DJ Spinn, born Morris Harper in Chicago, Illinois, is a master architect of footwork—one of the most rhythmically complex and physically demanding dance styles to ever emerge from the windy city. As a DJ, producer, and co-founder of Teklife, Spinn has pushed it beyond its battle-circle origins into the global underground. More than two decades in, he’s still at the cutting edge, ensuring that the genre’s pulse resonates around the world. On Thursday, February 20, the international footwork showcase comes to Control Club as we celebrate Teklife with DJ Spinn, Loefah, Traxman, and more.
From the jump, Spinn was a dancer. In the late ‘90s, he was part of House-O-Matics, one of Chicago's premier dance crews. The music was fuel for the fast feet and raw energy required of footwork battles. This experience gave him an edge when he moved into DJing, knowing exactly how to build tracks that could push dancers to their physical and emotional limits.
Around 1998, Spinn was tearing up the wildest house parties, roller rinks, and teen club nights, DJing with his partner-in-crime DJ Rashad, who would later become footwork’s most influential figure. The duo caught Dance Mania Records's ear, leading to their first release, Bout It Bout It Mix. But when Dance Mania folded in the early 2000s, the two went full force into footwork, refining it into a faster, more unpredictable sound built on chopped-up vocals, glitchy synths, and percussive madness.
By 2006, they had formed Ghettoteknitianz, the raw, battle-hardened crew. Over time, this collective evolved into what is now known as Teklife. Teklife was an elite squad of producers and DJs—Traxman, DJ Earl, DJ Manny, DJ Phil, DJ Taye—where you had to prove yourself through music. If your beats didn’t have the dancers snapping to 160 BPM madness, you weren’t in. This energy built a tight-knit movement that, by the late 2000s, had transformed Teklife into a global force. Spinn's 2007 track, Bounce N Break Yo Back, would also play an integral role in this, being the biggest-selling juke track ever.
While footwork had deep roots in Chicago’s South and West Sides, it took an outsider’s curiosity to push it beyond the city limits. London’s Hyperdub Records, spearheaded by Kode9 (himself coming to Control Club on March 14), became an early genre champion, releasing DJ Rashad’s landmark Double Cup in 2013. It would be this record that would definitively bring footwork into the electronic music conversation. Spinn was there too, delivering his 2011 EP Man I Do It, one of the first footwork releases to permeate across the UK and European club scenes. In 2019, Spinn would return to Hyperdub with his G-Funk-infused Da Life EP.
Then, at what seemed like a career apex, came tragedy. DJ Rashad’s passing in 2014 left an unfillable void. He had been footwork’s most visible ambassador, its innovator, its spirit. But Spinn would take charge, ensuring that Teklife stayed alive and footwork kept evolving, expanding its reach with collaborations that pulled from trap, jungle, jazz, experimental, and beyond, as exemplified on his 2015 release, Off That Loud. His latest offering, the collaborative Who Betta, with The Era Footwork Crew and Jana Rush, is another burner built for the cypher and the club.
From there, Spinn would stay locked in, taking footwork to the world stage—Movement Detroit, Sonar, Red Bull Music Academy, Boiler Room takeovers. But more than that, he also kept building the next wave of the genre through influences on Addison Groove and Ramadanman. Footwork was a network, a philosophy, a language that spread city to city, crew to crew. Now you've got Teklife heads everywhere, from Denver to Tokyo, London to Belgrade, feeding a circle that never stops moving.
Two decades deep, Spinn still got it locked, keeping footwork’s pulse steady while bending and twisting the form. But no matter the terrain, its bass still knocks, hi-hats still skitter, and cyphers keep moving. As long as DJ Spinn is on the decks, Chicago’s fastest, wildest sound isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
