Derrick May

In the mid 1980s, Detroit native Derrick May fused the icy synthetic rhythms of new wave with the dance-inducing club beats of Chicago house and underground disco to create what is now called techno music. Along with his high school pals Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson (together known as the Bellville Three), May revolutionized dance music--and pop music in general--by introducing a highly mechanized, futuristic aesthetic and deconstructionist conceptual approach to making records, opening the floodgates for thousands of intellectualizing knob-twisters and beatmakers. May has performed and released music under his own name as well as the monikers Mayday and Rhythm is Rhythm, and continued to do so into the early 2000s.