Hey everyone, I’m C. Dub. And this is a podcast about house music.
When we last left Detroit, house and techno were twins raised in the same neighborhood—one born of gospel and groove, the other of machines and math. But the story didn’t end in those warehouses. It kept growing, shaped by the people who carried both sounds in their bones.
Kevin Saunderson was one of them.
He was born in Brooklyn in 1964, but his family moved to Belleville, Michigan when he was still a kid. The move dropped him right between farmland and factory smoke. Detroit was close enough to feel, but far enough to dream about. At home, his older brother’s records spun Parliament, Stevie Wonder, and Ohio Players. Late at night, the radio turned futuristic—Kraftwerk, Prince, The Electrifying Mojo. Those frequencies collided in his mind. Funk met circuitry. Soul met sequence. That’s where the blueprint started.
At Belleville High, he met two kids who heard music the same way: Juan Atkins and Derrick May. They weren’t the popular ones. They were the ones talking about drum machines no one had seen and records no one else understood. They built a friendship out of sound. Juan was the philosopher. Derrick was the provocateur. Kevin was the engineer—the one who could take an idea and make it move.
By 1987, he founded KMS Records—his initials on the door, his fingerprints on the city’s next chapter. It was one of the first Black-owned electronic labels to release straight from Detroit to the world. The label became a launchpad for his own projects and for producers who were inventing Detroit techno in real time.
Then came Inner City, his collaboration with vocalist Paris Grey. Their sound wasn’t borrowed from Chicago or Europe. It was Detroit optimism with a house heartbeat.
In 1988, “Big Fun” hit the UK Top 10. “Good Life” followed and crossed continents. These weren’t crossover tracks; they were cross-pollinations—soulful, synthetic, and deeply human. Inner City didn’t just make radio hits; they made history.
Kevin didn’t stop there. Under other names—E-Dancer, Reese, Tronik House—he kept pushing deeper underground. In 1988 he released “Just Want Another Chance,” a track whose bassline became immortal. That detuned low-end, now known as the Reese bass, shaped drum & bass, jungle, dubstep, and half the darker corners of modern electronic music. His fingerprints are in genres that didn’t even exist when he pressed that record.
As house and techno grew into global industries, Kevin stayed rooted. He kept the independent grind alive, touring, mentoring, and producing from his KMS studio. He welcomed young Detroit artists like MK and Carl Craig, offering gear, advice, and patience. He wasn’t a gatekeeper. He was a gardener.
His legacy runs in the family now. His sons, Dantiez and DaMarii, are producers and DJs, carrying the Saunderson name into new decades. Every year at Movement Festival on Detroit’s riverfront, Kevin still headlines. He’s treated like royalty there, but he plays like a worker—head down, hands on, eyes on the crowd.
He’s received official recognition for it too. In 2016, the City of Detroit awarded him a Spirit of Detroit Resolution Award for his contributions to electronic music. He’s also been honored internationally for advancing Detroit’s global presence in arts and culture. For a kid who started making beats in his bedroom, that’s a full-circle moment.
Kevin’s story is full of side roads too. He’s collaborated with artists you might not expect—from British rappers to European producers like KiNK on the 2017 track “Idyllic,” a playful, retro-futurist piece that felt like a wink to his eighties self. His remixes of pop and hip-hop acts in the late eighties showed he was never afraid to get a little campy, to let the underground flirt with the mainstream.
Through it all, Kevin stayed steady.
He sponsors youth baseball teams back home in Metro Detroit. He mentors quietly. And this year, he’s expanding that spirit again