Twenty-nine of the thirty-six cuts in this jackin house selection sit in a minor key. That number undercuts the cliché of the genre as perpetual party: here the jack plays out in half-light, with the groove as the only lamp left on. And yet the map has a bright frame: it opens in B-flat major with DJ Sneak's 'Full Cycle' in Cinthie's remix, and closes in D major with Audio Soul Project's 'Music Dub', also the longest cut at 8:07. Between those two poles, the shadows get organized.
There are two centers of gravity. G minor shows up five times — from Jeff Dougler & Balu's 'Love Me' to 'Judy Russell Red', the second Sneak in the selection — and its relative major is precisely the B-flat of the opening. B minor is the most repeated key, six cuts, and its relative major is the D that closes everything out. The geometry is elegant: the record opens and shuts by resolving its two busiest zones.
B minor, the dark street
That key hosts the extremes. 'Our World' in Demuir's Playboi Edit fires the tempo up to 158 BPM while the rest of the record breathes between 123 and 131, and Matrefakt's 'Love 2 C', in Phil Weeks' Ghetto Mix, pulls it back to the middle pulse. Weeks, founder of Robsoul — the Paris label he has run since 2000, which lands two cuts here via Joss Moog and Marlon George — signs two remixes in the pack. And Sneak, Puerto Rican-born and Chicago-raised, part of the city's second wave of house alongside Derrick Carter and Cajmere, even echoes in someone else's title: Bruno Furlan's 'Cajmere', in D minor.
Durations complete the picture: from the 4:13 sigh of 'Let Me Be Me' to the eight-minute closer that switches the lights off in a major key. If jackin house is muscle, this map is a reminder that it knows melancholy too.
Sources: Wikipedia · RA
