One of the many advantages of growing older is that you stop caring so much about what people think of you. This surely goes double for a dance-music legend like RP Boo. Established!, Boo’s fourth full-length for Planet Mu, may be titled to remind the casual listener that the Chicago DJ and producer is no newcomer to the footwork game: His 1997 song “Baby Come On” has been cited as the genre’s founding track. But judging from this gleefully party-starting album, which borrows from orthodox sources such as Phil Collins and Dr. Dre as it calls back to footwork’s roots in Chicago house, Boo is more interested in polishing the dancefloor than burnishing his own reputation.
Established! makes a left turn from Boo’s previous album, 2018’s I’ll Tell You What!. That record was minimal almost to the point of obsession, frequently doing away with the bass-drum punch that punctuates footwork in favor of winsome drift. Established! isn’t maximalist, exactly—Boo’s style favors using a small number of ingredients to maximum effect—but simple good times are back in vogue on the album’s bookending songs. On both tracks, Boo revisits the roots of Chicago footwork via the 4/4 pulse of the house scene that birthed it, weaving in elementary piano riffs on “All My Life” (a track that could almost be the work of the late Paul Johnson) and borrowing from Class Action’s “Weekend” on “Another Night to Party.”
If the latter sounds familiar to RP Boo fans, that’s no surprise: Boo has sampled “Weekend” on a handful of previous occasions and also employs it on “Finally Here (ft. Afiya),” which rounds off the first half of Established!. On paper, this repetition might sound lazy. But in gleeful practice, these songs feel more like the supremely self-assured work of a producer who isn’t ashamed to employ a simple trick in the name of firing up the dance. As if that wasn’t quite enough to drive the festive point home, “Finally Here” also samples Masters at Work’s eternally reworked “The Ha Dance,” a sacred text of ballroom, the two dance-music touchstones skipping around each other with the nervous energy of rookie boxers at their first bout.
Beyond the audacity of these musical moves lies Boo’s knack for reinvention. “Ivory Surface” initially appears to be moving at two entirely different rhythms, as Boo flips the seductive funk of Barry White’s “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby” into a spiky ball of musical nerves that promises a sinister end to the original’s silken seduction. The Dre-indebted “How 2 Get It Done!” is another masterclass in sampling, as Boo chops and stitches his material into classically angular footwork constructions using tiny, dextrous moves, like a sculptor coaxing shapes from a block of marble. And if “All Over” leans rather heavily on Phil Collins’ heavily gated 1982 song “I Don’t Care Anymore,” seeing pristine footwork surface from such unlikely source material is still a hoot.
In a big season for footwork releases, with ingenious new albums from Jana Rush and DJ Manny already on the shelves, Established! doesn’t exactly move the needle for the genre; it is a shame, too, that the album lags slightly as a listening experience on tracks like “Now U Know!,” which Boo says he created with dance battles in mind. But if you’re looking for a record to remind you why you fell in love with footwork in the first place, as well as a gentle refresher of the genre’s roots, Established! is perfectly placed to twang heartstrings and hamstrings alike, bursting with audacious energy, liberal sass, and mountains of soul.
Buy: Rough Trade
(popitrecords.com.)
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