- At a pivotal moment in footwork history, DJ Manny injects the genre with a healthy dose of romance and R&B.
- At its core, footwork has always been about dancing. "It wasn't a thing that we made and called footwork," DJ Spinn explained in a 2014 interview with Dummy. "It just got called that 'cause people wanted to footwork to it." This symbiotic relationship between dancing and music has propelled the formerly niche genre to astronomical heights. If anyone was looking for an example of the Black tradition of call-and-response in dance music, it'd be wise to point them toward the numerous YouTube videos of footwork battles, where dancers' legs jerk in this and that direction, caught in a Tasmanian Devil-like whir.
Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, DJ Manny has been involved in the footwork scene since the age of ten, when he was a dancer before he became a producer. His early records, while pointedly battle-ready, have always represented footwork's soulful side, thanks to strong influences from house and R&B. His latest album, Signals In My Head, purposefully mellows some of the more boisterous parts of footwork’s personality in a quest to create what he calls a "romantic footwork" record, an endeavour he believes no one has attempted before.
One explanation for this: footwork has always been about shattering the genteel predictability of house, the supreme romancer of dance music. It sounds challenging to insert love poems into a genre whose entire premise rests on throwing agile dancers off with a blaze of syncopated hi-hats. Then again, footwork has come a long way since the Teklife crew came into the picture. Once cloistered to community centers, ice rinks, even alleys, the genre has historically been misunderstood in its hometown of Chicago, even as it was catapulted to the international stage with the pivotal release of Planet Mu's Bangs & Works compilation in 2010.
But there have been gradual improvements in its hometown reputation since. Today, a footwork film called Footnotes is being projected onto Chicago's Merchandise Mart through September in a move that has brought renewed hope to the footwork community that, perhaps after 30 years, the genre and its accompanying dance style will receive the visibility it deserves in its birthplace.
This is the landscape that DJ Manny, now based in New York, finds himself in. In his new home base he has direct access to a vast diversity of genres beyond footwork that have swept over the city's bustling scene in recent years. You can hear it clearly on Signals In My Head. East Coast club makes its way into tracks like the idyllic "You All I Need," with its wistful house leanings, and "Club GTA," where laser synths take on an almost cheesy melody, but it works. An emphasis on charming melodies is what makes this album special—how else do you infuse romance into a genre that thrives on chaos? Without needing lyrics, "Signals In My Head" achieves this with sweet, lollygagging notes that make their way across idyllic pads and hiccuping drums.
DJ Manny hasn't deviated entirely from the classic footwork formula. "Wants My Body," with its Class Action sample looping and levitating above detonating percussion, couldn't make for a more perfect climax smack dab in the middle of the record. For a moment, the lyrics, "Maybe I'll find someone/Somebody who wants my body baby," sound more like a mantra than a frustrated wish.
Still, there are more mongrel hybrid tracks, like "Havin' Fun," which vacillates between nose-scrunching footwork breakdowns and jungle breaks in a frenzied chase, following what sounds like a sample from a slapstick comedy: "Did you just break that vase?" The accusation is promptly responded to with a crash, as well as frantic shrieks from a woman howling, "Papi! Papi!" "Good Love" is an enjoyable challenge, jerking between ethereal jungle and offbeat drum patterns. In moments like this, it feels like DJ Manny is doing all he can to show respect toward where he's at, while raising a tall glass to where he came from.
Tracklist01. Never Was Ah Hoe
02. U Want It
03. You All I Need
04. Club GTA
05. All I Need
06. Wants My Body feat. DJ Chap
07. Havin' Fun feat. DJ Phil
08. Good Love
09. Signals In My Head
10. That Thang
11. Smoke 'n' Fade Away
12. At First Site