kerri chandler

"When I started doing house, I didn't know I was into doing house. I started because it was therapeutic – I lost my girlfriend years ago, someone killed her. Behind [legendary NJ club where KC would become resident] Zanzibar, of all things – this guy raped her, and killed her, and left her behind the club. But she loved house music. I was devastated, I was really, really wrecked.

She was always behind me, a beautiful woman, and I didn't know what to do with myself – but I thought to myself, “well, she loved house music, let me get more into house,” and I listened to what was going on. My friend said, “You should get more into making house music, I think you'd be really good at it” - because at that point I'd only been producing hip hop – and I thought “well, Tracy really loved house, but I don't really know how to do house.” So I said, “Let me play with some things, we'll see” - and the first track I made was “Get It Off”.

Now “Get It Off” was short for “get it off of my mind” because of her, and I put all these parts in it that had to do with what I was going through because of her – like there's a part that goes “You! Are! So! Vicious!” and I was talking to the guy that did that to her, and “now is the time, now is the time” was like “now is the time to get this off my mind”. And there was “get it off, get it off, set it loose”, and also a big scratch through the middle of the records which is what my life felt like when they killed her: it changed my entire groove, it changed my being."