BC122 - DJ Q&A: DJ Funk (March 2012)
From the vaults, a conversation with the late, trailblazing Chicago producer and DJ
My Chicago Reader feature on second-wave Chicago house music, published thirteen years ago, was a crucial stepping stone toward The Underground Is Massive, and maybe the most enjoyable interview I did for it was with Charles Chambers, a.k.a. DJ Funk. I’d earmarked a fuller version of our Q&A for this space a good while back, but as you’ve seen, many other things jumped in front of it, including a little bit about him in memoriam (cf. BC116). But the man spoke for himself better than I could, so here he is—nearly five thousand words of him. I’d completely forgotten that he’d bought his home studio off the band Styx, whose prog-rock was almost the polar opposite of Funk’s, er, rather more minimalist style. There’s also a not-so-small point of historical record: He takes credit for coining the term “ghetto house.” Rest in peace, and thank you for all the killer tracks and great sets.
MICHAELANGELO MATOS: You got some time?
DJ FUNK: Yep. You’re from Baltimore, right?
I’m originally from Minneapolis.
Oh wow, the cold city, right by here.
Totally. I was a raver. That’s part of why I’m doing this. That’s my era, the nineties.
Well, it’s still mine. I’m still a raver. I think I’m a little too old. Yeah, the regular jobs was kind of boring and shit, so I just decided to keep doing the entertainment and DJing stuff.
Well, let’s start from the beginning with you. You’re Chicago born and raised? Lifelong?
Yep. This is where I started doing records at Dance Mania and stuff like that in the mid-nineties.
When did you start DJing? Did you want to make tracks or did you want to DJ first?
DJ first, because, I mean I never even thought about making music. I just wanted to DJ because it was kind of cool. It was like the “in” thing to do when I was a teenager, plus you get girls, plus you make money. I just did it for a hobby at first. I never really took it seriously until after awhile, until I started DJing at bigger clubs. Then I started producing because I thought about, well, if I really want to take this really, really seriously, I’m going to have something to back me up, so I’m going to learn how to run the studio, write, run my own record company. It went from there. Just started out as a hobby, but I’ve been taking it serious lately.
How long have you been at it?
For about twenty years. I’m forty now. In my late teenage years, I actually started.
Was it house music that you were playing right away or were you playing other kinds of stuff?
Oh, I was playing R&B. I was playing old school like James Brown. I was playing house. And I was playing hip-hop. I was more of a club DJ at first, where I could go and spin for six hours or something, open up the club, play all different types of music, and close the club up. That was how an original club DJ started. It wasn’t no one-hour [set], you know, it was three, four, or five, or six hours. I can’t believe I used to do that now, though.
You had to have an opening. You had to have nice music for people to walk in and then you had to get the party up and you had to peak it and then you had to wind it down.
Right. That’s one thing I think a lot of clubs try to do now, or a lot of electronic concerts, they have different DJs at different times because they have different effects.
And you didn’t have that luxury?
No. Not at first. I think I started demanding that in the late nineties, when my music was starting to get played all around the world. Anytime I do a show, I always make sure I got the peak time and best hours and main stage. But not at first, man. I started out playing really early at techno shows. When I got out, when I stopped making house music, I was ending the party. I just got tired of it one day [and said], “I’m not going to take this no more: Main stage, main time, main cash.”
When did house music come into your life? Was it on the radio that you first heard it?
Yeah, but I used to stay in Detroit, too. I was into break dancing. So I was always into music, but I wasn’t ever really planning on DJing or anything, that was just something . . .
You were buying records because you liked them.
Right. When I first started, I was so young and I really didn’t have no cash then. I would take two stereos and hook them together and make my own little mixtape, with my mixer and my turntables. I’d have two old turntables and I’d get me a makeshift mixer—you can take a stereo and [use] the auxiliary—and I would just mix like they would mix on the radio. I’m kind of self-taught.
Who were the first DJs you knew personally? Did you have anybody show you the ropes once you kind of figured it out yourself? Did somebody sit down with you and a pair of decks and be like, “This is what you do with these?”
Not really. One guy showed me how to play just a little bit. But I kind of got that on my own. This other guy I ended up DJing with early in my career—he never showed me how to DJ, which was really funny, but he would let me watch him set up before the show. So I would go up to the club early help them set up the equipment. We would be up there for two or three hours before the club opened. I wasn’t even working for him, really, I was just helping to get in the party for free. I used to go out two or three days a week, all the time, constantly, so that saved me a whole bunch of cash just going around helping out.
He would let me just set up and watch. He didn’t tell me how to do it. When I just watched him, I understood how to control the crowd. That’s really important, because you have a lot of DJs that go through fads, trends, and stuff like that with different styles of music. For instance, if you were a DMC DJ, you were scratching a lot. I really don’t scratch that much, I’m more concentrated on stuff that’s going to move the crowd. I’m the kind of guy to come in and when I play people scream. When I put records on, I get my gratitude by making people go buck wild.
Like my friend DJ Assault, he’s more of a, I guess you can say, showoff DJ. He’ll be up there scratching. But to me, it’s kind of boring, because he’s doing stuff people already heard already a million times. I would be the kind of guy that would come up with all brand new fresh songs that nobody heard before. And I would have the party that way.
What you said about playing fresh music, you just were always out looking for music?
Right, and then I started producing and understood that I could have more control over my career if I could make my own music. So if I play a show, probably about 75 to 80 percent of the music that I played at the show I produced or I made. I still play the records that I made when I first started coming out in the mid-nineties—like fifteen, sixteen years ago. [Sigh—MM.] They still work—they were always good and they were always hits. It sounds good.
I don’t give a lot of people access to a lot of the music that I make because then it makes it more special. Everybody else just can’t get the songs. Even if you hear radio play it too much, what happened with an earlier mentor that I had, I used to work at this company called Dance Mania before I got the dot-com. I would ask my friend Ray, “Why you never get a distributing deal with Sony or Warner Brothers,” and, “Why do you let us put a lot of dirty music on there?”
He said, “First of all, if I did let them distribute it, they’ll end up owing me hundreds of thousands of dollars, making excuses not to pay me. I know I can sell the stuff on my own and get paid. I might not make as much, but at least I’ll have the money that I’ve actually made.”
About the dirty stuff, he said, “The dirtier you got it, the less radio play you get, and the better it’s going to be for you in the long run. Because then the radio station just can’t take your stuff and just really exploit it out, because that’s what they will do. And then you’ll have enough time to get your catalog up, where you have control over your own music, versus just selling it to a company—I’ve do my own thing, I’ve got my own deal. Or having too much radio play because then you won’t have enough time to put new songs out.”
[To do that], you have to be more consistent, and my consistency is just being in the game a long time and actually listening to what he said.
Where in Chicago were you situated? Were you from the Southside?
No, out West. I lived over the whole city, but I grew up out West, mainly. When I got a little older I move down South and then I moved downtown but then I moved out to the West suburbs, maybe ten minutes from Chicago, not too far but in a nice location. I’ve been out here for over ten years.
You spent some time in Detroit. Were you parents divorced or something like that, were you kind of going back and forth?
No. My grandma raised me. My pops, I really didn't get to know him. My mom was always gone. So I spent with my grandma most of the time. I just wanted to go somewhere different, just to have a different experience. It didn't have anything to do with music. I just wanted to go with my cousins and them. So I ended up there for a few years.
I had got access to the Detroit-style mixing, because in Detroit it was almost electro-sounding. Chicago’s more housey than electro. So I kind of started combining them when I started making my CDs. I always incorporated some L.A., some Chicago, some Detroit. I always had a different style than most of the cats that were in Chicago. They didn't really understand what I was doing at first. I was actually just catering to different crowds, ’cause people liked different style of music.
How would a Chicago DJ play a few records versus the way a Detroit person would?
I think that the difference between Chicago DJs or the Detroit DJs, for instance, is Detroit DJs are more like Q-Bert, into cutting and scratching. Chicago DJs is more like maybe Frankie Knuckles or somebody like that.
Longer mixes?
Not necessarily longer. It was just a different style. It' s hard to explain it but I don't know, I just think Chicago has more soul than Detroit in learning how to rock a party and keeping it rocking.
When you start DJing, how long did it take for you to kind of concentrating more on house music?
I used to produce rap groups. I made a couple of hit records back in the day for a few rap groups. I just saw the music never going nowhere. I just thought about it like. I'm forty now, I thought about when I was a teenager—or a young adult, I be in my twenties—and I was thinking, “This gangster music is kind of cool now, ’cause this is where I come up from. But I don't see it lasting long, or at least lasting long for me. I see myself forty years old at a house party, or a techno or a club party, or a concert playing dance music, versus trying to be the hardest rapper in the world.” I played the curve. But I was mixing everything. It was mainly house music, but it was also everything else.
How did you hook up with Dance Mania?
I produced my own album downtown somewhere, paid for all my studio time. I was a young cat, so I was hustling on the streets, just trying to make some money to go in the studio. I actually pressed my own album, on my own record label. It wasn’t that much: like 500, 800 records. But I would come up with boxes of records. Then one day, the man who owned [the label] said, “Will you do a record for me? We’ll sell tons more if you do it up on my label.” [The idea was that] he would do something for my label and I would do something on his. I was going to do my own record as well as do one for him. That's how it started.
Before you were a DJ, were you a dancer?
Yeah, I was a breakdancer at first. That got me into the music in the first place. It was so cool, like a phenomenon—if you could breakdance, you could get the girls. We used to participate in contests and stuff like that. And half of the group—well, shit, the majority of the group [laughs]—went into making hip-hop. I stayed in the dance genre, so to speak, the electro-techno, the housey style, versus being a rapper.
I used to breakdance when I was really young. I cant remember how old, but really young. When I became a young adult I made up my mind: “This ain’t the right place to go.” At that point I decided to start my rap career. One of the groups I used to work with was called Do or Die, from Chicago. I produced their first record in my studio. I put it out and pressed it up. Then they signed a deal with Rap-A-Lot and Virgin, and didn't include me on the deal. I was thinking, “This rap shit ain't gonna go nowhere anyway.” They went pretty far, but right now they're not really doing anything anymore. However, my career is still going strong. Last week I came back from Belgium and Ireland—Dublin.
I made a conscious decision that I wasn't going to beg these guys to produce for them again after I already produced an album for them and they acted like they didn't know me once they got signed. So I told myself I would have to learn how to rap, write music, DJ, and record all of your own stuff so that way I could have more control over your foundation. So if my writing don’t make no money, my producing might; if my producing don’t make no money, my DJing. My engineering might. I know how to do so much stuff in the studio, my career is not going to be based on just one particular thing.
So does that hold true to this day? Do you still do those other things while traveling and DJing?
I haven't produced in four years, but I have enough of my own material to make a double album.
Which clubs were you playing before you started playing raves?
Just regular dance clubs. The clubs I used to play would be 16 to 18 and up. They wouldn’t be 21 and up. I used to play at about four or five of the biggest clubs on the west side. I used to have a big draw. A lot of people would come out to see me play, and I could really make them dance good, because I used to be a dancer myself.
Were your earliest recordings ever released, or did you make a lot of tracks before you felt like you could release them?
I made a few tracks, but they weren't necessarily released on wax. I would make tracks on cassette tape. We would take a four-track to the clubs and we would play stuff off the cassettes. So people heard them, it just wasn’t pressed up on wax. So it got a lot of airplay. This is when cassettes were happening, so you know it’s a long time ago.
When did you find out about raves? Were you already playing clubs when that avenue opened up?
Not really. I’d stopped DJing, and I started producing more. I made a couple of real big records. This guy I used to know—I used to be real cool with him—he asked me to come down and play a techno party. I’d never played a techno party before but it was in a warehouse. I just got in there. I couldn’t even mix that good because I wasn’t mixing in years. I just jammed it out and ever since then I’ve been on the scene.
Sneak told me when I talked to him that it helped having the word DJ in his name helped him get gigs: People would hear his production and figure, oh he’s got a DJ in his name, he must be a DJ. Did that help you?
