The Rise of Todd Terry, as Told by Todd Terry
Todd Terry was omnipresent in New York’s early house scene. When the sound hit the city in the late ‘80s, his early grounding in hip-hop production led to a string of classics, featuring liberally lifted samples, under both his own name and aliases including Black Riot, Royal House and the Todd Terry Project. Artists from Marshall Jefferson to Dinosaur L were plundered for hits such as “Can You Party” and “Bango (to the Bat Mobile).” Terry further melded the worlds of hip-hop and house when “Can You Party” was transformed by MCs the Jungle Brothers into their own hit “I’ll House You.”
When London’s Ministry of Sound opened in 1991, based around the design of New York’s iconic Paradise Garage, Terry was among those invited to set the musical tone. With UK radio more accepting of house music, he went on to score two Top 10 hits with “Keep on Jumpin’” and “Something Going On,” while his remix of English duo Everything But the Girl’s “Missing” became a worldwide success, spending a year in the US Hot 100.
Mixing up these greatest moments with new tracks from his own InHouse Records label and ones from other like-minded artists, Terry has just dropped My House Is Your House for Ministry of Sound. Back in the fold of the club that helped him become an international star, he’d just returned from Miami Music Week when we caught up with him to look back on his career. Loving the return of house music, Terry is back to doing what he does best.
Here, in his own words, Terry recounts his rise to house dominance.
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Back in the days in my DJ world, you had to play everything, from reggae to rap records to freestyle to house to disco. That was the way you were brought up—every party was like a wedding, almost—so you kept mixing in different types of music.
I was making more hip-hop stuff at first, then I went into freestyle, then I went into house. I was hanging out in a lot of the freestyle clubs like 10.18, then house started to brew at the same time. I had the best of both worlds. My earliest track as far as house was “Party People,” and then “A Day in the Life” to “Can You Party” to “Bango”… something like that.
Some of my first studios were SoundLab in Brooklyn—I used to go there, I had a little drum machine and used their keyboards to make music—then Power Play Studios was where I met Norty Cotto and learned how to use the SP-1200. I went through different worlds really fast. It was really cut and dry to begin with; then it started to get more technical as I went on.
“Bango” was the real “OK, take this guy seriously. He’s really going for it.” I thought “Can You Party” was enough, but when “Bango” came out, that was the over-the-top thing, along with “A Day in the Life.” Those two really set grounds for me. They were being played in Heartthrob, 10.18, Studio 54, the World, Red Zone, a lot of the New York clubs at the time.
I started off DJing at the World when I had records coming out; that was my whole pitch. It was me and David Morales—we was playing there for Steven Lewis. That was a big deal back then; Steven Lewis was running a lot of clubs. So I hooked up with him, and he gave me a chance.
I think ‘89 was the first time I was out in England, somewhere around “Bango” and “A Day in the Life,” that whole series of records with Sleeping Bag Records. The first club I did was the Wag; then we did Brixton Academy. That’s where it really started to go places. I started to travel to all the spots in London. In the ‘90s, I went out there with Strictly Rhythm.
The first time I played Ministry of Sound, it was me, [founder and resident DJ] Justin Berkmann and CJ Mackintosh. That was kind of when it first opened up. Justin Berkmann really fought for me to help build the club and the style of music that it should be. I was really going for acid house, just house music, four to the floor, good songs, good music. If you want to play tech to that kind of beat, we could do that too. Just different worlds around that house beat.
It was hard to get records played on the radio in New York. I had some stations that would play stuff, but New York has always been on some other type of vibe; they weren’t on the same vibe that London was. London was a little bit more accessible to new music. New York was just stuck in being back in the day; they didn’t want to try anything new.
The first chart success was “Weekend.” That stuck out because it was a song, and it was the right time for me. “I’ll House You” was another big radio hit for me that came out of nowhere, so that was just an added plus. Tony D from the Idlers label had the idea to put rap on top of house [using Terry’s “Can You Party” as the backing track]. He did it, they showed it to me, then we fixed it up. Three or four hours later, we had a hit record.
I’d never heard of Everything But the Girl when they asked me to remix “Missing.” At first, they didn’t like the remix; they wasn’t too keen. I don’t know if it was the group, or it was the label. So it took a while for everyone to be into it before they put it out, and it took a while for it to be successful. It didn’t really blow up the first time people heard it. It took about eight or nine months, then it started getting radio play. Then it blew up, and they decided to put it on the album.
“Jumpin’” opened up Ibiza; it was around the same era. The first thing I’d been told about Ibiza was that it was really commercial, so I wasn’t too keen to go out there. But I was playing house out there and a bit more techno; they need more energy than what Ministry of Sound were playing.
I’m always trying to make you dance, to get that type of groove where you bob your head. I’m always trying to keep that feel, whether it’s a swing style or it’s a hard-driving style. I took all my old sounds from the SP-1200, from the RZ-1, from the SP-12, from the 909, and I put them in Logic. I kind of made sure that it has the same dirt that it had before, but I make everything in Logic now, with Ultra Beat or the EXS.
We got a lot of new kids interested in where the culture of house music started. So that’s kind of interesting, to school them all over again.
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