A decade before the red-pill manosphere epidemic influenced an election and inspired overly didactic Netflix content, the worst thing you had to worry about was your kid getting into brostep. The hypermasculine, IDGAF dubstep offshoot was defined by cracked copies of FruityLoops, excessive molly use, and enough glow sticks to overtake the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. There were plenty of flash-in-the-pan star DJ/producers, from Flux Pavilion to Rusko to Bassnectar, but the official mascot for the genre will forever be the former emo singer with the dirty-kitchen-mop haircut: Skrillex.
He is also possibly the only brostep survivor with anything resembling a mainstream career post–Obama administration. The man born Sonny Moore has spent the past decade or so racking up production credits for the likes of Justin Bieber, Mariah Carey, Ed Sheeran, Juice WRLD, and Beyoncé, reinventing himself as a stealth hitmaker and an auteur who could credibly collaborate with more critic-approved electronic artists like Fred again.. and Four Tet. All of which made the return of the scary saw-bass monster this year downright exhilarating.
Fuck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol but Ur Not!! is a legitimately thrilling collection of songs (34 of them, to be exact), filled with bass drops that fall like Acme anvils. It’s a prodigal son coming home and showing what his absence has wrought—Fuck U Skrillex is more aggro than the pop or hip-hop dalliances of his twin 2023 records, and it’s full of features from old friends (Joker, Boys Noize) and Skrillex’s spiritual progeny (Dylan Brady of 100 gecs shows up on a few tracks; it makes too much sense). It’s hard to recommend many songs individually—they’re mostly instrumental and mixed together like a DJ set, so few stretch beyond two minutes—but taken as a whole, it’s a return-to-mecca experience for anyone who ever downloaded the “Pro Nails” remix or had an emotional experience while listening to “Levels.” There’s even an obligatory “Damn, son, where’d you find this?” vocal tag midway through Fuck U Skrillex, but maybe the most important spoken words come in the opening seconds of the relatively tranquil “KORABU.” The voiceover says, “Reject society, return to nature,” and amid the wobble and chaos, you think: This sounds like salvation.
