F*CK U SKRILLEX YOU THINK UR ANDY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!! <3
The tale of Sonny Moore’s career is a long and unpredictable one: Emo kid from LA makes a name as leader of a screamo band, then pivots in the late 2000s to effectively redefine dubstep for millions of raging revelers at the exact moment the EDM economy exploded. Early 2010s EPs like *Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites* are now considered canon; along the way, he had a hand in some of the best pure pop tunes of the decade, scored a Harmony Korine film (2012’s *Spring Breakers*), and circled back to reunite with his old band, From First to Last. But for his outsized impact on the past two decades of pop culture, his studio albums have been few and, well, not always far between. Nine years passed between his full-length debut, 2014’s *Recess*, and his second album, 2023’s *Quest for Fire*; one day later, he released his third album, *Don’t Get Too Close*. Naturally, it follows that the roguish superproducer would drop his fourth album out of the sky with no warning on April Fools’ Day. But the appeal of the so-called “brostep” disrupter has long been his ability to balance his prankster impulses with technical wizardry and boundary-pushing ideas. And though the title’s all-caps rant is delivered with a wink, there is a case for *F\*CK U SKRILLEX...* as a work of bona fide pop art. In this case, replace soup cans with DJ drops, which Skrillex incorporates gratuitously in a way you might call avant-garde as the album’s 34 tracks gallop into one another, then disappear just as you’ve started to wrap your head around them. Cacophonous Brazilian phonk wails into classic dubstep, hardcore techno, trance, and less-than-a-minute bursts of pop-EDM perfection. Meanwhile, increasingly unhinged Trap-A-holics-type DJ drops hint playfully at Skrillex’s mindset at this juncture in his career. “REJECT SOCIETY! RETURN TO NATURE!” bellows one such drop over the mystic-sounding “KORABU,” which crams six collaborators into two minutes (among them Drain Gang affiliates Whitearmor and Varg2™). “I SOLD MY SOUL TO GIVE YOU THIS SONG!” proclaims another one on “ZEET NOISE,” whose breakneck beat is co-produced by Boys Noize and 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady. “THIS BEAT DROP HAS BEEN SEIZED BY ATLANTIC RECORDS AND HAS BEEN REPLACED WITH SILENCE!” the cartoonish voice announces a minute into “BIGGY BAP” before the build-up ratchets back and the narration continues: “MY LIFE IS IN SHAMBLES! I HAVE SEVERE DEPRESSION!” Yet on “VOLTAGE,” the Platonic ideal of “filthy dubstep” erupts into a sentimental chorus: “Gotta believe there’s something more!” Of course, that’s before our ringleader brings things back to earth on closing track “AZASU” with a hearty thank-you to “the unknown graffiti artist who vandalized our wall,” as pictured on the album cover. These days, you never know where you might stumble upon a bold new work of pop art.
There are so many ideas packed into Sonny Moore’s whirlwind of an album—wubsmaxxing basslines, abrupt left turns, absurdist DJ tags—that it’s hard not to be bowled over by its sheer force of will.
Brostep’s back, baby, via a mammoth 34-track surprise album from one of its key pioneers, Skrillex – but is it better than before?