Cover Story: Dubstep's Rise In America & How Houston Was Involved
A couple of months ago, I received a text from a 40-something-year old man named Icey Hott.
Icey, a member of Houston's near-legendary group Street Military, was a seminal figure in the development of gangster rap in the Southern United States. He is an altogether terrifying gent, a glassy-eyed man carved out of the hard Earth of an inner-city slum.
The text was a link to a YouTube video of him sitting at a tiny, dirty table in an impoverished apartment, mixing music together on an iPad. But it wasn't rap he was blending. It was dubstep.
Dubstep is a superbass-charged form of Electronic Dance Music. It has become the most buzzy, most popular form of new music in America. If you have not experienced it one form or another, that means you either don't have the Internet or you are my mom.
That's why this week's cover story is about it (dubstep, not my mom).
It's all about how dubstep started as this underground, non-commercial, clubs-only thing in Europe, grew to be a regular part of music fans' lifestyle, made its way to the U.S., then mutated aggressively and became ubiquitous within the pop-culture canon.
And somewhere within that, somewhere way back at the beginning stages of existence in America, is a small group of forward-thinking DJs and dubstep lovers from Houston called Gritsy.
Gritsy has operated one of the longest running dubstep parties in the nation. To those in the know, they are regarded as instrumental dubstep advocates, first-class concert organizers, and just a generally sincere, music-is-my-life collection of folks.
So read the story. It's good. It mentions an elephant, mirrors rattling until they're broken and a robot masturbating.
And listen to dubstep while you read. It helps. Go here..
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