We spoke to ghetto house pioneer and new signing DJ Slugo about the making of one of his biggest tracks: ‘Wouldn’t You Like to Be a Hoe’.

Hailing from South Side Chicago, DJ Slugo is one of the most influential artists in the genres of ghetto house and juke. When we asked him to tell us the story behind any one of most popular tracks, he singled out ‘Wouldn’t You Like to be a Hoe’ as undoubtedly “one of [his] biggest songs.”

First, DJ Slugo delved right into the technical side. “I made this track with a Roland R70 and a Gemini 2-channel mixer with the four sample banks,” he said. This equipment set-up comes as no surprise, considering ‘Wouldn’t You Like to Be a Hoe’s spare and minimalist feel. It’s the revelations DJ Slugo told us about the song’s lyrics and vocals that are really surprising.

“This track was actually made as a joke,” he revealed. “I was sitting with a few associates and I made the joke and had them all uncontrollably laughing, but one of them said ‘You should make that into a track!’ Needless to say, after they left my home studio the idea to make it a track stuck with me, so I did it.” With this story and the track’s vocals in mind, it isn’t hard to see how the light-hearted lyrical refrain began as a joke between friends. It turns out the song is a playful twist on a the jingle from a 1970s Dr Pepper commercial. Knowing DJ Slugo’s musical sense of humour, it isn’t surprising that transforming this idea into a full song was something that he wanted to do.

Asked about ‘Wouldn’t You Like to Be a Hoe’s success, DJ Slugo had this to say. “I didn’t know it would be a big track when I was done, but I did know people would get a kick out of it.” As it happens, he was right about people getting a kick out of it, and that kick was reflected in the song’s worldwide popularity. “Years after I finished it, Ray Barney, the CEO of Dance Mania, heard the track and allowed me to release in on vinyl. It got in the hands of a lot of big DJs overseas and that’s how it got broken the first time.”

That first time was in the mid 1990s. ‘Wouldn’t You Like to Be a Hoe’ came out as part of DJ Slugo’s EP Taris Is Paris, which helped spread the ghetto house sound around the world. Fellow MN2S artist and ghetto house pioneer DJ Deeon was thanked on the sleevenotes. Of course, DJ Slugo wouldn’t be talking about a ‘first time’ if there wasn’t going to be a second time, and the second time may be where younger electronic music fans know the track from.

“I say the first time because over 20 years later, Nina Kraviz and a few other international DJs played the record at some big festivals,” he said. The track’s resurgence was phenomenal. “It was like the song was brand new again,” said DJ Slugo. “This made me love the record all over again, just like the night I made it.” Indeed, though ‘Wouldn’t You Like to Be a Hoe’ has many trademark traits of a 90s ghetto classic, it sounds so fresh after all these years that it could have been recorded yesterday. The song’s second coming was so successful that DJ Slugo re-released it on the EP Wouldn’t You Like to Be a Hoe 2K.

DJ Slugo had just one final thing to share with us. “In closing I will say: I’m a hoe, he’s a hoe, she’s a hoe, we some hoes, wouldn’t you like to be a hoe too?”

Book DJ Slugo for a DJ set packed with ghetto house and juke classics from the producer of ‘Wouldn’t You Like to Be a Hoe’ himself.

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