Turn Up the Heat: Chris Lake and Ragie Ban’s “Toxic” Drop

Chris Lake ‘s latest joint venture with Brazilian producer Ragie Ban doesn’t so much tip its hat to the old school—it takes it by the throat and drags it kicking and screaming onto 2025’s hottest dancefloors. “Toxic,” released on Lake’s own Black Book Records, transmutes Bell Biv DeVoe’s 1990 R&B smash “Poison” into something a whole lot more poisonous.

The track’s genius lies in its audacious simplicity. Rather than overcomplicating the flip, Lake and Ban extract the infectious hook, weaponizing it against a backdrop of snarling, distorted bass and crisp percussion that cracks like a whip across bare skin. What emerges is neither nostalgic pastiche nor remixed rehash, but something gloriously mutated—a house banger with new jack swing DNA.

Since it was debuted on Costa Rica’s Ocaso Music Festival, the song has carried this kind of special pre-release mythic status. Freed at long last, however, “Toxic” proves an excellent prime example of tribute material that makes itself completely, completely new again.

For Chris Lake, the album is another step along the evolutionary path of a career that’s all about perpetual sound-shifting, and also emphasizing Ban’s natural talent in producing percussion-driven club tools. The collaboration feels organic rather than forced—two artists operating on the same frequency rather than checking boxes for streaming algorithms.

With his debut “Thursday Night Campgrounds” gig at Coachella on April 10th just around the corner, plus gigs at Breakaway and Escapade, Chris Lake has armed himself with just the right kind of high-octane igniter that transmutes festival sets into sacraments. “Toxic” is not a song—it’s four-on-the-floor sound adrenaline, and it’s designed to provoke mass movement and shared ecstasy.