Bleep

Established! — that certainly sums up the legacy of RP Boo. Regarded as the Juan Atkins of Chicago footwork, his influence on the genre can’t be overstated enough, from his DJ-ing days in the early 1990s to his 2013-2018 holy trinity of full-length releases on Planet Mu. With Established!, the trinity now becomes four-pronged — and what’s more, Boo shows off the endless stream of new ideas he’s still capable of bringing to the beat pad.

One of the most remarkable things about Established! is RP Boo’s fresh-faced hunger and humour. Once we’re allowed into his world with the sparse piano jam of ‘All My Life’, we encounter the familiar G-Funk swagger of Dre and Snoop’s ‘Nuthin’ But A G Thang’, in which Boo locates a nascent, throbbing groove beneath the blunted sample and spins the track into a vertigo-inducing barrage. ‘Finally Here’ sees Boo teaming up with Afiya for a raunchy party rap melee, where group chants and girl group vocalisations pop in and out of ear shot across a classic footwork bass buzz.

RP Boo offers a number of reminders with Established! Chief among them is the sheer amount of fun that can be had by sending samples and beats over the 150bpm mark. He runs this joint — and don’t you forget it.