TRAXMAN - Beat Up Tha Old Skool (Mixtape)

Style: Ghetto House
Length: 30 minutes
December 18th, 2012

UPDATE: Spin Magazine just named “The Mind of Traxman” as their #2 Best Dance Album of 2012!

Ghetto house — the raw, heavily-syncopated branch of house music that fills this exclusive throwback mix — is also referred to by some as ghetto tracks or booty tracks. But don’t let Traxman hear you calling it by the latter, softer term. “This isn’t Miami!” he says.

The genre owes its existence to a much rougher sense of time and place, as it found its voice in the ghettos of Chicago during the early ’90s. “House was dying because it didn’t reflect our environment anymore,” Trax tells us. “That ‘preppy house’ shit was too happy. The older guys were getting signed to majors and losing sight of where house came from and losing their edge.”

It’s a style filled with ‘hood refrains, generally set to a tempo ranging from 125BPM-145BPM, and was just one in a series of homegrown genres born out of the house movement, which began there. Juke and footwork music sprang from the ghetto house scene in the late ’90s. Most of the artists on this mix still make music, but have added newer genres like these to their skill set.

This may only be a small slice of a rich musical era, but it’s a good place to start. And it reflects a moment in history that deserves recognition from the youth around the world, and not just in Chicago. So learn something and listen to this mix of some of the biggest and best ghetto house tracks from 1993-97.

Be forewarned, this music is explicit and may require parental advisory.

Photography: Oliver Rivard