DJ Sneak

There’s a good reason that DJ Sneak is the third person name-checked in “Teachers”, Daft Punk’s 1997 roll call of house and techno icons: The Chicago DJ pioneered a style of rugged, cut-up house music that left a major impact not just on the French duo but also on dance music as a whole. Born Carlos Sosa in Puerto Rico in 1969, Sneak moved to Chicago in the early ’80s and quickly discovered the city’s burgeoning house scene. He started putting out records in the early ’90s, on both his own Defiant Records and Green Velvet’s Cajual and Relief imprints. Part of Chicago’s so-called second wave of house producers, he translated the lean grooves of ’80s house into beefier, more sample-driven sounds like 1996’s “Keep On Groovin’” and 1997’s “You Can’t Hide From Your Bud”, sculpting filtered disco breaks into hypnotic dance-floor bliss. In the decades since, Sneak has kept pace with the times without ever abandoning the fundamental funk that makes his music so vital.