Inner City is an American electronic dance music band formed in 1987 in Detroit, Michigan. The group originally consisted of record producer and composer Kevin Saunderson (born September 5, 1964 in New York), and vocalist Paris Grey (born November 5, 1965 in Glencoe, near Chicago, Illinois). Saunderson, along with Juan Atkins and Derrick May, is one of the Belleville Three, high school friends who later pioneered the Detroit techno, the first techno musical scene. In February 2018, Billboard magazine ranked them as the 69th most successful dance music artists of all-time.
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Musical career
Inner City topped the US Billboard dance chart five times, and had nine top 40 hits on the UK Singles Chart. The group's early dancefloor-pop music crossover tracks were "Big Fun" (UK No. 8, US Dance No. 1) and "Good Life" (UK No. 4, US Dance No. 1). Other hits include "Ain't Nobody Better" (UK No. 10, US Dance No. 1) "Do You Love What You Feel" (UK No. 16, US Dance No. 1) and "Whatcha Gonna Do with My Lovin'" (UK No. 12, US Dance No. 8). The group recorded three albums for Virgin/EMI Records and two singles for Columbia/SME Records.
In the early 1990s, Tommy Onyx was brought on to be the band leader for Inner City live shows. Onyx co wrote the hits “Hallelujah”, “Fire” & “Bad Girl” and produced the Spanish language version of Good Life, “Buena Vida”.
In 2017, a new incarnation of the group was formed with Kevin Saunderson's youngest son Dantiez joining as a permanent fixture. Dantiez and Kevin’s first single as Inner City, “Good Luck”, was released April 14, 2017 on KMS. “Good Luck” features vocals from LaRae Starr and includes remixes from DEAS, Sure Is Pure and Chuck Daniels. In 2018, Steffanie Christi’an was added as vocalist.
In 2020, the Saundersons (Kevin and his son Dantiez) released a new Inner City album with Christi'an as the main vocalist. Called We All Move Together, the title track which featured a spoken word performance from actor Idris Elba. Elba also featured on the single "No More Looking Back", which was the first Inner City project to be released by Defected Records, a British independent record label specialising in house music.
Discography
Albums
A Album was released as Big Fun in North America.
Articles, interviews and reviews
"Kevin Saunderson: “Black people don’t even know that techno came from Black artists”Jaguar talks to Kevin Saunderson and Idris Elba about their Inner City collaboration, the roots of techno and the future of dance music" jaguea, Mix, 22 October 2020
"How we made Good Life: Paris Grey and Kevin Saunderson on Inner City's house classic" interview by Interviews by Dave Simpson, The Guardian, Tue 6 Aug 2019