DANCING IN THE DARK: The songs “Club...

DANCING IN THE DARK: The songs “Club Lonely” and “Saved My Life,” by Lil Louis & the World were two of the dance crowd’s favorites of recent months. Club deejays still play the songs in high rotation and many of them name Lil Louis’ “Journey With the Lonely” as the best dance album of the year.

The artist was not nearly so popular at Epic Records, which released the album. Epic quietly dropped Lil Louis last month in a parting that a spokesman for the company describes as “amicable.” Louis accepts the move as a “business decision,” but says that the reasoning behind it illustrates a conflict between pop and dance mentalities that might spread as dance music solidifies its place in the pop market.

The label reportedly felt that Louis, a former Chicago dance-club deejay, hadn’t established a solid public image--he’s the writer and producer of his records, but the singing was done by several women. In any case, Louis’ dance-club success wasn’t translating to album sales. Sales of “Journey With the Lonely,” were nearly 100,000 copies--not that bad for a dance artist, but not overwhelming either.

The way Louis sees it, the high-level executives at Epic are ignorant about the basics of the dance market. “They don’t really understand that a record gets big in the dance underground and that doesn’t necessarily translate into sales,” he said. “You need to have different expectations and goals for dance artists. They wanted me to go the next level, to make me a pop artist, but that’s not what I wanted. They’re judging me by pop standards. That’s not right.”

Right now, his future plans are sketchy. He said he’s been contacted by several labels but nothing concrete has developed. Nor is he working on an album. His primary focus is finding a distributor for his Diamond International Records.