TEN CITY – THE NEXT GENERATION

Ten City’s Own Byron Stingily Takes Us Behind The Scenes of His New Album, The Next Generation

“I want to stay true, while incorporating the new.”

House Music’s enduring superpower is baked right into its origins — how the beat and the groove and the words bring people together while lifting us up. The best songs, the best artists have that power to unify us, to bring us together despite our differences and move us in ways both familiar and brand new.

Ten City helped lay the strong foundation upon which our House stands, they know how to lift us up with the beat and inspire us with Byron Stingily’s powerful voice and lyrics. When Ten City lays down a track, you know it was born from the heart. Today, these legendary artists behind the timeless hits that elevate us like Devotion, Get Up (Everybody), and Be Free are back with a brand-new album, and it’s a BIG one.

“(Working with new, young artists) was the idea from the beginning,” Byron Stingily says. “I had a meeting with the head of Nervous Records, Mike Weiss, and together we were like, ‘What’s going to make this album be something special for right now?’ He started naming off producers, and I was like, it needs to be somebody with a fresh new sound, like Emmaculate. He asked if Emmaculate can do the whole project, and I said of course he can. I knew that if he was just given the green light, he can deliver.”

He not only delivered, Emmaculate knocked it so far out of the park it cleared Wrigley’s ivy walls and is probably still skating somewhere across Lake Michigan. Ten City The Next Generation is packed with 13 hot new songs, every single one crafted with love and written to move you, to make you Get On Up, as the Godfather himself, James Brown, might say.

And you can get on up and dance to all of them right now, today, without delay. Hitmaster Mike Weiss’s very own Nervous Records has it ready for you special, waiting for you on your favorite music streaming platform. Click Right Here to get yours today!

Or, if you like your grooves fresh-pressed, you can pick up a platter at your favorite vinyl shop or Online Right Here Right Now (subject to availability, they’re spinning out the door fast!).

The Next Generation reunites the crew who brought us the Grammy-Nominated Ten City album Judgement, and its blockbuster follow-up album, Love is Love, which featured the hit single, A Girl Named Phil, which I still keep on repeat. But the most exciting part about this new album is how Byron and the crew used their experience and talents to both give back to others and elevate the work. They opened their doors to a whole new generation, welcomed them in, and everyone’s work on this album was elevated because they came together in unity to lift each other up first.

“Emmaculate, Shebazz Curtis, and El Boogie are part of my team, that’s my crew; we work on everything together,” Byron says. “The difference with this album is Emmaculate pretty much worked on every song but one. This album is produced by Emmaculate, and co-produced by me.

“Marshall Jefferson wrote verses on Man Like Me. Marshall is a legendary producer, his hit song Move Your Body was just ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as the 8^th greatest dance record of all time. Marshall is revered. This time around, and even Marshall agreed, we needed to do something a little more contemporary for now, and we figured me and Emmaculate should do the project.

“Emmacuate is a generation younger than Marshall and me. He has a different perspective, a different set of ears, and a different sound. We wanted to stay true to what the Ten City sound is, to the essence of Ten City, so that was my responsibility to maintain that.

“But I relied heavily on Emmaculate and Shebazz to make sure that this album is something that can be played right now. If we walk in a club that plays dance music, this album is something that can play and be well-received,” Byron says.

Fresh is right, as The Next Generation features some of the hottest up-and-coming artists on the scene, some of them already breaking records and breaking barriers.

“I had a hook called Love Music, and Emmaculate came up with a beat and a groove for that, and we went in the studio and cut the song,” Byron says. “We sent that to New York and Michael Weiss said, ‘Yeah, this is what we’re looking for.’ And then the next song we did was Mon’Arie’s Live Your Life, then Michael Weiss was like, ‘Yeah, you guys are cookin’.”

Turns out the key to cookin’ up hits is working with fresh ingredients. In addition to Shebazz Curtis and El Boogie, producers DJ Flipside, Na’el Shehade, Gershon Jackson, and Paris Cesvette bring their unique fires to feed The Next Generation.

“As much as we got Emmaculate, Shebazz, and El (Boogie) on the project,” Byron says, “there’s fresh talent in Lee England doing string arrangements, we have Ryan Wayne Tedder on the horns, we have a young lady, Uneq’ka, a very soulful singer.

“We got Mon’Aerie, an actress and a phenomenal singer — she just finished a major role as Shug Avery in The Color Purple on stage here in Chicago at the Goodman Theatre, which is a prestigious theatre. She’s been on the television show The Chi, she models, she’s doing all kinds of things.

“We have Darious Lyles (aka D. Lylez), he’s been singing with a lot of hip-hop artists and R&B artists; he sounds like a modern, young Michael Jackson, he’s got the whole Chris Brown thing. He also reminds me of Craig David, the British artist, he’s got that really fresh sound.

“We have OVEOUS, who’s a spoken-word artist, we have the great artist Ric Wilson on the album. We have a group named DRAMA, and they had a hit song with almost 100 million Spotify streams. They performed at Madison Square Gardens, and we went and saw them. I asked them if they would perform on the Ten City album, and they said, without hesitation, that it was an honor. Their style of Dance Music is different from us, so to do a song with them, the combination of Ten City and DRAMA is really good to me,” Byron says.

