The merging of hip-hop and footwork that occurs on the collaborative EP Live From Your Mama’s House should have been just beginning of a new musical paradigm merging vital streams of the Chicago music scene. Instead, it stands as a salute to a fallen hero. The late DJ Rashad was the driving force behind Teklife and a major figure in the Chicago juke/footwork scene; rapper Mic Terror was among the many Chicagoans who came of age at house parties where Rashad’s music was the soundtrack. And in 2013, Terror and Rashad hatched a plan to work on a recording project together. Though work began on a joint recording between Teklife and Terror’s Treated crew, fate flew in the face of their plans, and Rashad’s life was tragically ended by an accidental overdose.
Nevertheless, Treated and Teklife elected to honor Rashad’s memory by finishing the record, and now Live From Your Mama’s House stands as a monument to the possibilities of the footwork sound that was Rashad’s real heartbeat.
Looking back at his early exposure to Rashad’s work, Mic Terror said in a recent interview, “They were like celebrities when we were in junior high. There’d be flyers and you’d always see ‘DJ Rashad, RP Boo, Spinn, Gant-Man.’ And that was like, the juke parties at the time, and we knew them from there.”
With the arrival of the Treated/Teklife EP, then, Terror has come full circle, even if the record arrives as a kind of eulogy.