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The motivation was always simple: let the artists speak.

When I first stepped in as creative director of Trax Records in 2009, I couldn’t have imagined how deeply my decisions would root themselves in the culture and landscape that is house music. At the time, the idea of celebrating the label’s fortieth anniversary wasn’t even a certainty. Survival itself was the question.

And yet here we are. I’m now mixing the album I curated to commemorate that milestone — forty years of Trax Records — a moment that once felt far from guaranteed.

The journey between those two points was not always stable. There were stretches when the lights nearly went out, when the ground beneath the label felt uncertain. I stayed because I believed in the artists — and because I saw clearly how often their voices were being silenced or sidelined by self-interest and by an industry that didn’t understand the culture it was benefiting from.

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There were more phone calls than I can count where the person on the other end seemed less interested in our success than in seeing it stop. But every challenge sharpened the mission. Every obstacle only made the work stronger.

Looking back now, I’m proud of that persistence.

Twenty years can pass in a blink, but when I measure that time by the artists we’ve elevated and the music we’ve preserved, it feels meaningful. More than anything, I feel a sense of completion. I began this work during a period when house music — and the community that built it — faced an existential threat. From industry forces, from shifting cultural priorities, even from the city that birthed it. The scene needed people who believed in its value, people who understood that the creators of this music deserved far more than they were receiving.

I wanted to be one of those people.

The last time a mix of this scale came together around Trax was through Paul Johnson and Maurice Joshua, twenty years ago. Now I’ve had the chance to present my own interpretation — to show the world how I hear this music, how I experience my relationship with the songs and with the artistry behind them.

What I wanted to show was the full scope of house music — what it truly is and always has been. The esoteric edges. The pop crossovers. The raw underground pulse. It’s all part of the same tapestry.

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That tapestry is Chicago. The tapestry is House.

This project was built with deep gratitude. I want to thank every artist and every collaborator who helped bring it to life, along with the platforms and institutions that amplified it — Desslab, the Grammys, DJ Mag, Billboard, Resident Advisor, Beatport, and the global house community that continues to carry this music forward.

When I designed this release, my intention was preservation. House music’s history is constantly at risk of being flattened or rewritten by the mainstream. I wanted this album to serve as a reminder of the real story — the living memory of a culture built from the ground up.

For us. By us.

It was important to me that Larry Sherman’s presence be part of that story. One of his songs is included here, and he also appears on the final drop — the label has not allowed the last drop as yet to be released — alongside Ron Hardy and a megamix from Chip Chop. That final installment has been finished for over a year now. I’ve since moved on, creatively and personally, so I’m not sure when the label will release it. But when it arrives, it will complete what I envisioned as the spine of the project: a musical flag of Chicago.

Because that’s what this music ultimately carries.

We may come from different places, different cities, different lives. But somewhere deep inside the rhythm — inside the kick drum and the bassline — we’re all carrying Chicago.

Thank you.