Juke and Footwork
The 8 Best Juke and Footwork
Tracks of All Time
Chicago house accelerated past the point of comfort and handed to dancers. Ghetto house became juke became footwork: 160 BPM, chopped vocal fragments, and triplet kick patterns written to answer a dancer's feet in real time.
- Origin
- Chicago, Illinois, 1992
- Tempo
- 150–165 BPM
- Also known as
- footwork, juke, chicago juke, ghetto house
- Tracks
- 8
- Updated
- 2026-08-29
Listen to the whole list
Play it through here →One record after another, with the verdicts
Take 7 of 8 to YouTube → (opens in a new tab)
Opens the list on YouTube as a playlist you can save to your own account. We never see your account, and nothing is stored here. 1 of these records have no verified YouTube link yet, so they are left out rather than guessed at.
Curators on Juke and Footwork
This ranking is the whole scene arguing. These are individuals who gave us their own Juke and Footwork list, and a reason for every record on it.
Number 1: Cajmere / Percolator
1992 · Cajual
One bleeping figure, endlessly repeated, that became a genre's shared vocabulary. Thirty years of Chicago records quote it, and a whole category of track is still named after it.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 2: DJ Deeon / Freak Like Me
1994 · Dance Mania
Ghetto house at its most reduced: a drum pattern, a bassline and a chant. Deeon made records that cost nothing and worked on any system, which is why they travelled so far from Chicago.
Number 4: RP Boo / Baby Come On
1997 · Dance Mania
A white label built on an Ol' Dirty Bastard sample, and usually named as the first footwork track: the moment the beat stops being four-to-the-floor and starts answering a dancer instead.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — 160, The Waxonia Desk — Footwork Travels
Number 5: DJ Rashad / Feelin
2013 · Hyperdub
Rashad's gift was making the style hospitable without slowing it down — soul samples and drum-and-bass warmth over patterns that still refuse to resolve. The record that took footwork worldwide.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — 160, The Waxonia Desk — Footwork Travels, The Waxonia Desk — Ghosts, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 6: Traxman / Footworkin on Air
2012 · Planet Mu
A Chicago veteran demonstrating how much melody the format can carry. Traxman's crate-digging is the counter-argument to the idea that footwork is only rhythm and shouting.
Number 7: DJ Nate / Hatas Our Motivation
2010 · Planet Mu
Made on a phone-era budget and released to an audience that had no context for it. The strangest record on this list, and the one that convinced Europe something genuinely new was happening.
Number 8: Jlin / Erotic Heat
2011 · Planet Mu
Footwork detached from the dance entirely, by a producer from Gary who never made tracks for battles. Two singles on a compilation before any album: all the rhythmic complexity, none of the samples, and a completely personal result.