Five years ago today, Diplo and Switch collaboration with an incredible team as Major Lazer, was let loose upon the world with their debut album Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do. With major label distribution from Downtown Music, it was truly the first time that pop culture at-large became familiar not just with Diplo, but with the underground musical polyglot that is, was, and always will be Mad Decent. There will never be another album that will share its level of impact for indie dance in mainstream music, and as far as being the true place where the broad and deep story of America's EDM era begins, June 16, 2009 is as great of a place as any to begin.
I still remember "Hold the Line"–the album's lead single–being publicly released one day after my 31st birthday (April 20, 2009). As well, it was definitely out and circulating prior to that point at South by Southwest that year, so between a Mad Decent party at a former Goodwill store at a strip mall outside of Austin, Texas, and pretty much every DJ set I heard at every bar on the drunken hipster bar crawl that SXSW is every year for so many, we were all very familiar with the song. For many, indie dance was a three horse race to the mainstream. Indie electro was best represented by A-Trak's pulse pounding remix of "Heads Will Roll" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, while Baltimore club was represented by DJ Class' "I'm the Shit," a tremendously pop-friendly song which had been remixed with vocals by the likes of Kanye West, Jermaine Dupri and Trey Songz. But then, there was this thing called "Major Lazer" that Diplo was making with Switch that very few had any clue how to appropriately define.
Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do works because intriguingly it's at its best as an album when it is a pastiche of everything Americans know about Jamaican culture (which oftentimes fits in a thimble), with some super-American tropes tossed in for epic effect. The aforementioned "Hold the Line" kicks off with twangy western guitars, ultimately giving the effect of feeling like a gang of hipster gunslingers in purple sneakers is preparing to duel-at-twenty paces with the mainstream musical establishment. Santigold's patois-tinged vocal is sampled brilliantly, along with the neigh of horses and yes, the sound of a phone's busy signal. But, though there is a dancehall emcee named Busy Signal (yes, he's the rapper on Major Lazer's 2013-released "Watch Out for This (Bumaye)"), the rapper here is Mr. Lexx, who drops what still sounds like and amazing freestyle over a dubplate more than an actual rap/dance track.
The rest of the album serves as an introduction into the exciting multi-ethnic mess that mainstream dance has become in 2014. There's no better explanation for this than the now ubiquitous "Pon de Floor." Whether as the track sampled for Beyonce's "Run the World (Girls)," proof that Jamaican "daggering" is the forefather of "twerking" or the most "shitfacedly loopy" (as Pete Cashmore of NME wrote in 2009) song you've heard on a night at the club in quite some time, it's phenomenal. With then rising big room electro house name Afrojack being involved in the programming of that then amazingly progressive Dutch house drum line, it also should have been the first bit of awareness of just how big Diplo, Major Lazer and ultimately, Mad Decent would eventually become. As a harbinger of everything else that's happened in popular culture at-large, the description by Consequence of Sound's Ted Maider of Eric Wareheim's video for the clip as "this song is already fucking whacked, but the video takes it to a whole other level ... 'Pon de Floor' seems equally as offensive as watching porn on hallucinogenic substances" makes everything from "Gangnam Style," to "Turn Down for What," "#Selfie" and anything Miley Cyrus has done in the past two years make all of the sense in the world.
Everything that touched Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do gained some greater level of indie fame, too, which ultimately allowed Diplo access to increased global tastemaker recognition. The album was a perfect storm where even a comedy rapper like Prince Zimboo could have a conversation with an auto-tuned baby's wail and it would be great. Even the songs that didn't stick as indie-hipster-to mainstream pop hit singles are still amazing. The Nina Sky and Ricky Blaze collaboration "Keep It Going Louder" is frankly timeless, and if as a DJ you blew the dust from it every summer and played it out at venues as far ranging as bar nights to pool parties in Vegas, it's a winner. Big-room house meets dancehall-friendly vibes creating a fantastic song.
Between Major Lazer's 2009 debut album and 2013's follow up Free The Universe, the effect of Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do has been incredibly far-reaching. Foremost, Afrojack and Diplo are, for many, on the same level of name awareness in big room dance. As well, Dave Nada invented moombahton later in 2009, and by the time it became a "thing," it was almost synonymous with the rise of Major Lazer, and as similarly dub culture-influenced dubstep significantly emerged in the rising to mainstream U.S. EDM environment, there was now this massively bass-heavy, unique, and oftentimes bordering on the absurd culture for electronic dance music developing in America. Intriguingly, Major Lazer was not on the inaugural Electric Zoo lineup in 2009. However, by 2010 there was Diplo playing as "Major Lazer" on the mainstage surrounded by booty-popping dancers, Skerrit Bwoy jumping from ladders onto women's nether regions and simulating sex, and the pastiche became an altogether too real thing in the mainstream.
By Free The Universe, Switch was gone, with Diplo at the helm now joined by a literal who's who of international dance, and the global domination is complete. Mad Decent has major label distribution as well now with Universal Records, a far cry from five years prior. The one-armed "major" fighting zombie revolution with his lazer-as-arm had stopped being an iconic picture, but is now being played in videos by actor Terry Crews. Rappers on the album aren't just all Jamaican anymore, but now Santigold, Peaches, Tyga, Wyclef Jean and 2 Chainz getting involved and getting their dancehall/reggae vibes in gear. Reincarnated, Snoop Dogg's "Snoop Lion" project with Diplo involved ganja, Jamaica, and had so many pieces of the Major Lazer pop puzzle present. Also, the Apocalypse Soon EP's featured vocals from Pharrell and Sean Paul. If for nothing else, rap's dance mainstreaming oftentimes via Major Lazer is truly impressive.
But, in thinking back to that very first time I heard "Hold The Line" at DC9–then a sweaty and dirty hipster bar in Washington, DC–the legacy of Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do, in retrospect, was obvious before it was even released. People freaked out. There were girls literally jumping on couches and swinging from the venue's ceiling beams, plus guys and girls simulating sex while dancing on top of speakers. Anybody who paused for a second to take it all in kept a bemused look on their face, and wondered if the venue would get angry if they too got on that couch, and stage dove? What a difference five years makes.
