Download Jimmy Edgar’s Tribute to Frankie Knuckles

“The first time I heard ‘Baby Wants To Ride,’ it really moved me,” says Jimmy Edgar, the man behind techno and house label Ultramajic, and a key figure in Detroit’s new school of DJs and producers. Today Jimmy pays tribute to an artist who looms large in his personal history by releasing his snappy, futuristic remix of the late Frankie Knuckles’ soulful classic, “Baby Wants to Ride.”

“One listen,” he says, “and you can see where I drew all my inspiration when making my tune from 2006, ‘Hot, Raw, Sex.’” Any good historian will tell you that, through all the adversarial moments and competition, Detroit and Chicago have always traded tips. “Chicago is approximately a six-hour drive from Detroit,” Edgar recalls, “so growing up we would frequent parties,back and forth”—and at the time, Frankie Knuckles’ records were in every vinyl shop in Chicago. His edit of “Baby Wants to Ride” is a much-needed reminder of that long history of exchange between dance music’s midwestern metropoles. Download it above and pour one out for the Godfather of House.

@maxpearl