JOHN’S GUIDE: BALTIMORE CLUB

DANCE MY PAIN AWAY

Quick Note: My “Underdog Pop” project RUSTBELT released a video today. It’s for a song called “Oh My God Here It Comes Now.” I’ve made a lot of music videos, and this is one of the better ones. I think it explains a thing or two. Alright… Back to the reason we are all here: pure, 100 percent unadulterated music blogging. 

It seems like Jersey club music is everywhere. With varying degrees of success, Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem and Ice Spice and PinkPantheress have all done their take on the frenzied dance style. It continues to blow up on TikTok. Hell, just last week, the Jonas Brothers and the South Korean boy band Tomorrow X Together dropped a "Jersey Club Remix" of their collaborative song "Do It Like That." 

So, it’s a good time to remember where this music started—not Jersey, but Baltimore. There is a whole lineage of street-level East Coast dance music, and that story begins in the city that smells like Old Bay. The last 10 years of Jersey club development deserves its own blog. The music has gone in so many directions. But I think it’s important that some of these classic Baltimore tracks are not forgotten. 

Baltimore club is built on fast breakbeats and samples of everything from contemporary rap music to the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song. It can be twee or nasty or futuristic, but it’s ultimately so rooted in the larger American music continuum that its drum samples might as well be the stomps and claps at the beginning of "Where Did Our Love Go" by The Supremes—a track that, not coincidentally, has been flipped into a Baltimore classic.

DJ Technics “Mr. Postman”

Let’s start on that Motown tip. Here, Technics slices up a fundamental Tamla track. Like other good contemporary regional American dance styles—New Orleans bounce comes to mind—many classic Baltimore club cuts are built upon the same couple of drum breaks. Namely: "Think (About It)" by Lynn Collins and "Sing Sing" by Gaz. Everything on this list fits together perfectly. Load them into your DJ software and invite some friends over. Pick up some root beer.

Ménage À’ Trois “Funky 69”

"Funky 69" is a nice study in the percussive nuances of Baltimore club. From the 15-second mark until the 44-second mark, it is built on nothing but a "Think" break and an 808 clap on the second and fourth beats. Then a snare pattern comes in, and, at the one-minute point, a kick drum. Throughout, a vocal loop ("I think it’s fine/That funky number 69/I do not mind/I do not mind that 69") remains unchanged. These slowly stacking rhythms do the same thing to my body as chugging a medium iced coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts. As Joel Holmberg might say… I’m up!

Rod Lee “Rump”

It might be good to touch on the whole "songs versus tracks" thing. Outside of a few friends, I have no idea who is reading this blog. Anyway. Songs: self-contained pieces meant, ideally, to be listened to front-to-back. Tracks: less linear dance music used by DJs as tools in a larger set. Baltimore club tracks were made for DJs, and they were made to be mixed fast. On Rod Lee’s Vol. 2: Operation Not Done Yet mix, this Bone Thugs flip gets played for just a little over two minutes. 

Rod Lee “Dance My Pain Away”

We’ve been talking tracks. We just heard a Rod Lee track, but now here is a Rod Lee song. "Dance My Pain Away" deserves a place in the American Songbook. It deserves to be sung by children’s choirs and played at baseball games. It’s just vocals and drums, and it is one of my favorite songs of all time. "Now I’m on my tippy toes/Face down, eyes closed."

Griff & Booman “Pick Em Up”

One of the first times I heard Baltimore club—not the first time, that was way back in 2002; thank you, Jesse—it kind of reminded me of Fatboy Slim. Which makes sense, considering the shared musical history of both Baltimore club and big beat: both are influenced by early breakbeat rave and Chicago house and anything-goes rap sampling. "Pick Em Up" might be the hardest track on this list. (I can’t find a stream of this DJ Technics mix of proto-Baltimore records, but if you dive into the tracklisting, you will see just how varied club music’s roots are.)

Ram Jam “Black Betty (Cousin Cole Remix)”

At a certain point in the bloghouse era, a lot of indie rock kids started making novelty Baltimore club remixes; most of them were mediocre or just bad. But this Ram Jam remix by Cousin Cole? Fye! A highwater mark in the sub-subgenre—to this day, it will destroy a room of coked-up garage rockers.

Scottie B & King Tut “The Almighty Simon Joint”

Made by Actual Baltimore Club Legends Scottie B & King Tut, this remix of "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon always sounded to me like a response to the wave of mediocre bloghouse takes on Baltimore club. Crazy intro: A kick doesn’t appear until around a minute. When that "Think" break hits at 1:14, though? It’s time to go! 

DJ Kenny B “Pagers Blowing Up”

Senior year of high school, my friend Fred and I threw a monthly dance party at an art gallery in Milwaukee. He played funk and soul. I played a lot of Baltimore club. Can you picture a bunch of wasted teenagers dancing dangerously close to expensive art objects? Back then, one of the only places I could find Baltimore records was on the website Turntablelab. That’s where I copped this deadstock gem from 1996. The track’s breakbeat manipulation displays just how important England was to the scene. Maryland is one of the original thirteen colonies.

Rod Lee & Ms. Peaches “Boy Don’t Waste My Time”

"Boy don’t waste my time/Just put your head between my thighs." This track is a nice compliment to "Funky 69." One of the last times I DJ’d, in 2019 at 538 Johnson, I mixed "Boy Don’t Waste My Time" out of an old rave cut, and I momentarily felt like I was really "doing something" by combining those two songs, which is a feeling specific to DJing that I occasionally miss but also understand I will probably not feel again for a long time. 

KW Griff “Foot Stompin’”

These old-time Baltimore flips trigger some of my more convoluted conceptual ideas about American music. I can’t help it. “Foot Stompin” is a remix of a 1961 song of the same name by The Flares. That little rock and roll guitar lick that gets chopped throughout the song makes me want to start a garage rock project that only uses Baltimore club drums.

DJ Technics “Ride Or Die”

Few rappers sound as good over Baltimore breaks as DMX (RIP). I will not cap; the first time I heard this track was on a 2004 mix by Diplo’s old DJ duo Hollertronix. If I had to make a list of embarrassing-yet-unimpeachable 2000s hipster mixes, that would have to go on the list. Do you have the constitution to enjoy mashups? If so, it might be worth a listen.  

K-Swift “Club Queen Volume 1 (Full Mixtape)”

K-Swift was taken from the world far too early. There is no doubt in my mind that the DJ and producer would’ve been a star. Somehow, I played at her final show. I’ll never forget that day—in my confusing life of music, which is full of failure and self-hatred, it’s a memory that I cherish. The afternoon show and then the afterparty at The Paradox. Baltimore club music changed my life.