Beginning in the mid-90s and continuing through its final days, Dance Mania worked with Gant-Man and Traxman to release early forms of juke and footwork, fast-paced styles that branched off from ghetto house and have since become international phenomena. Critic David Quam, who wrote a detailed overview of juke and footwork music for Spin last year, says the styles were going through a critical development period around the time Barney pulled the plug; most of it happened underground once the scene lost Dance Mania as an incubator.
With his label, record shop, and distribution business gone, Barney seemed content to focus on a life outside music—he worked in computer support and in 2010 began running a health-food store near Kedzie and Roosevelt that his father had started in 1994. But Mitchell wouldn’t let Dance Mania go quietly. “When I stepped away, Victor must have called me at least once a month with propositions,” Barney says. Of course, interest in the label had yet to blossom as it has over the past few years, and even when it began to grow, Mitchell didn’t know about it.
He got clued into Dance Mania’s newfound popularity in 2009, when a Berlin label contacted him on Facebook to ask him about Dance Mania. Barney started getting Facebook messages from fans around the world—he still seems perplexed about it, because he says he’s never posted anything about the label on his profile. This rising Dance Mania fever was enough to convince him to give it another go.