Four to the Floor Again
In 2022 Beyoncé made a house record and dedicated it to her late uncle Johnny, who was gay and who raised her on this music; Drake put one out the same summer. Amapiano went global. A genre that spent the 2010s as a specialist concern is back under mainstream pop, and the argument that came with it, about credit, about who is invited to the front of a music built by people the mainstream once had no room for, is the same argument the archive opens with. This facet is the last few years, and the return.
Part of House Music
49 moments in this segment.
- - Chip E., Carl Cox and Martin Garrix in Miami. Three generations in one frame: the Chicago originator Chip E., the British DJ Carl Cox and the Dutch producer Martin Garrix, photographed in Miami after the release of the documentary What We Started, in which all three appear. The distance between the man who was there at the beginning and the stadium headliner is the credit argument in a single picture.
- - Marshall Jefferson x Solardo - Move Your Body. Jefferson rebuilds his own 1986 anthem with a contemporary UK duo for Ultra, thirty-three years on. It shows the record's continuing commercial life and that its author is still working rather than being merely sampled.
- - Duane Powell at the Stony Island Arts Bank. The Chicago DJ and selector Duane Powell playing at the Stony Island Arts Bank on the city's South Side in January 2020. House is still played where it started, in rooms that treat it as local history rather than as nostalgia.
- - REVIVAL: DJ lil'dave live from the drive-in, 2020. A filmed set from REVIVAL, the Philadelphia house and disco party, played to cars at a drive-in during the year clubs were shut. It is a small record of how the dancefloor survived 2020 by moving outdoors, and of the American city party circuit that keeps this music running between revivals.
- - Danny Tenaglia live from LIV Miami, 20 June 2020. An hour recorded at an empty LIV Miami for MDLBeast's twelve-hour Freqways live stream during the pandemic shutdown. It is a document of the year clubs closed and DJs played to cameras instead of rooms. Tenaglia works the same way regardless of whether anyone is in front of him.
- - Fred again.. studio session, London, April 2021. A fly-on-the-wall studio session filmed in London in April 2021, around the Actual Life records: sampling, looping and building tracks in real time. It shows the working method behind a strand of house that is made largely from voice notes and borrowed fragments.
- - Louie Vega - Defected Croatia 2021. Louie Vega on the Defected Croatia bill in the first festival season after the shutdowns. It is the older New York vocal-house tradition placed inside the modern label-festival machinery. Full set as broadcast by Defected.
- - The Blessed Madonna - Boiler Room London. Her return to Boiler Room in London under the city's Covid restrictions, staged with volumetric visuals rather than the usual bare room. The set marks the reopening period after eighteen months in which the entire club economy that produced this music was shut down.
- - Ron Trent - Boiler Room Festival New York: Underground & Black. Ron Trent plays Ash Lauryn's Underground & Black room at Boiler Room's New York festival, staged under the city's Covid restrictions. Lauryn built that platform to keep the credit for dance music with the Black people who made it, and Trent, Chicago deep house, co-founder of Prescription Records, is that lineage in person. Seventy-five minutes of the long, unhurried deep house he has played since the early 1990s.
- - Danny Tenaglia at Music On Festival, Amsterdam 2022. Danny Tenaglia's festival set at Music On in Amsterdam, filmed and released by the promoter. It is a rare look at a DJ formed by New York's all-night club culture working a daytime festival stage. Complete set rather than an aftermovie.
- - Danny Tenaglia - Disco Disco pool party, Miami Music Week 2022. Tenaglia playing the Disco Disco pool party during Miami Music Week, filmed by DJ Mag. Miami Music Week is the descendant of the Winter Music Conference, the week where the American dance industry does its business in public. The set leans on the disco and vocal end of his catalogue.
- - Nic Fanciulli - Defected Croatia main stage, 9 August 2022. A full main-stage recording from Defected's Croatia festival, filmed and streamed as part of the label's Broadcasting House series. It documents how a label built on classic house catalogue turned itself into a festival brand. Useful as a record of the modern label-as-festival model.
- - The Forgotten Black and Queer History of House Music. A Daily Show segment prompted by Beyonce's Renaissance and Drake's Honestly, Nevermind, explaining to a pop audience that house was built by Black and Latino people, many of them gay, in Chicago and New York. It is the clearest mainstream statement of the archive's own central fact.
- - Danny Tenaglia - four-hour set in Mexico City, 22 September 2022. Danny Tenaglia playing an open-ended four-hour set at Barbaro Club House in Mexico City. Tenaglia is the last of the New York marathon DJs still working at this length, and the format, not the record selection, is the point. Filmed straight through rather than edited to highlights.
- - Renaissance: A Film by Beyonce (2023). The concert film built around the Renaissance World Tour, the stadium-scale moment when house music returned to the centre of American pop. The album it documents was explicitly dedicated to the Black and queer originators of the music, and the film is the fullest statement of that argument the mainstream has produced. Included as the full documentary rather than its trailers.
