This sequel was always on the cards – pfft, as if you could quieten down Strut’s first ‘Dance Mania’ revue to a single volume. When X-rated entertainment meets unpretentious get-up-and-go, the ’90s booty bass/hip-house/ghetto techno movement stretches the founding essence and development of 2014’s ‘Hardcore Traxx’. Mostly, by being sweaty, shirtless and on heat.
While not unanimously as crude as some of its showmanship (DJ Funk’s ‘Bitches!!!’, contrarily the comp’s funkiest moment), a Euro feel invades the Chicago roughness and juke blueprints, whose sometime remedial rhythms are fuel for the abrupt targeting of base instincts.
Its stiffness is despite imploring you to get loose – at its most minimal its muscles still ripple (DJ Rush’s ‘The Reactor’), and its subtle variations, at best, spread the shtick less thickly, though there are no God complexes about being the toughest on the block. Paul Johnson, popping an unsubtle amount of acid with the heart attack to match on ‘Give Me Ecstacy’, occupies techno space along with Steve Poindexter and DJ Deeon, to temporarily free fratboy minds.
Despite some of the content, it’s an overview rising above dingy basements and shifty hideaways – its freakin’ and jackin’ could just as easily fill car parks and cookouts. As much as times change, they stay the same: some of ‘Ghetto Madness’ hasn’t dated well, yet elsewhere it’s upfront and out the gutter stature gives prudes and purists the finger.
7/10
Words: Matt Oliver
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