And on the DJ side, what was the big break?

On the DJ front, there's my cousin, who's no longer living, and Gene Hunt. Gene's manager Steven Norvilles and my cousin went to Quigley South High School together. If my cousin, Anton Rogers, was alive today he would be one of the premier DJs out. He actually influenced one of my other cousins, Andre Hatchett.

I didn't know music was such a family affair...

Yeah, me, Andre Hatchett and Lee Collins are cousins. A lot of the stuff I used to play at the Reactor [a Chicago club of the '80s], Anton would give to me. Anyway, he passed in 1989 in a car accident - he was actually in the car with Andre, Darryl Townsend...They had a little crew and had just dropped Andre off. They were major record collectors and so, for me, being the youngest in the crew, I was immersed in a lot of music on the DJ front. These guys were always buying records. I don't just mean going to the record store - I mean flea markets, out-of-town flea markets, garage sales, experimenting with buying a whole lot of stuff and sorting through it. So that's the school I come from. To this day I'm an audiophile. I like to study music, try new things out. That's what keeps it interesting. And that's why when I went to New York I had no problem connecting there.

Now when and why did you leave Chicago, a place where you were established and succeeding, to move to New York?

I left between '96 and '97 and was there for almost a decade. I hooked up with cats like Fran�ois K, who I already knew, Joe Claussell, Spinna, Ian Friday - those were my knockas! And actually one of my best friends back there, Jonesy Hines, who used to do management for the Giant Step party, which was my residency out there. Jonesy's about 45 years old and has been collecting music forever. He's like a walking encyclopedia. You go down to his basement and it's like a music library!

He's one of those guys you can just hum a few bars of a song and they'll tell you when it was made, the label and might have a few of the remakes...Your cousin Lee Collins, Sadar Behar and Jarvis Mason are like that for me. It's a priceless gift, really.

[laughing] Exactly. Those are my buddies. The ones you ask "Do you have that?" and they say "Do you have this?" and it goes on for hours. I really didn't plan on living in New York, though. I knew from traveling back and forth that if I was going to live there, I was going to have to have a lot of money and I had lost a lot building my space here [Prescription Records]. So I went there and it took me over! It was like a whirlwind. I learned a lot there on the international front, everything.

What has happened in Chicago is it's kind of gotten stuck in House - the name "House" and what it's supposed to be, instead of what it started as: an amalgamation of music - everything.

By "everything" do you mean the come-as-you-are-and-show-me-who-YOU-are attitude that seems to have left?

Exactly, exactly - not just stuck in the title. I mean, I started off that way [knowing it was everything] and never got off it, but a lot of people coming into the scene and who never were a part of the scene don't know that. And it's not their fault. For me, when I was coming up, we tried to study everything that was around us and we tried to study what it was all about instead of getting what we call the "newscaster version". If you're going to know something, know it. Try to be the best at it because you're carrying a legacy that's rich and it's our responsibility to know that shit. Unfortunately, now a lot of people don't do their homework.

Alright, will you help me help people with their homework? Even though this is dance music, most of the credit is given to the DJs and producers and promoters. How important do you think the real dancers, the ones who generate circles and energy are to this scene?

Heh, well you know I was a dancefloor kid! When I first moved to New York, for the first maybe two years, I was a babypowder kid! That's it. I was dancing and interacting with the community on the dance floor so that by the time that I started doing my own thing, they were like "Oh, so that's Ron Trent!" They already knew me.

It seems like it would be important to dance if you make dance music, but a lot of newer people lie and say they've got to dance when they've really go to have a drink. You never see them on the floor or they bring the breakbattle/single person showcase to the dance floor. I really feel that's changing the music and the scene.

For sure. That's the first school - the dance. You have to understand the translation, what it feels like, what's going on. In New York, like the early scene, dance is like yoga. Folks change their clothes. That's their gym - listening to something you've never heard before, or nostalgic pieces, and being immersed in that moment, and working it out...It's not about moves or the names of steps, it's about your soul.