“Some of the more traditional songs are the ones that are resonating in England,” Byron says. “Even though Dance Music is worldwide, there are small, distinct differences between the records that become big. England has their own style, Italy’s got their own style, France has their own style, New York, Chicago, Baltimore, LA — and now you have these commercial records that are getting 300-to-400 million streams.

“How do you add all of those elements to try to create something that’s going to hit the masses? There are thousands of dance records put out per week. What are you going to do to separate yourself that makes your record stick out? Do you even think about it? How do you go about making a hit record?”

Byron knows. His music has traveled around the world, from Devotion to That’s The Way Love Is to Right Back to You to Be Free and Love Is Love, Ten City stays in rotation in South America, England, Europe, Africa, Japan, Iceland, Australia, and many more countries and cultures.

To this day, Byron still travels the world, performing in front of live audiences throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, often backed by some of the world’s most phenomenal bands and orchestras. He knows how to craft the beats and lyrics that resonate with people, because our needs, our desires, our feelings are universal no matter who you are or where you were born. People are people wherever you are, and none of us are immune to the music when a hot beat drops.

“The key to being a good songwriter or a good record producer is sometimes you have to not think about it, you gotta just do it,” Byron says. “But you also have to be a fan, and be aware of what you feel is going to move people, what’s going to move you. You gotta be in tune with the audience.”

House Music’s ability to elevate our best selves, its positivity and inclusivity hits hard on these bangin’ new Ten City tracks. If the groove is the driving heartbeat, then the meaning behind the lyrics and the bare emotion that went into crafting them is the vibrant soul of The Next Generation.

“This was probably the most focused I’ve ever been working on an album, because my mom was very sick,” Byron says. “She has since passed, and the only thing that allowed me to escape thinking about that was working on this album, so I was very focused.

“Each one of these songs may mean one thing on the surface, but it might mean something else, and certain songs were meant to mean certain things.”

“There’s a song on the album called You’re A Star. I wrote that song sitting in the stands at my son’s wrestling tournament for the state championship,” Byron says. “I was sitting there in the stands, and he came up to me and asked, ‘Dad, would you be mad at me if I didn’t win the whole tournament?’ And I told him, ‘No, I wouldn’t be mad at you if you didn’t win the wrestling tournament. At the end of the day, we’re still all going out to eat after the tournament, we’re still going to have fun. Your family is still going to love you whether you win or lose, it ain’t like the house is dependent on you winning or not, go out and do your thing.’

“Part of me wanted him to know he was great; I didn’t want to put pressure on him, but I was like, If he really knew his full potential… So, I wrote the song You’re A Star sitting there in the stands. In the song it says, ‘Tonight is your big night / All the lights are shining bright / Cameras are in your direction / You are the main attraction.’ And so, after he did win State, all the people wanted to interview him, so it’s saying, You’re a Star. The song feels like an artist getting ready to perform at an awards show, but the song was motivated by my son,” Byron says.

“There’s a song on the album, House Again, and we do House Music, so on the surface people may say, ‘Why are you calling it House again?’ But it actually does symbolize a rebirth for House Music. Everyone talks about EDM, and so I’m like, Hey, it’s time for House again, for House artists.

“But it’s also talking about a relationship, a man and woman. Can they rebuild the love back in their relationship? But what people don’t know is it’s also a song about politics. I was thinking about our country, and about, ‘Can it be a house again?’ with all this separation going on. Can it be love and people caring about each other again?

“And then, on the world front, can there be love in the world? I don’t know if it ever was (laughs), but the romanticism in me is saying, can this be a house again, a united world, a united country? Even locally, there are so many things going on in Chicago. The song is asking, Is there still any hope left?” Byron says.

If there’s still an ember of hope burning in this world, The Next Generation ignites it and builds it into a roaring fire, a beacon that draws us together and shows us that yes, hope is still alive, and it burns hot within us when we all move together as one.

“I never want to be a copycat, or chase the latest trends,” Byron says. “I want to do something that’s going to inspire people, but I also want to be a leader, so we tried to strike a really good balance between the true and the new. That’s what I told the record label, I want to stay true, while incorporating the new. I want to stay true to my original roots, but I want it to feel new, that’s why we called the album, The Next Generation.

“I write on different levels and different perspectives; a lot of the songs on the album have different meanings. I don’t like hitting people over the head with it, so a lot of times people say it’s uplifting, feel-good music. But there are different meanings throughout the album to try to reach people on a deeper, spiritual level. I don’t get into religion; I love religion, I just think certain things with religion have been used to separate us so many times, and so I try not to talk about things on a religious level. I try to make music to bring people together, and that was the whole thing about House Music, it was meant to bring people together. I try to put messages in there to unify us,” Byron says.

We’re right here beside you in unity, brother, standing in Ten City’s bright light.

You can download Ten City’s brand-new album, TEN CITY – THE NEXT GENERATION Right Here, Right Now.

Byron Stingily is one of the founders of Chicago Devotion, a company built to be a gathering place where people can find the help they need now. Chicago Devotion features our team’s efforts to bring hard-to-find resources and information to the people so they can achieve their dreams – another example of the work Byron puts in every day to better peoples’ lives.

For more helpful resources and information for your needs and to enrich your daily lives, gather together on the Chicago Devotion Home Page and follow us on Facebook and X, @ChicagoDevotion.