In 2013, it finally looks like Chicago’s footwork pioneers are being given their due. Of course, footwork has been established as a global phenomenon for three or four years now, but the focus has always been on appropriation/mis-appropriation or on a handful of artists who have managed to transcend the scene’s insular facade. Teklife and its accompanying label/party Lit City Trax are seemingly on the tip everyone’s tongue these days and the crew is one of the hottest commodities in contemporary dance music. DJ Rashad, DJ Spinn, and more recently and much belatedly, RP Boo often receive the majority of praise, but young DJ Earl is getting his much deserved due as well. With the exception of Spinn, there isn’t anyone who manages to weave perplexingly dreamy melodies into footwork’s dissonant rubric as well as Earl. On “SomeBodyySayYeahhh”, Earl works a noodling 8 bit melody into a jungle of muted toms, hi hats and snares, giving the song a certain ear worm quality without surrendering any of the confounding sonic effects that pervade so much of the Teklife catalogue. It’s Teklife or no life after all.

Earlier today, I was listening to the new Migos tape (again) and it struck me that I enjoy it for almost the exact same reason that I enjoy the footwork coming out of the Teklife camp as of late. They both rely on vocal cadence and timbre, intense repetition, expertly crafted beat work and forceful emotion (the unrestrained anger on “I Don’t Like”, the triumphant nature of “Versace”). In a way, Migos, Chief Keef and Rick Ross have more in common with RP Boo, DJ Rashad and DJ Earl than they with Mac Miller, Earl Sweatshirt and Chance The Rapper (although the latter does perform some truly amazing vocal tricks). Take DJ Earl’s update on DJ Roc’s “Ain’t No Coming Down” for example. Earl takes a few simple, seemingly innocuous Juicy J lines and lays them over a ruthlessly syncopated beat that makes Jordan Houston’s original seem pallid in comparison. In its stripped down simplicity, “Ain’t No Coming Down” is far more affecting than the original.