Chris Lake, Chris Lorenzo and Kenny Beats Flip CAKE’s “Short Skirt / Long Jacket”
Chris Lake, Chris Lorenzo and Kenny Beats turn CAKE's 2001 classic "Short Skirt / Long Jacket" into an official tech house rework after nearly a year as a set ID.
You know that CAKE song your parents’ radio station wouldn’t stop playing in 2001? It’s a tech house record now. Chris Lake, Chris Lorenzo and Kenny Beats released “Long Jacket” on Friday via Big Beat Records, officially transforming “Short Skirt / Long Jacket” into the bounciest thing you’ll hear all weekend — with CAKE themselves credited on the track.
If the drop sounds familiar, that’s because this one’s been living in sets for almost a year as an unreleased ID. Lorenzo aired it at EDC Las Vegas, Lake hammered it during his three-night Brooklyn run this summer, and the duo played it together as Anti Up at Portola. When a track survives that long on the ID circuit without leaking into irrelevance, it usually means it actually works on a dancefloor — and this one very much does.
The Lake and Lorenzo partnership needs no introduction at this point — they’ve been trading collabs for years and share the Anti Up alias. The wildcard here is Kenny Beats. Before he became the producer behind records for Denzel Curry, Vince Staples and even Weezer, he was one half of trap duo LOUDPVCK, so this is less a genre tourist moment and more a guy coming home to dance music with a decade of hip-hop production tricks in his back pocket. You can hear it in how the vocal chops swing.
And look, the source material was always secretly dance-adjacent. That deadpan bassline groove is why “Short Skirt / Long Jacket” became a radio staple after the turn of the century (and later the theme song for Chuck, for those who remember network television). Stripping it down and rebuilding it as bouncy tech house is less of a stretch than it sounds on paper — the funk was already in there. The trio just turned it up.
Between this and the wave of 90s-and-2000s flips currently running the Beatport chart, official rework season is fully upon us. Some of them feel like lazy nostalgia grabs. This one feels like three producers who genuinely love the original having way too much fun with the stems. Play it loud and try not to smile — a girl with a short skirt and a looong jacket has still got it.