- - DJ Sneak live at West Coast Weekender, San Diego. Two hours of DJ Sneak at an underground West Coast Weekender event in San Diego, filmed properly rather than on a phone. It captures the American circuit that never went to the festival mainstage, small promoters, long sets and a crowd who came for the records.
- - Renaissance World Tour trailer. The official worldwide trailer for the tour behind Renaissance, the 2022 album that put house back at the centre of mainstream pop. The tour staged the record's debt to Black and queer dance culture in stadiums, which is what makes it part of this story rather than a footnote to it.
- - Fred again.. rooftop set, Arun's Roof, London. An hour of new material played to friends on a London rooftop, filmed in one take and posted to the artist's own channel. The format - small room, no stage, everyone close - is deliberately closer to a house party than a festival, and it is a large part of why this music reached a streaming-era audience.
- - Body & Soul at Flow Festival, Helsinki. The New York party as a festival booking in Finland in 2024, nearly thirty years after it started. It shows what happened to this lineage in the present: the same three DJs, a European festival stage, a crowd with no connection to the rooms the music came from.
- - Dennis Ferrer b2b HoneyLuv - The Ditch, Defected Malta 2024. Dennis Ferrer and HoneyLuv trading records back to back at Defected's Malta weekender, with Nasser Baker guesting. The pairing puts a veteran New York house producer next to one of the American DJs who broke through in the streaming era. A clean document of the current festival circuit.
- - Ron Trent - Coloring Lessons Juneteenth Block Party, Brooklyn. Two hours from Ron Trent at The Lot Radio's Juneteenth block party in Brooklyn, a street celebration with dancers, dominoes and double dutch alongside the DJ booth. It is house doing the job it was invented for: a Black social occasion built around a sound system rather than a ticketed stage.
- - Ron Trent live at The Bowl, We Out Here Festival. A three-hour Ron Trent set on The Bowl stage at We Out Here in Wimborne St Giles, the Dorset festival built out of the London jazz and broken-beat scene. The length is the point: Trent's sets are constructed as arcs rather than as sequences of peaks, which is what the deep house tradition means by a journey.
- - Ron Trent at Dekmantel Ten, 4 August 2024. Ron Trent's set on the closing day of Dekmantel's tenth-anniversary festival in Amsterdam. Trent made 'Altered States' as a Chicago teenager and has spent thirty years pushing house toward live instrumentation and jazz, which is what a Dekmantel booking is for. Streamed and archived by the festival.
- - Nightmares On Wax at Nectar Lounge, Seattle. A full ninety-minute DJ set at a small Seattle club, filmed by an audience member in 4K with an external recorder. Fan documentation like this is now a large part of the live record for touring DJs, and it captures a room size that the official channels almost never film.
- - Open-air party in the Nuthepark. An open-air electronic party in the Nuthepark in Potsdam on 1 May 2025. Four decades on from Chicago, a park, a rig and a public holiday is still the cheapest way to hold a dance.
- - Honey Dijon on Chicago, the Grammys and Beyoncé. Honey Dijon over lunch in Manchester on discovering house at Chicago school dances and ending up with Grammy credits and work on Beyoncé's Renaissance. A good marker of how far the current revival has carried people who were there at the start.
- - Riva Starr - Movement Detroit, 25 May 2025. Riva Starr's house set from Movement in Detroit, recorded on the festival's middle day. Starr is a house producer and label owner rather than a techno DJ, and the set is a good example of how house is programmed at a festival built on Detroit techno. Released by the artist as a full unedited recording.
- - Mike Hitman Wilson on stage in Aurora. Mike "Hitman" Wilson, one of the Chicago radio DJs who carried house onto daytime airwaves in the 1980s, playing the A-Town House Music Fest in Aurora, Illinois. Forty years on, the originators still work the same circuit.
- - Bad Boy Bill in 2025. Bad Boy Bill, who came up through Chicago's mix-tape and radio culture, at the A-Town House Music Fest. He is among the few Chicago DJs of that generation with an unbroken touring career.
- - Julian Jumpin Perez at A-Town. Julian "Jumpin" Perez, a fixture of Chicago house radio, DJing the A-Town House Music Fest. The festival programmes the city's veteran selectors rather than touring headliners.
- - Mickey Mixin Oliver behind the decks. Mickey "Mixin" Oliver playing the A-Town House Music Fest in Aurora, Illinois. He was part of the Chicago radio mix crews that made house a local mass medium before it was an export.
- - The crowd at A-Town House Music Fest. The A-Town House Music Fest seen from the side of the PIAZZA stage in Aurora, Illinois. A free suburban street festival built entirely on Chicago house is a fair picture of where the music sits now.
- - Fred again.. green room set, Rome. A set played in a venue's green room after a Rome show, with people invited back from the crowd, two speakers and no stage. It documents the small-room habit that runs alongside the arena tour, and the community the artist keeps building the records out of.
