Influences: Dj Deeon (Dance Mania)

Hailing from the South side of Chicago, DJ Deeon was part of a fresh generation of stars who made their names in the mid 90s with the raw, stripped back, hyper bpms of ghetto house. His sleazy club sounds – including the all time Ghetto House classic The Freak – feature on the recently released Dance Mania: Ghetto Madness LP that dropped via Strut a couple of weeks back. We asked Deeon to tell us all about the tracks that influenced him, and his choices take in the early house experiments of Chip E, Steve Silk Hurley's lesser known rendition of I Can't Turn Around (originally written by Isaac Hayes, and later made famous by Farley Jackmaster Funk), right through to early examples of how much Chi-Town loves an X-Rated lyric – Jackmaster Dick's Jack The Dick is a rude as they come, and the template for a million filthy minded, party-starting Dance Mania records that followed… As Deeon himself has said, ghetto house is music "for strippers, for the street – the stepchild of Chicago house." Here are the tracks that made that stepchild get up jam…
Dance Mania – Ghetto Madness is out now via Strut.
I thought Farley was an idol back in the early days. WBMX was the first radio station to play house and you had Farley and the Hot Mix 5 with guys like Mickey “Mixin’” Oliver, Scott “Smokin’” Silz and, later, Julian “Jumpin’” Perez every week. Farley’s early productions were big in clubs – ‘Aw Shucks’, ‘Jack The Bass’. He was early with X-rated lyrics on a house track. This was on the flip of ‘Jack The Bass’.
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