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R.I.P. DJ Rashad, Joyous Explorer of Ghettotech

Due to an apparent drug overdose, one of music's innovators died early Sunday at home in Chicago.

DJ Rashad, one of music's innovators, died early Sunday at home in Chicago due to a suspected drug overdose. He was 34.

Born Rashad Harden, DJ Rashad was Chicago's leading ambassador of footwork, or juke, genres that, like ghettotech before it, stretched hip hop into the territory of house, jungle music and beyond, into weird and surprising sonic places. Like the associated dance style, Rashad's music was often eclectic, frenetic and unafraid.

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Rashad's death comes less than a month after another well-loved Chicago DJ, Frankie Knuckles, known as the "godfather of house music", died from complications related to type II diabetes. From Noisey:

“It’s just a tragic loss of a great musical genius,” [DJ] Spinn told the Chicago Sun-Times Saturday night. Others in the community, such as Rashad's recent tourmate and fellow Chicagoan Chance the Rapper and Hyperdub label head Kode9, began tweeting their condolences.

…He and his Teklife collective gained an international following in recent years after Rashad signed with British dance label Hyperdub. His 2013 album Double Cup was one of the most beautiful and uplifting dance albums in recent memory, and Rashad will undoubtedly be remembered as one of contemporary dance music's most innovative stylists and most irreplaceable presences.

Rashad's music displayed his promiscuous musical attention and sounded like the soundtrack to a fast-paced, distracted world. Bizarre samples on a kind of slapstick repeat, beats missing and then deftly reinserted, a raucous use of radio hits blended with house rhythms; these were some of Rashad's trademarks. He and the scene rose to new prominence with last year's Double Cup, some of which he performed last month in Brooklyn in a steamy packed Cameo. On stage with some of his Teklife crew while a throng of clubgoers gyrated below, Rashad seemed as exuberant and free and playful as his music sounded.

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More details about his death are expected on Monday following an autopsy, but a police spokesperson said Rashad was found unconscious next to drug paraphernalia. (Teklife refers to ghettotech, but it's hard not to think of "Tek," the digital drug at the center of William Shatner's and Ron Goulart's 90's scifi series.) Drugs were embedded in the music; "I'm Too Hi" is the incessant refrain on his last album's last song. Last year an interviewer asked Rashad why the Chicago rap scene had a bad reputation on Twitter:

Like I said, man, it’s rap music. That’s what rap music is about. Sometimes all niggas are talking about is killing people, fucking, smoking weed, and doing drugs, so that’s what the music is gonna talk about. They’ve just got their own perspective to it, you know?

His perspective will be sadly missed. Listen to a set from 2011 here, and hear his new EP, We On 1, which is due to be released on vinyl this week.

Top photo: TogetherBoston