Person · 1963 · Detroit [42.33, -83.05]

Derrick May

The most lyrical of the Belleville Three, May recorded under the alias Rhythim Is Rhythim and gave techno its emotional high-water mark with the 1987 anthem "Strings of Life." In 1986 he launched the Transmat label, a sister imprint to Atkins's Metroplex that nurtured a second wave of Detroit producers. He once described the music as George Clinton and Kraftwerk trapped in an elevator, a phrase that became shorthand for the whole scene.

Evidence2

Connections4

  • influenced by → Juan Atkins

    Atkins was the elder of the Belleville schoolmates and the first to record, and his example drew Derrick May into making electronic music. May has consistently named Atkins as the one who showed the circle that machines could carry their own sound. The mentorship runs straight from Metroplex to the founding of May's Transmat.

  • collaborates with → Founding of Transmat Records

    Derrick May founded Transmat in 1986 as a sister label to Metroplex, extending the Detroit infrastructure Atkins had begun. Transmat would release "Strings of Life" and mentor the producers who became the genre's second generation.

  • collaborates with → Rhythim Is Rhythim — Strings of Life (EP)

    Recording as Rhythim Is Rhythim, Derrick May composed and produced "Strings of Life," released on his own Transmat label in 1987. It became the emotional anthem that carried Detroit techno to dancefloors across Europe.

  • influences → Carl Craig

    Derrick May mentored the younger Carl Craig and released his early work on Transmat, passing the Belleville lineage to the genre's second generation. Craig would extend Detroit techno into more cinematic, jazz-touched territory through his own label, Planet E. The relationship is the clearest thread linking the founders to what came after.

See it on the globe →Sources