PRETTY LIGHTS

For someone who claims to despise Dubstep, I’ve had two posts in one week about it. Am I a closet Dubstep fan?  Do I secretly have this love hate relationship with an Awfully Fantastic genre of electronic music? MAYBE!  I guess I can chalk it up to being the same as listening to that R&B slow jam on the way home when no one is in your car and knowing more than half the lyrics. HAHA C’mon don’t lie! You know you can sing almost every Boyz II Men song. And you may even be as lame as knowing a KC and JoJo or Baby Face track. Anyways back to the matter at hand, DUBSTEP, well more importantly Pretty Lights aka Derek Vincent Smith. Possibly the one artist I’m dying to see that I just haven’t got the chance too. I only went to one day at EDC 2009 (of course not the day he was there). I chose Passion Pit over him at Coachella 2010, big mistake. I missed him later that year in Los Angeles at The Wiltern, mainly due to the fact that seeing a DJ at The Wiltern just sounds god awful. And most recently I missed him in San Diego in September. Maybe the stars just haven’t aligned yet, but they will soon. For being a white guy I feel as if I have a decent knowledge/appreciation for hip-hop, but Pretty Lights has taken it to another level. His blend of hip-hop samples with house beats, Dubstep wobbles, and flawless transitions are second to none. From someone who has made a feeble attempt at producing my own beats I can tell you it is nowhere near as easy as it seems, and Pretty Lights is the perfect combination of electro/house/dubstep/hip-hop and he does it all with such a unique style. He broke on the scene in 2006, but in the last few years he has really made his mark on the scene. If you don’t own “Passing By Behind Your Eyes” stop reading this boring blog and run to your local record store. I have a feeling most of you haven’t heard of this phenom so I’ve featured a few of my favourites. Enjoy!

-TYC