DJ Sneak

DJ Sneak is Carlos Sosa, a Puerto Rican-born DJ and producer raised in Chicago, and one of the defining figures of the second wave of Chicago house. Born in Puerto Rico, his earliest touchstones were salsa, merengue and Latin orchestras, and he moved to Chicago with his family in the early 80s. Unable to speak much English at the time, he gravitated towards instrumental music, finding his way into the city's underground through warehouse parties, old mixtapes and WBMX radio shows from the likes of Farley Jackmaster Funk and Steve Hurley. The nickname came from another life entirely: he was a graffiti tagger before he was a producer.

He launched his own label, Defiant Records, in the early 90s, but the turning point came in 1994 when, working at Chicago's Gramophone Records, he met Cajmere, better known as Green Velvet, who ran the Cajual and Relief imprints. Cajmere put out several of his pivotal early tracks, including the "Moon Doggy E.P." on Cajual, and his debut album "Blue Funk Files" followed on Relief. That same year "You Can't Hide from Your Bud" landed on Derrick Carter's Classic, fusing sampled disco loops with jacking Chicago rhythms and setting a clear template for the filtered disco-house sound that soon swept dancefloors worldwide.

That influence travelled far. Daft Punk named him in the "Teachers" roll-call on their album "Homework," crediting his "house gangster" aesthetic, and he later picked up a songwriting credit on their track "Digital Love." Through the late 90s his footprint widened, with records on New York imprints like Henry Street and Strictly Rhythm, collaborations with Armand Van Helden, and his own Magnetic Recordings launched in 2001.

His DJ sound is instantly recognisable: tempos pitched a touch above the house norm, skittering percussion in a bright upper register, disco filters draped over raw jacking drums, and a Latin sensibility running underneath it all. A long-time Ibiza regular, he has documented both sides of his practice on mixes like "Fabric 62" and the retrospective "Back in the Box." Alongside Derrick Carter, Green Velvet and Paul Johnson, he belongs to the generation that kept Chicago house alive and evolving through the 90s, and the records he made for Cajual, Relief, Defiant and Classic remain the core of his legacy.