DJ Funk, the revolutionary Chicago producer who coined and helped create the ghetto home subgenre, has died, Resident Advisor stories, citing the late musician’s good friend and collaborator DJ Slugo. In accordance with a fundraiser for funeral bills, DJ Funk had been residing with most cancers. He was 54 years previous.
Born Charles Chambers, in Chicago, DJ Funk lower his enamel on the Midwest underground rave circuit within the early Nineteen Nineties. Alongside the likes of Traxman, DJ Assault, and DJ Deeon, he pioneered a brand new sound that combined sped-up home and Miami bass with raunchy name and response chants taken from hip-hop. The identify “ghetto home” first appeared on Road Traxx II, one of many now-classic EPs Chambers put out on native label Dance Mania (which he later got here to personal) all through the last decade. In 1996, techno grandmaster Jeff Mills included the DJ Funk tracks “Work That Physique” and “Run (U.Okay.)” in his landmark mix at Tokyo’s Liquid Room.
Launched in 1999, Chambers’ album Booty Home Anthems—the primary in an eventual three-part sequence—offered over one million copies in america, with “Pump It,” “Work It,” and “Work That Physique” extra turning into membership staples. He based his personal label, Funk Data, in 2006, the identical 12 months he remixed Justice’s “Let There Be Mild,” from their Waters of Nazareth EP. The remix wasn’t Chambers’ solely crossover with French contact; he’d beforehand been name-dropped by Daft Punk on “Lecturers,” the Homework lower that served as an prolonged shoutout to Thomas Bangalter and Man-Manuel de Homem-Christo’s influences.
Chambers obtained a lift of consideration in 2013, when his tracks “Home the Groove” and “The Authentic Video Conflict: Video Conflict II (Road Combine)” have been included on the compilation document Hardcore Traxx: Dance Mania Records 1986-1997. Ghetto home turned the progenitor of Chicago’s thriving juke and footwork scenes, and artists together with RP Boo and the UK’s Night Slugs collective have taken to social media to pay tribute to DJ Funk and his lasting impression on their work.
In 2012, Chambers advised Crack, “I’m not making an attempt to be a super-producer, however what I do is simply make stuff that’s related to my life. I wish to be on the present enjoying music that I’d really wish to be dancing to myself, the shit that’s gonna make me pleased.”
