DJ Nate

DJ Nate, born Nathan Clark, grew up in the westside of Chicago. He is well known within Chicago for his Footwork Tracks, which are instrumental tracks in the genre known as “Juke”, made for footworking, or Juking, a dance similar to Jit, which has it’s roots in African dancing (according to conversations I’ve had with some of these guys). The Juke sound has its roots in Chicago House, Ghettotech, Booty House and is recognisably a manic sped up version of this. It is sometimes hard to draw a definite line between Juke and Footwork tracks but to generalise, Footwork tracks (or maybe the sort of Footwork tracks I’m interested in) utilise samples from pop and hip hop, pitching, layering and triggering them in a rhythmic manner, mirroring the rhythm of the feet in the dance. The dance battles mean that some of the tracks repeat the dancers’ names in a kind of repetitive mantra, which i find hypnotising, sometimes the track will go through the names of an entire squad (Y.P.S, Heat Squad etc.) as they take the circle. This hypnotising quality combined with the sparser drum patterns, often with busy fills, relentless triplets and off-kilter accents, mirroring the speed of the dance, is what gives these Footwurk Traks their unique quality for me. DJ Nate releases his single “Hatas Our Motivation” and album “Da Trak Genious” in August and September respectively.