Black Book ID’s is the compilation series Black Book Records launched in 2021 to turn one of dance music’s most familiar forms of suspense—unidentified and previously unreleased club tracks—into a label discovery format. The first chapter arrived March 26, 2021. By March 2025 the series had reached Chapter 9, bringing established producers and newer names into the same release framework.
The title uses language that already existed in DJ culture. In a tracklist, “ID” is a placeholder for a track whose artist or title has not been identified. It often appears because the record is unreleased, but “ID” and “unreleased” are not exact synonyms: a released record can still be logged as ID if whoever wrote the tracklist does not know it.
WHAT “ID” MEANS IN DANCE MUSIC
DJ tracklists are normally written as artist — title. When one part is unknown, “ID” stands in for the missing information. “Artist — ID” means the artist is known but the title is not; “ID — ID” means neither the artist nor the title has been identified in that tracklist.
In club culture, those gaps often happen because DJs play records before release: unfinished versions, promos, exclusives, edits or tracks deliberately kept unnamed while they are being tested. The mystery becomes part of the audience experience. A record can build a reputation through clips and set recordings before there is a public streaming link or catalog number.
That context connects directly to Chris Lake’s wider workflow. The story of “In The Yuma” documents a track created in 2020, tested in front of a crowd much later and officially released only after it had become part of Lake’s sets. The broader Chris Lake unreleased-music guide explains how that studio-to-stage testing loop works across multiple records. Not every Black Book ID follows that exact timeline, but the culture around the series comes from the same club-first ecosystem.
BLACK BOOK TURNED THE SHORTHAND INTO A DISCOVERY SERIES
Black Book ID’s: Chapter 1 arrived on March 26, 2021. Beatport lists Chris Lake, Riva Starr, lau.ra, Dubesque, Fourword and Nicky Night Time among the artists represented across the release and its remix credit.
Lake described the purpose at launch as giving fans “a sense of discovery,” using exclusive, previously unreleased recordings from artists listeners already knew alongside music from new producers the label was excited about.
That sentence is effectively the operating model. The series is not a dump of anonymous files. By the time a chapter is commercially released, the credits are public and the tracks have identities. “IDs” describes where the music comes from culturally—the unreleased, searched-for, DJ-tested side of house music—and the discovery behavior the label wants to preserve.
CHAPTER 1 ESTABLISHED THE MIX OF FAMILIAR AND NEW
The first chapter opened with Chris Lake and Riva Starr featuring lau.ra, then moved through Dubesque and Fourword before a NightFunk remix of Nicky Night Time. The point was not to present a single permanent Black Book roster. It was to combine a recognizable label-head record with producers who could be discovered through the compilation itself.
That balance became one of the series’ recurring characteristics. The label could use the compilation to connect listeners who arrived for Lake or another established name to artists whose work they had not yet encountered.
This is why the series belongs beside, but not inside, the Black Book Records artists guide. An IDs appearance documents a release relationship; it does not automatically establish an exclusive signing or long-term roster position.
THE SERIES BECAME PART OF THE LABEL’S RELEASE MILESTONES
By March 2023, Black Book ID’s: Chapter 5 carried catalog number BB50B and marked the label’s 50th-release milestone. That placement shows the series had moved from a one-off compilation concept into part of the label’s core architecture.
The broader Black Book Records history documents how the label grew from Lake’s 2016 need for control over his own releases into an artist-development and events platform. The IDs chapters supplied a repeatable discovery mechanism inside that larger institution.
CHAPTER 8 SHOWED HOW WIDE THE FORMAT COULD GET
Beatport lists Black Book ID’s: Chapter 8 on July 26, 2024 with artists including Chris Lake, Cloonee, Aatig, Alex Culross, BANGLABOY, Trallez, Abbud, Pedroz and Coffintexts. That lineup spans the label founder, a strongly associated Black Book artist, established collaborators and newer producers.
It also demonstrates why “ID” should not be read as “unknown artist.” By release day, the credits are explicit. The series is using the ID concept as a discovery lens, not hiding the identity of the producers after the record is on sale.
CHAPTER 9 PUSHED THE SERIES INTO 2025
Black Book ID’s: Chapter 9 was released March 7, 2025. Beatport lists Nariman, Marco Strous, Roddy Lima, Miane and Ocsav, with a 126–134 BPM range across the release. The official label language described it as one of the series’ most diverse groups of tastemakers.
Black Book’s current official music catalog still identifies Chapter 9 as the most recent numbered IDs chapter visible in the catalog as of September 2026. The important point is not whether the numbering eventually continues; it is that nine chapters over four years made the concept a durable part of the label rather than a temporary campaign.
ESTABLISHED NAMES AND EMERGING PRODUCERS SHARE THE SAME FRAME
Black Book’s official history names Green Velvet, Riva Starr and Prok & Fitch among established artists represented in the series, while highlighting rising producers such as Marco Strous, Hank and TOBEHONEST.
That mix serves a practical discovery function. An established artist can pull a listener into a compilation; a newer producer can leave with attention that would have been harder to create through a standalone release. The label can also test how different sounds sit together without pretending every contributor belongs to one stylistic micro-genre.
WHY DJS TEST MUSIC BEFORE RELEASE
Electronic records are unusual because their real operating environment can be radically different from the studio. A bassline that feels balanced on monitors may behave differently on a club system. An arrangement that feels long at home may create exactly the necessary tension in a room. A strange vocal or sound effect can either become the moment everyone remembers or disappear entirely at scale.
Lake’s production workflow repeatedly returns to that studio-to-crowd loop. Live testing can reveal whether a record translates, while the producer still retains responsibility for the artistic decision. The Black Book IDs concept fits naturally into a label run by someone who has long treated DJ sets as places where unfinished and unreleased music can live before a formal campaign exists.
WHY FAN SPECULATION IS NOT A CREDIT SOURCE
The same culture that makes IDs exciting can also make them inaccurate. A fan hears an unidentified track in a Lake set, guesses a producer based on sound design and repeats the guess until it begins to look like a fact. Sometimes the guess is right. Sometimes it is not.
Black Book’s compilation series does not justify assigning credits to unrelated unknown tracks. This site will only identify an ID when a primary source, official tracklist, release page, artist confirmation or other reliable record supports the attribution. Reddit threads, comments and fan databases are useful for finding a question worth researching; they are not sufficient evidence for a songwriter or producer credit.
THE SERIES MADE DISCOVERY PART OF THE BLACK BOOK IDENTITY
Black Book was founded around Chris Lake’s own need to release music on his terms, but its long-term value depends on discovering records that are not simply extensions of his catalog. The IDs series makes that principle explicit.
Chapter 1 stated the objective directly: familiar artists plus new names, exclusive material plus discovery. Later chapters expanded the cast and eventually became label milestones in their own right. That is why the series is more than a clever name. It turns a basic behavior of dance-music culture—hearing something first in a DJ context and asking what it is—into a repeatable label format.