Scoop Jackson

He had to leave this town to get appreciated. It usually happens that way in this city: see something, have an impossible time doing what you see, go somewhere else, do what you saw, blow the fuck up, come back, hero. Felix Stallings was only 8 when he saw his future. He saw clubs like the Germania Room and Sauers change the dimensions of the music scene in the city. He saw DJs like Farley Keith and Jesse Saunders reshape the way urban and European music was being played. He saw Frankie Knuckles become God. By 14, he had written and composed a Chicago house anthem. "Phantasy Girl" by DJ Pierre was his. He was primed to be the prodigy of the decade, the next Marshall Jefferson, the next Ten City, the next Ron Hardy. But Felix saw what was going on; saw how cultural icons, musical geniuses, were stuck here in their own silver screen shower scene, bathing in their own glory. So instead of rockin' the house, the kid who had Prince all inside of him, playing at the time everything from clarinet to bass to synthesized keyboards and piano--ran away. Leaving house without a home. Knowing that his life was bigger than a 312 area code.

708. I dial those followed by seven other digits. Felix Stallings Jr. answers in a mad rush to spend some quality time with the fam before he has to catch a plane to Belgium. "My manager just hit me with this," he says, referring to our last-minute interview. He speaks in a hurried but Heathcliff The Cat cool voice. "I've got like one pair of jeans and four pair of underwear that I basically have to throw in a bag." His stint will be short, because after that gig, he has to fly New York to revisit a yearlong project that will soon make history, then bolt back here to the Chi for the release party of one of the most-anticipated dance albums of all time. Now internationally known as Felix Da Housecat, aka Aphrohead; aka the Maddkatt Courtship; aka Sharkimaxx; aka Electrikboy; aka Devin Dazzle (notice the Prince influence?), Mr. Felix Stallings, by leaving Chicago, has become possibly the most prominent producer of house music ever born. No disrespect to Steve (Hurley) or Frankie (Knuckles), but this Cat, from outta nowhere, has reached that `nother level most Chicago artists never see.

On B96, either Maurice Joshua or Brian Middleton spins Da Housecat Remix of Britney Spears' "Toxic." Inside clubs across the world, the identical is happening. Last year it was his "Die Another Day" Madonna remix, the year before that it was his remix of Rinocerose's "Lost Love" that not only made global club impact, but got him nominated for a Grammy. Ears started burning, hearts started pounding, sweat began trickling down temples. The music that Felix Da Housecat was stamping his name on was broadening the scope of mundane pop artists' sound. Since they were calling his style electroclash, it can be said: he's been electrickcuting `em.

As Hurley, who's not only the producer behind Oprah's "Idol" project, but who is president of NARAS, says: "Felix knows how to take his old school influences and bring them to the new school in a way they can relate to."

Felix reaches inside of a bag full of records. Outside of creating music (producing), he is one of the world's supreme DJs, on par with the Mark Raes and Tomcrafts in the global world of deep dance. "DJing is like a hobby," Felix says, looking for Anne Clark's "Our Darkness" which he spun on his critically acclaimed 2003 "A Bugged Out Mix." "I think of myself as a producer first."

As he searches, standing in front of a closet full of Adidas kicks and eclectic track-suit jackets, the sound of his 5-year old daughter, Ariana, can be heard. She's looking at television. Sean Combs appears on the flat screen. "Daddy, that's Puff."

"Does she know who you are?" I ask him.

"I don't think she knows or understands," he responds. "Which is cool."

Soon she will. Because that project Felix has to stop in New York for, the one he's been working on for a year, the one that he's turned over twenty tracks for, the one that has changed his approach to making music, the one that's about to make music history, is P. Diddy's decade-long-awaited dance album. Produced by who else? Ariana's daddy.

"To me the definition of electroclash is white music with no soul, no spunk. It's just monotone and straight--no melody, no nothing. Just straight electronic music trying to copy the eighties. My goal is to bury that period."

He told Remix magazine this last month. To know Felix Stallings is to know that he's not about to fall into that musical death trap.

"I hate labels," he says, defending his words. "All of the music I make that they're calling `electroclash' is the music Ron Hardy [legendary house DJ] would play at the Music Box."

"I knew all of the music they were playing was imported," he'd say. "They were bringing records over from Europe or buying them at Importes [a record store formerly located on Plymouth Court in the South Loop]. We would call it house, but it was a special type of house. And that was my influence."

Whether it was Adonis' or Byron Stingly's voice, Andre Hatchett's or Wayne Williams' gift on the Technics, Mr. Fingers or Marshall Jefferson's ability to create anthems, it affected him.

And that was just Chicago. From Europe, every artist from Alexander Robotnic to John Rocco to the song he says he's "rockin' right now" while he's diggin' in his crate to find it, My Mine's "Hypnotic Tango," have shaped his process for developing his version of soul music.

There is a history of music in and from Chicago that makes the city a resting place for black history's post-soul culture. As Nelson George wrote in his legendary book "Buppies, B-Boys, Baps and Bohos" (Harper Collins): "As a musical genre, a definition of African American culture, and the code word for our national identity, soul has pretty much been dead since Nixon's reelection in 1972."

The most ironic thing about that statement is that was one year after Felix Stallings was born.

