Rashad remixed that track with Trim so he's obviously heard grime, but he isn't sitting at home jamming it. He's definitely heard it. I do play some grime when I DJ, though usually just instrumentals, and I'm not super knowledgeable about it.
Man all the clubs in Chicago kind of fucking blow. Smartbar has a pretty decent sound system but I hate that place. Most places that have decent sound book terrible shows and aren't really rushing to book these guys. It's pretty grim here, and pretty sad. While the footwork battles are at dance studios and gyms and such, these guys DJ at clubs and house parties all the time. The only time I've seen any of these guys play at clubs in the hood they were pretty makeshift spots, but there used to be some regular spots they would play at, one was Callivini's in the South Suburbs, and Club Xavier on the West Side. I am not exactly sure what happened to these places (I think Xavier is closed down however). To be honest though I've had a lot more fun going to the footwork battles. They have two huge subs and the music is loud as fuck, you can hear it from down the block. There's plenty of bass, and I'd say the best way to hear footwork tracks really is through Spinn's PA in a tiny room.
To the dude who said something about other DJs playing footwork wrong, it's totally true, a lot of people suck at playing it out. A lot of people play the wrong tracks at the wrong time, and nobody dances to it. They just don't really know how to work with it, or they just have no sense of timing. Rashad, Spinn, Traxman ect don't exclusively play footwork tracks when they DJ, whether they are playing at a house party in Chicago or in Europe. Hell Clent is a hip-hop DJ on a local radio station, and I've hear Traxman play straight up techno sets. I've heard Spinn play dancehall at a party too. One of my favorite moments was seeing Rashad play at PS1 in NYC, where he got everybody dancing, starting off with classic house, jersey club to get people warmed up, and then dropped shit like Ghost at an outdoor venue with like 3000 people, many of them weird tourists. He told me when he first started playing in other cities and overseas that he would start with his more accessible jukey stuff, and people would ask him to play straight up footwork tracks. He was kind of nervous to play "that weird shit" as he calls it, but he knows now that people are familiar with his music and that they want to hear that kind of stuff, and he's pretty psyched on that.
