- RP Boo is a central figure in the history of footwork. The Chicago producer was there in the ‘90s, producing cuts like Baby Come On, which kicked the whole thing off. Like a lot of musical pioneers, despite being foundational his name isn’t as well known as some more recent contributors like DJ Rashad or the Teklife crew. Boo’s been banging back though, in the last five years actually building up a back catalogue of EPs and LPs that he never actually had, back in the day. Some of those have just been collections of his classics, but, increasingly, new material has been finding its way in there, to the point where the soon to be released, I’ll Tell You What! Is an LP of wholly new tunes.
The world outside of Chi-Town might not even know about footwork if it weren’t for the loving efforts of Planet Mu and its astonishing commitment to curating and releasing the beats (although I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention that the Hyperdub label is also pretty important in this regard). Footwork, by its very nature is a fringe sound: deliberately simple, harsh, repetitive and brutal. I can think of a number of beat styles you could describe that way, but the way footwork takes tiny vocal samples and splatters them into a collage that is the uncompromised, repetitive essense of beats, that’s tough stuff.
Some of the material Planet Mu has put out is a bit of a rough ride and, I’ll be honest, I think they’d put out an RP Boo record whether it was good or not. I’ve got to say though, on I’ll Tell You What! Boo really does have an eye for expanding his legacy, beyond that of reigning as the godfather as some of dance music’s most abrasive beats.
In the simplicity of its construction, footwork comes close to actually being popular music’s answer to minimalism. The label has been bandied about quite a lot in pop, but most of the stuff it’s applied to is just, well, simple, not actually minimalist. Footwork in its conceptual purity comes close. Think of something like Steve Reich’s Come Out and while the goals of most beat makers are miles away from Reich’s mind-bending experiments with phase music, you can’t help but hear a kinship.
Is that what RP Boo is doing here? Aiming to be some sort of transcendental genius? To be to footwork what Sun Ra is to jazz? Not really, if I had to pick a kindred spirit, Goldie would be the one. Like jungle’s biggest iconoclast, Boo is taking footwork and tricking it out into a rich, rococo version of what’s come before; using those simplest of elements and building them into the most ambitious edifices with emotional arcs that reach for the stars.
I suppose that kind of ambition is shared with somebody like Jlin. She received, rightfully, a huge amount of acclaim for her recent record Black Origami - which, unsurprisingly is another Planet Mu release. I felt like the palette that Jlin worked with to achieve what she did wasn’t actually footwork anymore, it was more complex and mutated away from the sound altogether.
One of the things I like best about I’ll Tell You What! is that it achieves what it does without getting out of the genre. Listen to a cut like U-Don’t No which deploys smooth, piano driven r’n’b, but created purely from drum machines and repetitive samples cut intricately together into something warm and wonderful, then played off against coldly philosophical spoken word samples; the emotional intricacy of the cut nearly outstrips what I thought footwork was capable of. Similarly, the surprisingly organic sounding boombap of Earth’s Battle Dance is like DJ Premier recreated out of crystalline, techy samples, turning the harshness of footwork on its ear. In case you’re worried, however, there are, of course, just plenty of hardass, brooding beatscapes and dancefloor oriented, footwork bangers, to remind you of who you’re dealing with here.
RP Boo has something of that master of sample based storytelling, Burial, giving you the feeling that you’re listening to an epic story created out of the most abstract of palettes. I suppose there really is something transcendental at work when he takes the most basic of building blocks and turns them into such a journey of a record. Footwork may well continue to do my head in, but RP Boo is ensuring his legacy by blowing my mind in a much better way than I thought possible.
- Chris Cobcroft.