Todd Terry

As the title indicates, The Todd Terry Trilogy: Past, Present & Future is a comprehensive career overview of one of the best-known American house DJs. Disc one is a seamless greatest-hits mix that makes for a great party but might disappoint anyone looking for full-length versions of classics like Sax's "Give Yourself to Me" or Royal House's "Can You Party," which are present here only in two-minute snippets. Discs two and three collect unmixed original versions and recent superstar remixes of seminal singles like the Jungle Brothers' 1988 side "I'll House You" (generally credited with starting the short-lived "hip-house" subgenre and later mercilessly mocked by De La Soul's "Kicked Out the House") and the Todd Terry Project's finest three minutes, "Bango." A giddy collision of samples (from the Art of Noise and the old Batman TV series, among others), giggles, and a nonsensical refrain, "Bango" is still an exhilarating classic of late-'80s dance music. The more recent material lacks the freshness of those early singles, but Terry is one of the few DJ/producers of his generation who's still producing interesting work. (Terry's one mainstream hit single, his glorious transformation of Everything But the Girl's "Missing," isn't on this collection, but then, just about all of his fans already own it.) ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide