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Remembering house music legend DJ Deeon, dead at 56
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AILSA CHANG, HOST:
In the last year, appreciation for house music has seen a bit of a renaissance.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
That's a Beyonce reference. I got it. And it's true. The genre emerged in Chicago, and we're going to take a moment to remember one of the city's legends in house music, DJ Deeon.
(SOUNDBITE OF DJ DEEON SONG, "FREAK LIKE ME")
CHANG: That is DJ Deeon's 1996 hit, "Freak Like Me."
DJ SCRAP DIRTY: DJ Deeon was one of the architects - what we call the godfather of ghetto house.
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CHANG: And that, my friends, is DJ Scrap Dirty, a fellow Chicago native who talked to us about Deeon's bass-heavy, sexually liberated sounds.
DJ SCRAP DIRTY: Ghetto house actually was like the child that nobody wanted to speak about because it was birthed in the underground - in the basement parties.
FLORIDO: It made waves around the world. DJ Deeon was even name-checked in Daft Punk's 1997 track "Teachers," which lists some of the French duo's influences.
CHANG: News of Deeon's death was posted on his Facebook page yesterday. DJ Deeon Boyd was 56 years old.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREAK LIKE ME")
DJ DEEON: (Singing) You need a freak like me to make love to your body. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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