Remembering house music legend DJ Deeon, dead at 56
Chicago house icon DJ Deeon passed this week. The producer pioneered the "ghetto house" subgenre in the early 1990s.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
In the last year, appreciation for house music has seen a bit of a renaissance.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
That's a Beyonce reference. I got it. And it's true. The genre emerged in Chicago, and we're going to take a moment to remember one of the city's legends in house music, DJ Deeon.
(SOUNDBITE OF DJ DEEON SONG, "FREAK LIKE ME")
CHANG: That is DJ Deeon's 1996 hit, "Freak Like Me."
DJ SCRAP DIRTY: DJ Deeon was one of the architects - what we call the godfather of ghetto house.
CHANG: And that, my friends, is DJ Scrap Dirty, a fellow Chicago native who talked to us about Deeon's bass-heavy, sexually liberated sounds.
DJ SCRAP DIRTY: Ghetto house actually was like the child that nobody wanted to speak about because it was birthed in the underground - in the basement parties.
FLORIDO: It made waves around the world. DJ Deeon was even name-checked in Daft Punk's 1997 track "Teachers," which lists some of the French duo's influences.
CHANG: News of Deeon's death was posted on his Facebook page yesterday. DJ Deeon Boyd was 56 years old.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREAK LIKE ME")
DJ DEEON: (Singing) You need a freak like me to make love to your body.
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