used by Henry Collins. Shitmat became known in the early 2000s for releases on the Ad Noiseam and Planet Mu labels. He also set up his own label, Wrong Music and put on parties in Brighton. His 2012 project Mash Hits remixed every UK number one single from 1952 onwards. He then stopped the Shitmat project, restarting it again in 2016.
Florida breaks, which may also be referred to as The Orlando Sound, Orlando breaks, or The Breaks, is a genre of breakbeat dance music that originated in the central region of the State of Florida, United States. Florida Breaks originates from a mixture of hip-hop, Miami bass and electro that often includes recognizable sampling of early jazz or funk beats from rare groove or popular film. Florida's breakbeat style feature vocal elements and retains the hip-hop rhythms on which is based. The Florida breakbeat style however is faster, more syncopated, and has a heavier and unrelenting bassline. The beat frequently slows and breaks down complex beat patterns and then rebuilds. The genre has been described as being easy to dance to while creating an uplifting, happy, or positive mood in the listener.
Wilson Anthony "Boozoo" Chavis was an American accordion player, singer, songwriter and bandleader. He was one of the pioneers of zydeco, the fusion of Cajun and blues music developed in southwest Louisiana.
The Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic is an annual parade held since 1929 in Chicago, Illinois. The Bud Billiken Day Parade is the largest African-American parade in the United States of America. Held annually on the city's south side on the second Saturday in August, the parade route travels on Dr. Martin Luther King Drive through the Bronzeville and Washington Park neighborhoods. At the end of the parade, in the historic Washington public park is a picnic and festival. Robert S. Abbott, the founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, created the fictional character of Bud Billiken, which he featured in as youth advice column in his paper. David Kellum, co-founder of the Bud Billiken Club and longtime parade coordinator suggested the parade as a celebration of African-American life.
Footwork, also called juke, footwork/juke or Chicago juke, is a genre of electronic music derived from ghetto house with elements of hip hop, first appearing in Chicago in the late 1990s. The music style evolved from the earlier, rapid rhythms of ghetto house, a change pioneered by RP Boo. It may draw from the rapid rhythms and sub-bass frequencies of drum & bass. Tracks also frequently feature heavily syncopated samples from rap, pop and other sources, and are often around 160 bpm.
Owsla is an American record label and creative collective. It was founded by Skrillex, Tim Smith, Kathryn Frazier, and Clayton Blaha in 2011. Skrillex announced the label on August 17, 2011. The label's first release was Porter Robinson's Spitfire.
Rashad Harden, known as DJ Rashad, was a Chicago-based electronic musician, producer and DJ known as a pioneer in the footwork genre and founder of the Teklife crew. He released his debut studio album Double Cup on Hyperdub in 2013 to critical praise. He died in April 2014 from a drug overdose.
Future house is a house music genre that emerged in the 2010s in the United Kingdom, described as a fusion of deep house, UK garage and incorporating other elements and techniques of other EDM genres. It is high in energy, generally consisting of big drops, 4/4 beats and is sonically bass heavy.
Jim Coles, professionally known as Om Unit, is an English, Bristol-based electronic producer and DJ, known for his work in electronic music and drum and bass.
Jerrilynn Patton, known as Jlin, is an electronic musician. She began producing music in 2008 and received early attention for her 2011 track "Erotic Heat". Jlin's debut album, Dark Energy, was released in 2015 to critical praise. Her follow-up Black Origami (2017) received further acclaim.
Virtual Anticipation is the first studio album by American artist Ben Aqua. It was released as a digital album on February 18, 2014 through #FEELINGS.
The Era is a Chicago-based footwork dance crew. Dancers from the group have performed at London's Barbican, the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago, and South by Southwest. The group also teaches footwork at High Concept Laboratories, where they have an incubation studio space.
Black Origami is the second album by American producer Jlin, first issued for streaming on May 11, 2017 and on other formats by Planet Mu on May 19, 2017. Produced in a year from 2015 to 2016, it features collaborations with William Basinski, Holly Herndon, Fawkes, and Dope Saint Jude. The title of Black Origami describes the structure of the music: the songs are complex pieces that take advantage of silence as much as sounds, similar to how an origami makes intricate art based on plain paper. Two tracks from previous Jlin extended plays appear on Black Origami: "Nandi" from Free Fall (2015) and "Nyakinya Rise" from Dark Lotus (2017).
Wills Glasspiegel is an American filmmaker, artist, scholar and community organizer from Chicago. Glasspiegel has spent several years working alongside electronic musicians and dancers from Sierra Leone, South Africa and Chicago. In 2017, he co-founded the arts and racial justice nonprofit, Open the Circle. He has produced public radio segments for All Things Considered and Morning Edition, and was recognized as a co-recipient of a Peabody Award in 2014 for his contributions to the public radio program Afropop Worldwide. Wills' collaborations have been featured in a variety of publications including CNN, FADER Magazine, Dazed Magazine, Pitchfork, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and Chicago Tribune. He has worked since 2016 as an artist and filmmaker with The Era Footwork Crew, including as creative director for The Era's touring performance, IN THE WURKZ, a show that won the National Dance Project award in 2019 from the New England Foundation for the Arts. Glasspiegel's work has been recognized with prizes from the MacArthur Foundation, the Field Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the City of Chicago.
I'll Tell You What is the third studio album by American electronic musician RP Boo. It was released in July 2018 under Planet Mu.
Teklife is an electronic music collective and record label from Chicago, Illinois. The group was founded by Rashad Harden and Morris Harper in 2011 in the city's suburbs, but rapidly gained traction among international audiences for pioneering the dance music genre footwork, a sped-up derivation Ghetto house which itself had been a local flavour of house music.