I arrived late to the party. I was in Amsterdam in 2003, on a Monday, four Hpnotiq's down, in a club, heard "Control Freaq," lost my fuckin' mind. I fell into a Jimmy Ross trance. Couldn't move. For five minutes and ten seconds, I felt hands, breasts, asses rubbed all over my body. I felt nothing. The fazing, the drop of bass, the resurgence of synth. The music got me. I felt like I was in either the Zion fuck scene in "The Matrix Reloaded" or in the opening scene of "Blade." Again, I felt nothing. As I walked to the booth where this sound had originated, I asked the DJ in my most distinguished un-American voice, "Who was that?" He held up the white label, "Felix Da Housecat!" he screamed, over the next greatest song I ever heard that night, "Sequel2Sub." "The song is called `Control Freaq.' This song and the last one are on his last CD, `Kittenz and Thee Glitz.' It's two years old, dude!"

I was two years late to a party that started in 1995. Felix dropped his official first full-length joint, "Alone In The Dark" that year to introduce himself to the world. The world wasn't really feeling what it was he was offering. The Eurovibe at that time was so entrenched in hip-hop and 808 beats, the post-Blue Monday/Yazoo sound of Felix's music was about to make the title to his album seem closer to the title of his autobiography. At 23, his revolution was about to be over. A DJ needed someone to save his life. Musical death became him. Reinvention was the only option.

"'Kittenz and Thee Glitz' is one of the most innovative records to come from an American DJ," the New York Times wrote before placing it #4 on their year-end best of albums of 2001. "A purrr-fect blend of 80's electro decadence," it was hailed. "****" from Rolling Stone. Even Spin magazine jumped on the EMU E4XT wagon in 2002, honoring him as DJ of the year.

Mr. Felix Stallings Jr. had reinvented himself into an international star of negroid Austin Powers magnificence. His face--which included heavy-rimmed black-shaded eyewear and the perfect mountainous unshaped texture afro-to-die-for--was seen everywhere. Along with "Madame Hollywood" and the song "Silver Screen Shower Scene," his music was being played around the world by everyone from Ministry of Sound to DJ Spinna. The album made Felix more than a star, it made him a marketable commodity in a business in desperate need to replace Moby.

"It was a trip," he says of those couple of years ago. Speaking now of how he's about to end the existence of Da Housecat. "The record company doesn't want me to do it, but I'm about to cut the hair and lose the glasses. Management telling at me `not to do it because that's you.' And I'm like, `That's why I'm trying to get rid of it, to start over.'

"I'm doing four albums now," he finishes. "I'm about to retire Felix Da Housecat."

But first he is trying to avoid the pressure of following up a masterpiece. His latest, the sequel to the monster he created, the most-anticipated dance/electroclash/house/soul CD ever, is called "Devin Dazzle & The Neon Fever." "It's different than `Kittenz'," is the first thing Felix says about it... and he says it immediately. "'Devin Dazzle' is on a whole Prince-like, post-black, electronic punk type of experience. More live instruments."

Former Chicago house DJ M, who through his record pool and industry connects was privy enough to hear `Devin' before its release date, said this: "Felix's style now of creating music is so pure in electronic soul and sound, so secretly rooted in the authenticity of house that he can be the reason you answer, `sight,' when asked the proverbial question: which would you rather lose--your ability to see or your ability to hear?"

Holy shit.

Before he goes to O'Hare, Felix and his crew (one of his boys he flew in from Switzerland, a couple of other of his boys, his wife Sophia and left-hand man Dave the Hustler) have raided Sushi Wabi. Heather, the ridiculously sexy maitre d', is used to seeing this ensemble at least three times weekly whenever Felix is in town. Quiet as kept--quiet as they try to keep it without being disrespectful to other patrons who have no idea what they are nonstop laughing about--this is what Felix does. This is his solace. Not Germany, not Japan, not New York. He does Randolph off-Halsted. He does Chicago. He does he.

"I don't think I'm lucky" he says, getting sake buzzed while his amazing Verve Heavenly House remix of Nina Simone's "Sinnerman" plays on the speaker above. "I'm blessed. I'm blessed to have the people around me that I have when I'm making the music."

As the hot sake and unagi kick in I think of how no one in the city really knows who this Cat really is. The city knows nothing of his contribution to its history. You won't hear any of Felix's songs on the radio anytime soon. The appreciation for truth in dance music--or house music since that's what it really is--hasn't found it's way into Clear Channel's monopoly of programming. But walk into any W lounge or inside one of Ian Schrager's hotels around the world, go to a club in Monaco, Brazil, Saint-Tropez, Beijing, Belgium or Brussels, go downstairs in the Virgin Megastore on Michigan Avenue, watch the "The Matrix Reloaded" or "Blade" again, and it's his music that will find you.

But Felix Stallings had to run away to make Felix Da Housecat happen. The one individual alive that has taken the Chicago ancestry of Jerry Butler, Pops Staples, Maurice White (Earth Wind & Fire), Curtis Mayfield and Donnie Hathaway and found a way to give global recognition to the Jamie Principals, Keith Nunnellys and Daryl Pandys who never got past Lake Michigan recognition, understands that it ain't where you at that will ultimately define you--it's where you from.

"A lot of people in the beginning didn't know I was from Chicago," he says having his last laugh before kissing the Chi goodbye and kissing the sky. "Everyone thought I was from England." He tilts his shades down and smiles. "They thought I was a white guy."

Ain't that how it usually goes?

(2004-05-12)

Also by Scoop Jackson

Go West
South Side-raised, the young preppy backpack prodigy Kanye began replacing lyrics with poetry, beats with rhythms
(2004-02-03)

A Civil Rights Movement
The Chicago Bulls ain't what they used to be.
(2000-06-08)

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