PUMPDABEAT

10. HOUSE MEETING

You spent the day doing what you have to do in the real world, trans activism, community work, survival, whatever it takes to make your life operate. Now you come home to the house and the house has its own meeting to run. Track ten is built in contemporary gospel because house meetings are church and always have been. The agenda is real, the accountability is real, and somewhere in the middle of it the conversation turns to the legends and icons who have gone quiet. The floor is still moving. Your name and your title are not enough anymore. Come prepared. Bring your receipts. https://sites.google.com/view/ballroom-is-dead/ballroom-is-dead

From the album BALLROOM IS DEAD. Written and produced by VJ PUMPDABEAT. PUMPDABEAT, 2026.

8. AFTER WE BALL

The ball is over, the clips are posted, the critiques are in, and now it is two, three, four in the morning and the night took a turn in the best way. Track eight is that morning after energy, the good kind, when the sun is coming up and real life is about to start again. It lives in neo-soul jazz because that is the only genre that understands how to hold joy and exhaustion in the same breath. You have to carry it back out into the world with you and this track is that walk. https://sites.google.com/view/ballroom-is-dead/ballroom-is-dead

From the album BALLROOM IS DEAD. Written and produced by VJ PUMPDABEAT. PUMPDABEAT, 2026.

6. BQ WORK FOR IT

Track six lives in trap soul R&B because that sound understands what it means to be precise and emotional at the same time, which is exactly what butch queen performance has always been. The lyrics are the same as track seven because the standard is the same. What changes is who is delivering them and what that body means on that floor. The grand prize does not come because of your name or your lineage. It comes because you worked for it in front of everybody. This track is the admonishment and the invitation at the same time. https://sites.google.com/view/ballroom-is-dead/ballroom-is-dead

From the album BALLROOM IS DEAD. Written and produced by VJ PUMPDABEAT. PUMPDABEAT, 2026.

5. FIERCE

You are watching your clip and questioning everything. Did you win. Should you have lost. The critiques come, the praise comes, the reposts come, something goes viral. Track five does not need to explain what fierce means because the album has already been fierce from the first note. It lives in neo-funk and acid jazz because that sound has always known how to carry weight without losing the groove. The judgment is happening in real time and this track is what that feels like from the inside. https://sites.google.com/view/ballroom-is-dead/ballroom-is-dead

From the album BALLROOM IS DEAD. Written and produced by VJ PUMPDABEAT. PUMPDABEAT, 2026.

4. THE HOUSES

Everyone is still in the parking lot, somebody's car is blasting, people are taking pictures, exchanging information, popping ass on bumpers, and what you notice is that all the divisions from inside are gone. Every house had a designated table in the venue. Out here everyone is connected somehow, the mainstream and the kiki, Pittsburgh next to DC, houses that were competing an hour ago now in each other's phones. Las casas. All of them. Right here. Track four is the roll call of everyone in attendance and it hits in dembow because this culture was never only English and never only one city. There are houses in every country now. LaBeija, Corey, Dupree, Chanel, Ebony, Xtravaganza, these are the names that built the floor we are all still walking on. The houses are not history. They are the floor that is still running right now. https://sites.google.com/view/ballroom-is-dead/ballroom-is-dead

From the album BALLROOM IS DEAD. Written and produced by VJ PUMPDABEAT. PUMPDABEAT, 2026.

2. BALL OVER

Track two is placed here on purpose. It starts in that feeling of a perfect ball night when everything is right, the music is right, the performances are right, the energy is right, and you are exactly where you are supposed to be. Then somebody could not hold it together and now everyone who came to be somewhere safe has to leave early. It lives in Southern R&B soul because that genre understands the full range of that feeling, the joy and the deflation and the oh well that only ballroom people know. https://sites.google.com/view/ballroom-is-dead/ballroom-is-dead

From the album BALLROOM IS DEAD. Written and produced by VJ PUMPDABEAT. PUMPDABEAT, 2026.

15. SEMINAL FIELDNOTES

The function is winding down and the camera finds the displaced people. The same crew that filmed the icon's comeback in track fourteen is still here with their equipment and their clipboards and their release forms. Track fifteen is about what you had to give up to access the money that paid for everything. Your culture as a deliverable. Your knowledge packaged as content for someone else's application. Your story told in their language so the check could clear. Track fifteen is jazz because jazz is the genre that America took from Black people, studied in universities, put in museums, and called a national treasure while the people who built it were still figuring out how to pay rent. This track is that cost itemized out loud. https://sites.google.com/view/ballroom-is-dead/ballroom-is-dead

From the album BALLROOM IS DEAD. Written and produced by VJ PUMPDABEAT. PUMPDABEAT, 2026.

12. DO IT

After all of that, the activism, the meeting, the callout, track twelve is the one second of freedom. But it is also the harm reduction track because when life gets heavy sometimes we make bigger problems trying to forget the ones we already have. The floor is where you bring it. Not the bottle, not the substance, not the thing that will cost you more than the night. The floor will take all of it and give you something back. Whatever you have been carrying all day, bring it here and do it. That is the whole instruction and the whole invitation. https://sites.google.com/view/ballroom-is-dead/ballroom-is-dead

From the album BALLROOM IS DEAD. Written and produced by VJ PUMPDABEAT. PUMPDABEAT, 2026.

13. NARCAN

Track thirteen follows twelve because that is exactly how it happens. The same indulgence that felt like freedom can take you under if it goes too far. This track lives in a dark funky space where desire and danger share the same breath because that is exactly what addiction feels like from the inside. But this community has always had a caring and comforting side that does not make the headlines. People ask about you. They notice when you are gone. They know what is going on and they show up anyway. The people we have lost are not statistics. They are house children, they are legends, they are people who were on this floor with us. We love you. Come back to your house. Come back to your category. We are still here and we want you here too. https://sites.google.com/view/ballroom-is-dead/ballroom-is-dead

From the album BALLROOM IS DEAD. Written and produced by VJ PUMPDABEAT. PUMPDABEAT, 2026.

7. FF WORK FOR IT

Same floor, same standard, same lyrics, different track, because the women's story deserves its own space and not a footnote. Track seven is slow burn R&B because that genre understands how to be completely in control of every single moment without rushing anything. The words are the same as track six because the demand is the same. What changes is who is delivering them and what that means on that floor. Every female figure category is represented here. Female figure, women, women performance, femme queen, the whole spectrum of what it means to walk as a woman on this floor. The siren energy in this track is not decoration. It is the category itself. Commanding, precise, fully in control. You want the grand prize. You know what it takes. The floor is where you earn it and this track is the reminder that nobody gets there without the work. https://sites.google.com/view/ballroom-is-dead/ballroom-is-dead

From the album BALLROOM IS DEAD. Written and produced by VJ PUMPDABEAT. PUMPDABEAT, 2026.