Ghettotech


Ghettotech is a genre of electronic music originating from Detroit. It combines elements of Chicago's ghetto house with electro, Detroit techno, Miami bass and UK garage. Former Detroit music journalist for the Detroit Metro Times, Hobey Echlin describes ghettotech as a genre that combines "techno's fast beats with rap's call-and-response." It features four-on-the-floor rhythms and is usually faster than most other dance music genres, at roughly 145 to 160 BPM. As with ghetto house, vocals are often repetitive and sometimes pornographic. As DJ Godfather puts it, "the beats are really gritty, really raw, nothing polished."
Ghettotech was born as a DJing style, inspired by the eclecticism of The Electrifying Mojo and the fast-paced mixing and turntablism of Jeff "The Wizard" Mills, with DJs mixing genres including jungle, ghetto house, hip hop, R&B, electro and Detroit techno. The general BPM of the music's mixing style increases over time.
A Detroit ghettotech style of dancing is called the jit. This dance style relies heavily on fast footwork combinations, drops, spins and improvisations. The roots of jit date back to Detroit Jitterbugs in the 1970s. Chicago's equivalent dance style is Juke, where the focus is on footwork dating back to the late 1980s.
Ghettotech was an integral part of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, an annual event.
Ghettotech saw a decline around 2007 as some key artists distanced themselves from the genre. In recent years however the surge in popularity of Ghettotech's sister genre Chicago footwork, has helped to spawn a new listener base. Ghettotech's newest wave of producers often produce tracks at 160 BPM to better accommodate mixing with Chicago footwork and other genres.

Key record labels