DJ Funk, the innovative Chicago producer who coined and helped create the ghetto house subgenre, has died, Resident Advisor reports, citing the late musician’s friend and collaborator DJ Slugo. According to a fundraiser for funeral expenses, DJ Funk had been living with cancer. He was 54 years old.
Born Charles Chambers, in Chicago, DJ Funk cut his teeth on the Midwest underground rave circuit in the early 1990s. Alongside the likes of Traxman, DJ Assault, and DJ Deeon, he pioneered a new sound that mixed sped-up house and Miami bass with raunchy call and response chants taken from hip-hop. The name “ghetto house” first appeared on Street Traxx II, one of the now-classic EPs Chambers put out on local label Dance Mania (which he later came to own) throughout the decade. In 1996, techno grandmaster Jeff Mills included the DJ Funk tracks “Work That Body” and “Run (U.K.)” in his landmark mix at Tokyo’s Liquid Room.
Released in 1999, Chambers’ album Booty House Anthems—the first in an eventual three-part series—sold over a million copies in the United States, with “Pump It,” “Work It,” and “Work That Body” more becoming club staples. He founded his own label, Funk Records, in 2006, the same year he remixed Justice’s “Let There Be Light,” from their Waters of Nazareth EP. The remix wasn’t Chambers’ only crossover with French touch; he’d previously been name-dropped by Daft Punk on “Teachers,” the Homework cut that served as an extended shoutout to Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo’s influences.
Chambers received a boost of attention in 2013, when his tracks “House the Groove” and “The Original Video Clash: Video Clash II (Street Mix)” were included on the compilation record Hardcore Traxx: Dance Mania Records 1986-1997. Ghetto house became the progenitor of Chicago’s thriving juke and footwork scenes, and artists including RP Boo and the United Kingdom’s Night Slugs collective have taken to social media to pay tribute to DJ Funk and his lasting impact on their work.
In 2012, Chambers told Crack, “I’m not trying to be a super-producer, but what I do is just make stuff that’s relevant to my life. I like to be at the show playing music that I’d actually like to be dancing to myself, the shit that’s gonna make me happy.”