Yeah. Back in the days when I first named myself DJ Funk, a lot of people weren’t putting DJ in front of their names, they were going with their real name. Charles Chambers, that’s my real name. Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Jeff Mills: Everybody was going with their regular names and I didn’t really want to use my name. I kind of wanted to make it more fantasy-like, more special, more of an entertainer. I’ve been using DJ Funk for when I was DJing in the clubs in ’89, but they were regular clubs. I wasn’t doing records or anything at that time. But I was DJ Funk then, still is now. It worked and I left it.
I want to talk a little bit about Gramaphone Records, I’m guessing you shopped there like everyone else?
A little bit. I used to get most of my stuff from Hot Jams or Barney’s Records, which was Dance Mania.
Was Dance Mania headquartered there?
Yeah, Barney’s was the name of the distribution company. They used to do distribution for all the major labels. He just had his own little record company—on the Westside, right off of Roosevelt.
That catalog seems like it’s been in limbo for a while.
Yeah. You know what? I’ve been talking to a couple people about trying to do something, because when the original company closed down, I asked the guy who used to own it, “Could I try to do something with it again, with the label?” And I think DJ Deon snuck in and incorporated it without asking them. But I asked them and I just used Dance Mania Records. I’ve got from about 300 to 500 original Dance Mania songs, digitally. I’m trying to figure out exactly how I want to put them out. They’ve been in limbo for a while, but I’ve been at them about five years or something.
Are you talking about Deon who became No ID? Or the Deeon who recorded for Dance Mania?
We are talking about the second one. That’s the one I know.
What was your impression of the loft scene house people versus the rave kids?
I wasn’t really a part of that genre. That was when I was underage. I couldn’t get into the loft parties. I think I might have been 17 years old when that was happening. The clubs that I DJed at were majority black, maybe 16 to 24, 25, almost all all-ages—sometimes 13-year-old kids snuck in there. But that was the older scene for me. I didn’t get to know the Lil Louises and them, because they was older. I was a young cat. The techno parties were like rock concerts where the kids were hugging all over each other, kissing all over each other.
How would you typify your own music? What would you call it?
My style is a lot of different styles mixed up together. First of all it’s got a house element, and then it’s got a techno element, like Detroit, a little bit. It’s got a rap element, like 2 Live Crew and Luke from Miami back in the day. Sometimes it’s breaky.
What I did to come up with the concept of ghetto house is, I just thought, “Well, a lot of people have sex and fuck and shit, but people are always so ashamed to talk about it. But this is what everybody do. This is how we got here.” I was the first one who named it ghetto house, booty house, all of that, ghetto-tech. When I first named it ghetto house then everybody else started calling it ghetto house.
Actually, most of the guys on the label started copying my stuff. People was biting your style and using your style. For instance, I would see some interviews lately where some of the ghetto guys—or some of the juke guys, cause they’ve kind of changed it to juke a little bit, but its still the same style—and it seems like . . .
When I hear the guys now, to me it’s some kind of dis, because I was the first one doing this style of music. They never mention me too much. It’s kind of a dis, where it’s like, “Wow, these guys is going to eat up my style of music and they don’t even be giving me props.”
That’s another thing where I wasn’t so interested in putting the Dance Mania stuff out. These guys were not showing no love. I tried to hook up with some of the guys, and it’s like, in one ear and out the next. It’s like, why should I put these guys on, and put them on my style, when, for instance, I’m still traveling around the world every other week or every other month? For instance, I just toured in Australia a few months ago for two weeks. Why should I hook them up with tours when I don’t even have to put records out, and I can be on tour, period?
In Minneapolis you’d see kids booming Dance Mania records in their trunks: It had 909s and 808s. It seemed a little analogous—not the same thing, but similar if in effect—as hip-hop around that time.
Right, right. That what we always used those particular drums. One thing that most people don’t know, probably, is that most black folks don’t listen to techno music, period, point blank. Maybe a little pop every now and then—maybe some Rihanna, if she makes a dance song. Black folks listen to juke music here, but they don’t listen to no other types of techno. So the ghetto, the booty, the juke, they listen to it here. But you can’t really play it out of Chicago or Detroit.
Were you surprised when the white rave kids started picking up on your shit?
A little bit, yeah. A little bit. But I had [made] the music so it would appeal to everybody. I would just go to a fucking electronic dance concert and I’m-a turn this shit out.
