Deskee is the stage name for Derrick Crumpley, a German-American

house music House is a music genre characterized by a repetitive Four on the floor (music), four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 120 beats per minute. It was created by Disc jockey, DJs and music producers from Chicago metropolitan area, Chicago' ...

artist.

Biography

Early life

He moved to

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

in 1984 with his mother, who was a member of the Armed Forces.

Musical career

Deskee became the main DJ for the road show called The Body Snatchers Road Show (members: Tillman, Williams, and Crumpley), and they played in several

night club A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs gener ...

s throughout Germany. Deskee shopped at the

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

record shop A record shop or record store is a retail outlet that sells Sound recording and reproduction, recorded music. In the late 19th century and the early 20th century, record shops only sold gramophone records, but over the 20th century, record sho ...

, Boy Records, during the late 1980s to mid 1990s, and was approached by the shop owners A. Shepanski and N. Jordan, who informed him of a

compilation album A compilation album comprises Album#Tracks, tracks, which may be previously released or unreleased, usually from several separate recordings by either one or several Performing arts#Performers, performers. If by one artist, then generally the tr ...

they were about to release on their new

independent record label An independent record label (or indie label) is a record label that operates without the funding or distribution of major record labels; they are a type of small- to medium-sized enterprise, or SME. The labels and artists are often represented ...

, Black-Out. Deskee teamed up with local DJ and

record producer A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure.Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...

H. Felber and

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

M. Rodiger, producing "Let There Be House". Maximillian Lenz (aka WestBam) and

Klaus Jankuhn Klaus Jankuhn (born 12 January 1965) is a German record producer and musician, considered a pioneer in the early German techno scene. He mostly worked for the artists of the rave label Low Spirit, producing artists such as WestBam, Marusha or DJ ...

added further work to the record. The lyrics for the song were co-written by Deskee and fellow rapper Tony Walton (aka True), who went on to work sign with Black-Out also. Deskee scored three hits on the US ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

Hot Dance Music/Club Play Dance Club Songs is a chart published weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine in the United States. It is a national look over of club disc jockeys to determine the most popular songs being played in nightclubs across the country. It was launched as th ...

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...

: two number-ones from 1990 ("Let There Be House" and "Dance Dance") and a top 20 hit in 1991 ("Kid Get Hyped", peaking at number 11). Deskee's singles also charted in the UK, where "Let There Be House" peaked at number 52, and "Dance, Dance" reached number 74 in the

UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...

, as well as Spain, Italy and Japan.

Discography

Singles

References