Chicago producer Steve Poindexter helped mold the raw underground sound known as ghetto house during its formation in the late 80s. His irreplaceable 1989 Work That Mutha Fucker 12-inch is a standard-bearer in ghetto house—the title track propels forward atop dirty, interlocking drum patterns, brittle hi-hats, and a sample of the words “work that mutha fucker” sporadically played on a loop. Poindexter crafted an arsenal of tracks he’d play live, but not all of them saw a physical release. That changes today, as buzzy label LA Club Resource—founded by 24-year-old California producer Delroy Edwards—releases Poindexter’s Street Fighter EP.
The release of the Street Fighter EP is the latest chapter in Poindexter’s lengthy musical history, which stretches back to 1975. Poindexter dipped his toe into music at the age of 10, which is when he began helping his older brother Tony Poindexter and friend Kurt Townsend throw parties at Mendel Catholic High School in Roseland. “I was carrying equipment for about six months before they even knew I knew how to DJ,” Poindexter says. “Then one day they gave me the chance to get on. Tony was playing a record, and he turned around and he was doing something—the record was ready to go off, so I put the record on and started playing the next record for him. He was like, ‘Wow, I ain’t know you know how to play.’”
Street Fighter was among the recordings in Scott’s possession through the years. “I went down to granny’s basement and found the whole thing, man—I found the label with the whole thing,” Scott says. The find came as a surprise to Poindexter. “We was playing some stuff and [Steve] put the Street Fighter on. I’m like, ‘Where did you get that from?,’” Poindexter says. The LA Club Resource 12-inch presents Street Fighter in its original form, though with a few minor tweaks. “We EQ’d it a little bit more—it sort of had that old, original Chicago sound, we wanted you to hear that hum,” Poindexter says. “It’s the noise from the four-track when it was recording. Those are actually mastered on a four-track recorder.”
