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Nobody comes out and says Skrillex-as-Unabombe​r or Skrillex-sans-fun because Skrillex is uncool.

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Robert Christgau, from his review of Death Grips’ The Money Store.

Wait, no. That isn’t true anymore. Sure, a year ago when I was e-mailing Brandon Soderberg about this guy named Skrillex, who was leading this new music that soundtracked far too much of my freshman year of college, Dubstep. Back then, no one (read: Critics/Indie Music types) were talking about Skrillex, even when he was still selling out shows last year! But, fast forward to Spin’s EDM cover story, Tom Breihan’s defense of the guy at Stereogum, and a Pitchfork interview (despite the only coverage of him before being a SXSW live review). 

The narrative on Skrillex is kind of weird, because he was lumped in with “Bro-Step” that was pitted against Post-Dubstep (James Blake type music), then people started to wonder why such a dichotomy existed and started embracing the dude. He’s got cover stories, sold out more shows, and even got pieces from respected music writers (Mark Richardson & Nitsuh Abebe) have discussed the guy. It’d be hard right now to call the guy “uncool”, even if there are plenty of people that passionately dislike his music. But, by now he has carved out a niche so large—if not too large for critics, who stopped caring about Dubstep in 2008, and don’t know Zeds Dred—that whether if he’s “uncool” or not stopped mattering to those who like him, and probably never mattered to him.