Derrick May met Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson while still a teenager in the Detroit area. Their friendship, DJ culture and shared obsession with electronic music became the core of what later came to be called the Belleville Three.

May’s first recordings emerged in the mid-1980s. After Let’s Go, released through Atkins’ Metroplex network, he established Transmat and developed his Rhythim Is Rhythim identity. Records including Nude Photo, It Is What It Is and Strings of Life pushed techno beyond mechanical futurism into something dramatic, melodic and deeply physical.

Strings of Life became especially important in Britain. Its piano-driven rush arrived as house music was breaking out of clubs into warehouses and raves, and it became one of the Detroit records most closely associated with the first UK acid-house explosion.

Transmat also became an institution in its own right. The label released and supported artists including Carl Craig, Stacey Pullen, Kenny Larkin and other figures who carried Detroit techno into its next phases.

May gradually reduced his recording output and concentrated increasingly on DJing, building a reputation for energetic, expressive sets that connected Detroit’s futurism with funk, house and European techno. His early catalogue remains fundamental to understanding how Detroit’s music became part of the global rave continuum.