And I don’t DJ like the regular DJs: I DJ more like an artist. For instance, you’ve got people who just play other people’s music. I don’t like those DJs, because it’s like, “Damn, you are just sucking everybody shit up.” And then you have your DJs who rap and sing and entertain the crowd and dance. I’m more like a DJ that performs, that makes his own music—way more of an artist than the regular, standard DJs.
When I used to listen to my boy DJ, he would play a lot of records from France, Germany, London, and all over Europe, you know? He doesn’t really care whether it was white or black. He just played hits. That’s what I got into more. Before we used to get out records, we used to play on rotation on the radio here. They was underground, before the Clear Channel took over.
Were the early raves that you played in Chicago largely illegal?
Nah—because it wasn’t illegal. I mean, ecstasy wasn’t illegal at first. I wish I would have knew that—I’d have been selling that shit. [laughs] That’s part of what killed the rave scene, too: Everybody was high off of whatever they wanted to. I use to smoke a lot of weed—that was my main thing. I didn’t really do no other type of drug. A little alcohol, maybe, but weed mostly. You could go to a rave party and it wasn’t so illegal that they would come in: I mean, they couldn’t arrest kids for having E because it wasn’t illegal. So they sitting down sucking on pacifiers, happy as hell, hugging people.
The funny thing about rave parties—rave parties were some of the most peaceful parties in the whole fucking world and they don’t want people to have a fucking good time, period! You’re mad because you’re not happy, and you want to see everybody else sad and shit with you.
Were you playing any early 2000s Chicago parties that got busted like you were describing, in the teeth of the whole crackdown?
Most of the Chicago parties didn’t get busted. Most of the parties that I did that got busted was in Detroit.
You know what, man? That was a real hard time for me. I just had to re-strategize what to do. This is my source of income, and the record stuff died, the CD stuff died. Me and my wife ended up breaking up then. I guess we were so stressed out, [with] money problems and shit, I can even say that had something to do [with] me in that situation. I ended up being a single parent taking care of three kids for like, I think, the last eight years and shit. Now they all adults, which is cool—I can get back into my funk. But that was hard on me.
What I had to do for the last four years [is] to start traveling to Europe all the time, because I would get two or three times the money. The flights were kicking my ass, that’s the only thing. Traveling for twelve hours, fourteen hours for the whole trip, nine hours on the plane—that’s the hard part about doing Europe. Besides that, I had to [offer a] cut to the local clubs and play smaller parties, get my price down. I was probably was getting two or three or five G’s for a party. I had to break it down to a grand. Which is still a lot of money for DJing an hour, but I was used to having doctor money, lawyer money! [laughs] I was down to regular work money.
But I was smart enough to do more shows and cut my price down. Then I finally did a remix for Justice, and that blew up so big. I was like, “Fuck it, I’m going to go and try to work overseas because this is the way I'm going to be able to stay in the game and not lose my house.”
The house that I bought is an old rock & roll studio. Remember that group? What's their name, Styx? “Mr. Roboto”? I bought their studio. It’s Funk’s studio now. When I say a real rock & roll studio, I'm talking about a thousand square feet, big main room, big room for a band, singer room, drummer room. From when you first walk in to the house, all the way to the back, there's big-ass windows all down here. It took a while to get used to it, but at least I made an investment.
Whereas you have all the other ghetto guys out: They don't own no houses, no cars. They’re still paying rent. At least I saved up smart enough. I’m not planning to stop DJing until I'm like, I don't know, sixty-something. And by the time time I do the Dance Mania stuff again, it'll be a little bit better, because it'll be all new cats coming on. For instance, some of them are a little bit jealous of some of the white cats doing ghetto music. I told them I was kind of proud. I go to Paris and stuff, man. I’ve got French guys doing ghetto music in French!
Remember I was telling you earlier about Do or Die, the rap group? I was smart enough to get some real estate, and luckily got a studio and my own company. I actually did incorporate Dance Mania Records, and I did the website dancemaniarecords.com. So it ain't like I just lost the whole wealth and maybe left the whole Dance Mania thing dead. No. I just don't have to rush out when a lot of brothers ain't showing no love. That's it. So you see, I'm on my thing.