This website is user-supported. Any donation is immensely appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/passionweiss
Son Raw is poppin’ bottles.
I’m a footwork purist, with occasional allowances for jungle-inflected tracks from the UK that sound like an authentic melding of local styles. Beyond those rare successful attempts at fusion, however, I stick to producers from Chicago or those with cosigns from the city’s tight-knit crews; it’s hard to find time for outside producers when Teklife alone produces a near-unending stream of sexually charged, acid spiked beats. With cosigns from the late great Rashad, however, Hesk is one producer from beyond Chicago’s borders whose Footwork I’ll always have time for: it’s a vibe thing, and crucially, he gets the avant-guard spirit and functional utilitarianism that makes the Chicago sound so vital.
After a few years laying low and a move to Toronto, I’m thrilled to spread the word that Hesk is back on the internet and he’s unleashed a backlog of classic material on Bandcamp. From the grime flip of Footwork on the Low (2K15) to the Molly soaked Neon Lights (2K13), there’s a tremendous lot to love here, most of it covering the heady years when the genre broke out from the Chicago underground to become an under-the-radar force and its later fracturing, post-Rashad. Very few producers could deliver a 100 track dump and have all of them be vital. These are.
Armed with a new studio, Hesk has promised new material to come. If it’s anything like this, we’re in for a treat.
