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We sit down with a DJ who's shaping Chicago's juke scene.

Wednesday Dec 05, 2007.     By Maya Henderson

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Becoming a DJ is just a few keystrokes within anyone's reach. You purchase some equipment and programs to mix and match beats, samples and vocals, and you've got a song. But there are those who do it and those who do it well, like DJ Gant-Man. A master of his craft, he's changed the minds of people who didn’t consider electronic music to be real music.

The Southeast Side native started messing around on his older brother's turntables when he was five years old. "Whenever he left, I'd beg my mom to let me get on his turntables," says the 27-year-old, born Gant Wilson. "She'd pull over a crate so I could stand up and do my thing."

By the time he was 10, Gant-Man had his own radio show on WKKC 89.3 FM every Saturday for a half hour. He worked his way up through the DJ scene and in 1992, at 14, he met Chicago house music legend Paul Johnson. They were fans of each other's work, and Gant-Man became Johnson's protege. He showed him how to make his own beats and how to refine his DJ skills.

In 1997, Johnson took Gant-Man to his first Chicago rave party, which he says blew his mind, watching so many people get down to Chicago house music. By 1998, Gant-Man began touring Europe with Johnson, even playing at The Queen, the biggest club in Paris at the time. He continued to perform throughout Europe, including a residency in the hedonistic, electronic-music party capital of the world, Ibiza, Spain.

But every time Gant-Man returned to Chicago, house music had changed a bit. Sub-genres, like jack house and acid house, began to pop up in the early '90s, and a sound called ghetto house caught his attention. "Ghetto house is what we called juke at the time," says Gant-Man. "But the name was too harsh for the mainstream, so we called it booty house."

He began to secretly make ghetto house tracks while still making a name for himself as a house DJ. It's often debated as to who first made ghetto house music, but Gant-Man credits Paul Johnson, DJ Deeon and DJ Milton for pioneering the sound.

Where house is a four-by-four beat and played at 130 beats per minute, ghetto house, which, according to Gant, he and DJ Poncho were the first to call juke on tracks in 1998, has anywhere from 150 to160 BPM. It's energetic, aggressive and fun. Sometimes juke lyrics are raunchy enough to make even salacious types blush; sometimes a preschooler literally provides vocals. The sound is perfect for losing it on the dance floor, and it even has its own dance style: juken or footwork.

Footwork can be nasty and suggestive of sexual acts or simply a show of mind-blowing confidence and coordination. But the focus is always on the lightening-fast feet. Dancers formed crews; as they got better, they needed the music to be faster, which Gant-Man explains is how juke got to be so speedy.

The new commercial for the Verizon Juke phone shows the dance, although, according to Gant-Man's manager, Patricia Sandifer, the company claimed it wasn’t aware of the Chicago sound. Now that they are, keep an eye out for juke ringtones.

Juke is still somewhat of a South Side and West Side thing. "If you ask a Chicago South Side kid what his favorite music is, he'll probably tell you juke before hip-hop," says Gant-Man. Smartbar hosted the first all-juke party on the North Side just a few months ago.

But 2008 is shaping up to be the second coming of Chicago dance music throughout the city. Acts like Kid Sister, with her fast raps over dance beats (Gant-Man remixed her single "Pro Nails" featuring Kanye West), and Flosstradamus, with its genre-bending, care-free DJ sets, are exposing their sounds to previously unreceptive audiences. Gant-Man will be releasing a few mixtapes and officially launching his label, Bang Tha Box Recordingz, which has already signed a few strong juke contenders. And he's ready to take juke to the next level. "If something is going on in juke, my name needs to be mentioned, because I put in so much work with this," he says. "But it is a Chicago thing, and it's for everybody. If you love it, I love it."

To catch juke while it's still raw, check out Gant-Man every other Saturday at Betty's Blue Star Lounge, and tune in to BET's 106 & Park at 6 p.m., Wednesday, December 19, to see the Chicago Juke Dancers perform to his "Juke Dat, Juke Dat." Find Best Beats, a weekly pick of our favorite club events, at CenterstageChicago.com/bars.