With the Mothership Tour invading and selling out venues nationwide, many of those who have been with the dubstep genre from the start would never have guessed it would amount to this. However, with the help of acts such as 12th Planet, Skrillex, Datsik, Excision, etc., dubstep can be seen on college campuses, the Top 40 pop music charts, and at festivals in arenas built for racing cars. The Mothership Tour touched down in Richmond this past Saturday at the National and unleashed an explosion of sounds and visuals to a packed and anxious venue. John Dadzie, aka 12th Planet, named the “American Dubstep King” by URB.com, was able to sit down with me and share some insight into the tour and his views on the ever-changing genre.
To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a tour as prominent and successful as the Mothership Tour, with regards to the type of music you are playing and the overwhelming demand for dubstep that has been growing in leaps and bounds over the past year. Having been one of the early pioneers of this music in America, how does it feel to be touring and playing sold-out shows across the country?
Basically, it feels as if every day is my birthday. When I first started making dubstep, we were playing to rooms of 50-100 people at most. Electro and house music used to always be the easy first choice. It’s great to see that a dubstep artist can get the same attention as someone like Tiesto or Avicii now. When dubstep was first making its round in America, your guys like Steve Aoki, Boys Noize, MSTRKRFT, etc, were all leading the pack. Dubstep was never the first pick.
It seemed to me like in the early days of dubstep, there were only the music nerds and the people who liked to listen to the weird shit at the shows.
Exactly. There were the guys who only listened to trance. There were the house-heads that only listened to house music. They never really criss-crossed. Now, on this Mothership Tour, I’ve experienced something I never thought I would. You could play a Metallica song and everyone would sing the lyrics and then play a Waka Flocka Flame song right after and you’d get the same reaction. I don’t think there’s ever been a time in electronic music up to this point where the walls have been broken down so frequently. I’ve also noticed that some genres like metal and electro have this clicquey fashion notion, where dubstep, on the other hand, is basically like: come as you are. You see guys wearing chains, girls wearing neon colors, people in cowboy hats, and so on.
After the Electric Daisy Carnival festival earlier this year, I read an article in the Dallas Observer that quoted you as saying that you hoped “everyone’s peaking now." With all the negative attention towards electronic music festivals, the sometimes lenient age-restrictions, and the drug culture, what can you say about how these factors have been affecting the music scene in general?
I remember what you are talking about. The thing is, now, people take anything you say and twist it to suit the angle they’re trying to pursue. While “peaking” can be used in reference to drugs, I said that because it was the peak of my set. It kind of got spun out of control because the media at the time was running with all of these stories about EDC and everyone was trying to find something new to talk about. Every time the media puts out something about the music festivals, or the drugs, it just seems to make the genre that much bigger. A lot of people have the mentality to do what society tells you not to. If they said to not go out and buy bread, you’re going to want to go buy bread. There has been an underlying drug culture in every genre of music that has ever existed… except for polka, probably. I’d feel comfortable saying there are a large percentage of people who go to these shows just for the music.
I saw today that High Contrast, a prominent drum-and-bass producer from Europe, released a video for a track which features Tiesto and Underworld. When I saw this, it made me kind of step back and see how much the different genres of electronic music have started to bleed over into each other. Now, Top 40 performers such as Rhianna, Britney Spears, and Chris Brown are having dance music producers make their tracks, which will eventually grace the Billboard charts. Have you been approached by anyone from the pop circuit, by chance?
I just did a record with Korn. I did a record with Good Charlotte, Dizzee Rascal and even Machine Gun Kelley. To me, it’s nothing new. Journalists seem to be eager to bring up this topic, but it’s honestly been happening for tens of years. Even the early rap music was sampling old school electronic guys like Kraftwerk. People have this appreciation for the underground, and they don’t want to see what they consider underground break through to mainstream. In actuality, prominent electronic producers have been doing these tunes for years. Hell, a guy who produced for NSYNC is now working with Rusko.
What can we expect to see from 12th Planet in the future? I’m still waiting for that 16bit collaboration you premiered at Electric Zoo a few weeks ago!
[laughs] That was the first and last time I’ve played that track live. We’re still working on it so hopefully it sees the light of day. Unfortunately, some tracks like that are never released. I do have a few releases coming out soon. The first is a remix of the Echo Park track “Fibre Optic” by myself and Flinch, for the label Disfigured Dubz. The other release is a solo remix for a track called “Killer” by 360. That’s out in Australia on the label EMI. Finally, on October 25th, I have an EP coming out from my label SMOG, which is going to be a three-track release.
Words by Alexander Rose
Photos by Erik Fox of Dope On Plastic