Inner City

Optimists were in limited supply in postindustrial, money-tight '80s Detroit, but Kevin Saunderson almost single-handedly changed all that by forming Inner City. Born in Brooklyn in 1964, Saunderson was DJing as a teenager in a rural suburb outside the Motor City, exploring Kraftwerk’s robot love calls and club music’s emerging brutal minimalism. In 1987, he produced “Big Fun”, a killer track he wanted to put lyrics on. He found singer Paris Grey, formed Inner City, and used her sturdy voice to add notes of hope and community to his blend of Chicago’s rumbling house sound and Detroit’s rugged booming gloom. In 1988, “Big Fun” and its follow-up release, "Good Life", established Inner City as a presence on European dance charts, and eventually in the U.S. Inner City marked an early turning point for electronic dance music, bringing an underground subculture into the pop mainstream, remix by remix. Inner City remained one of Saunderson’s recording guises throughout the years. In 2017, his son Dantiez joined the group, and their single from that year, “Good Luck” (featuring vocals from LaRae Starr), sounded proudly faithful to the dance floors that had first launched the band.