- - Fred again.. rooftop set, Fede's Roof, Naples. Another one-take rooftop set, this time in Naples, played to a few dozen people the night after a show. Kept alongside the London and Rome sets because each is a distinct performance in a different city rather than a re-upload of the same one.
- - Dennis Ferrer with HoneyLuv - Defected Croatia 2025. A main-stage festival set from Defected's Croatia weekender, with HoneyLuv and Nasser Baker joining Dennis Ferrer. Ferrer came up in the New York/New Jersey deep and vocal house tradition and here works it for a festival crowd. It shows what the commercial end of the house circuit sounds like now.
- - Iglesias b2b Neverdogs - Off Sónar, Barcelona 2025. A hybrid live and DJ back-to-back at Barcelona's Off Sónar programme, Iglesias playing live hardware while Neverdogs work four CDJs. It captures the tech-house end of the contemporary European circuit and how live and DJ performance are now mixed on one stage. Filmed as a full set rather than a highlight reel.
- - Ron Trent - soulful deep house set, Los Angeles. Ron Trent playing deep and soulful house for the Stardust series in Los Angeles. A Chicago-raised producer who has been recording since the late 1980s, Trent is one of the clearest links between the city's first records and the current deep house circuit. Filmed as a complete set.
- - Marshall Jefferson - Love to be Festival, The Stray, Harrogate. An hour from Marshall Jefferson at the Love to be festival on The Stray in Harrogate, recorded from the desk by the promoters. The northern English club circuit has booked Chicago's originators continuously since the late 1980s, and this is what that long relationship looks like now, a founder on a main stage in a Yorkshire park.
- - Roy Davis Jr. - house set at Mad Radio Miami, Wynwood. Nearly two and a half hours from Roy Davis Jr. in Mad Radio's booth in Wynwood, Miami. Small online radio stations have taken over the role that pirate and college radio used to play for this music, and they are one of the few places a Chicago originator still plays an unbroken two-hour selection.
- - Seth Troxler - Circoloco terrace set, DC-10 Ibiza. Two hours from Seth Troxler on the DC-10 terrace, recorded in June 2025 and released by Circoloco. Troxler is one of the American DJs who carried the Detroit and Chicago inheritance back into Ibiza's booths. A plain document of the current Monday party.
- - BLACKCLUB - Boiler Room: Chicago. A new-school Chicago selector on the same Boiler Room takeover that featured DJ Pierre, showing what the city's house scene sounds like in the 2020s. It is useful evidence against the idea that Chicago house is only a historical subject.
- - The Blessed Madonna - Lollapalooza, Chicago. A full festival hour from The Blessed Madonna at Lollapalooza in Chicago, house played on a rock festival's main circuit, in the city that invented it. It is a useful marker of how completely dance music has been absorbed into the general American festival bill in the 2020s.
- - Marshall Jefferson - Book Club Radio Festival: The Circus. Marshall Jefferson closes the first Book Club Radio festival from inside a circus ring, playing a classic Chicago set to a crowd raised on the platform's livestreams. It is a clear picture of how the founders now reach a younger audience: through a YouTube-native party brand rather than radio or a label.
- - Fred again.. and Thomas Bangalter, Alexandra Palace, 27 February 2026. The USB002 show at Alexandra Palace, with Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk on stage - the most direct public link in years between French house and the current British generation. The performance date is in the title, and the full set was posted by the artist afterwards.
- - AYYBO b2b Green Velvet - Yuma Tent, Coachella. A back-to-back in Coachella's Yuma tent, the dedicated house room that has become the festival's most reliable link to the genre's Chicago source. Green Velvet, thirty years into his career, plays alongside an artist half his age to a crowd that arrived through streaming rather than through record shops.
- - Rossi. - Boiler Room London. A London set from Rossi., one of the names carrying the minimal and tech-house end of the current UK scene. It is a snapshot of what a Boiler Room booking in the capital sounds like now, three decades on from the warehouse parties that made the format possible.
- - Carl Cox DJ set, We Belong Here, Brooklyn. A festival set from Carl Cox, who came up through the UK acid house and rave circuit of the late 1980s and has stayed on the circuit for nearly forty years. Kept as a document of what the surviving first-generation figures play now, and of the festival economy that absorbed the warehouse party.
- - Rossi. - Circoloco terrace closing set, DC-10 Ibiza. A full terrace closing set from Circoloco's Monday at DC-10, the party that kept a raw, stripped-back house sound on the island while the superclubs went big. Released by the promoter within weeks of the night. This is what Ibiza's house circuit sounds like now.
- - Ultra Naté - Movin' To The Sun (with HUGEL). Ultra Naté, the Baltimore vocalist whose 1997 anthem "Free" is one of house's permanent records, singing a new one thirty years on with French producer HUGEL. It is a clean measure of how the vocal house lineage still works commercially in the 2020s: a founding-era voice on a contemporary festival production. The performance clip is the record's own release material.
