Music

This Video of Americans Explaining Dubstep May Well Signal the End of Days


Once a guy name Skrillex came around and started a full-on phenomenon of face-melting, there became a well-documented cultural divide between the US and UK on what exactly dubstep is. But, if you know anything about Digital Mystikz, Mala, Tempa, Benga, Skream, or the seminal club night FWD>>>, you know that dubstep started not in America, but in the UK. So why does this recent Beatport video entitled This Is Dance Music: Dubstep, only talk to Americans, and more specifically, talk predominately about what most of us know to be brostep?

After watching said video, which strives to explain the history of an entire genre in under three minutes (something, admittedly, that we’ve been known to attempt ourselves), we can conclude that the people interviewed really only want to talk about fart noises. Because that’s what dubstep is all about: fart noises.

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Here’s a little poem to drill that fact more into your brain:

Dubstep is all about fart noises.

Dubstep is all about fart noises.

Dubstep is all about fart noises.

Dubstep is all about fart noises.

Burp noises.

And fart noises.

Watch the video below for more education.

Do you know what that faint taste of metal in the back of your mouth is? That gentle rising temperatures in the tubes of your arms? Or maybe the reddish, speckled haze descending over your vision? That’s your blood boiling. That’s your blood exceeding 100 degrees and boiling completely. You are a big fleshy blood kettle now. We know how it feels; we’re feeling it too.

Look: nobody wants to be the stuffy music nerd wearing the same black Reebok classics they’ve been wearing for the past 10 years, scratching their bum-fluff covered chin, whining about “that not being real dubstep.” Nevertheless, there’s a big difference between simply bastardizing a genre into something more commercially viable and proclaiming this rehashed version to be one that represents the genre’s true roots. This video actually goes as far as to suggest that the latter dubstep—or brostep, if you will—actually is dubstep. It’s not.

Perhaps I’m hugely embarrassing myself here, and this video is just a massive, elaborate hoax. If that is the case, then it is truly one of the most nuanced pieces of satire I’ve ever seen. But it can’t be. I can’t believe it. So I will press on regardless.

HERE ARE THE TOP FOUR QUOTES FROM THIS IS DANCE MUSIC: DUBSTEP:

1. “Most humans can’t speak dubstep so it has to be interpreted.”—12th Planet.

I’d almost be on board with this statement, if the entire video wasn’t literally men and women in silly hats trying to do impressions of what dubstep sounds like.

2. “Bwuep, bwuep, bwuep, bwuep…”—Americo of Boombox Cartel

See!

3. “In the late, late 90s, early 2000s, people like Benga, Tempa Recordings, Horsepower Productions, Kode9, they were making basically dark, instrumental 2step, and that was the roots of dubstep. And then around 2007, 2008, when Rusko and Caspa started doing their thing, they were taking those drum and bass sounds and bringing some of those pop sounds back in and that’s what led to the whole North American dubstep explosion.”—Reid Speed

It’s in this window that we sort of see the re-mythologizing of dubstep playing out. How it has now been rewritten that dubstep—the dubstep that was created in London—was in fact “dark instrumental two-step,” and how it wasn’t actually dubstep until it got huge and squelchy and American.

4. “I wouldn’t let my children listen to dubstep, hell no.”—Danny United

There’s something almost guilty about Danny United’s face throughout all of this. As if he knows. He knows it’s all a sham. He knows this isn’t above board. He’s known for years but now somebody’s stuck a camera in his face and forced him to explain himself. He has the air of a man who is being accused of theft but is too stoned to talk his way out of it.

We could go on, but we won’t, because what would be the point. Let’s just enjoy it for what it is. It’s dance music, and this is dubstep.