The bright lights sparkling along Chicago’s lakefront serve as a dedication to DJ Rashad’s Double Cup. It’s his heart and inspiration. The grid depicted on the album’s cover is the home of footwork, a street genre that quakes the concrete underneath dance battles. With the assistance of other hometown mixers Spinn and Taso, DJ Rashad proves that laying down a formula for competition is easy, but distinguishing such rhythmic schizophrenia requires a confident mixture of virtuosic precision and raw enthusiasm.
At its surface, Double Cup is pretty straightforward. The song titles get directly to the point, no deeper exploration necessary: “Pass That Shit”, “Drank, Kush, Barz”, “I’m Too Hi”. Ordinary phrases are manipulated to fill a space fitted for grand poetry. “Show U How” breaks its simple five-word phrasing into a handful of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Despite the scattered results, such experimentation is never random, but absolutely precise. He further develops the melody with the funky bass groove, replacing dub lines with something more authentic.
That doesn’t mean deep dub has entirely been eliminated from the formula, though. Instead of building to an anticipated drop, Rashad uses these elements as an atmospheric transformation. “She A Go” thumps its hip-hop lyricism into hazy tranquility, mixing slower heart rates with the same speedy stepping. The excitement that lies within “I Don’t Give a Fuck” is coated in thumping beats that pulse through both speakers, emboldening the track beyond its minimalist electronics.
The rapid, 160 BPM footwork movements may make his music sound exhausting, but a blissful sexual ecstasy dripped across the record eases the tension. “Let U Know” and “Only One” introduce manipulated vocals and an R&B seduction to the mix, the tracks’ smooth foundations equally as exhilarating as Double Cup‘s assorted bombastic rhythms.
Built for either the club or a footwork face-off, DJ Rashad’s edgy, thrilling dance records excel in relentless movement and speed, but also deep grooves. Double Cup is a great collection of dance music that manages to be compelling in 14 different ways.
Essential Tracks: “Show U How”, “She A Go”, and “Let U Know”
