When Skrillex addresses a crowd at an EDM festival these days, it's arguably pop culture and dance music's equivalent of a State of the Union Address. Speaking to partiers at Toronto's Solaris Music Festival on Sunday, Skrillex gave an impromptu, "PLUR"-centric address to revelers who just a day prior had engaged in a violent brawl:
“You all are beautiful! Give a round of applause for yourselves! All you, you too! I feel your energy, I can see an ocean of faces all sweaty, all crazy… Now we are going into the New Year! This is crazy, the last few years. In Electronic Music in North America, Canada, everywhere over this area it’s crazy. Because all this, you guys out here, doing this for years! Going, listening, this is our generation right now! And looking at the audience I so many different types of people! I see black kids, white kids, Chinese kids, Asian kids, Russian kids, Puerto Rican kids, Mexican kids, all you guys are here now! That’s amazing man. There is some special shit going on in our generation right now. Let’s not take that for granted. We need, into the New Year, let’s go in together. Let’s take this positivity over into 2015, because we need more positive shit on this planet. I feel like this is what it’s about man, we got 6.000 people here, no one is fighting and everyone is having a good time. I’m so impressed on this stage looking at you, I really am, I really appreciate your energy. So in 2015 let’s carry over this positivity, let’s spread it and make it bigger and better, and more soulful and more real than it ever has been before. But it’s not just up to me it’s up to you guys! Really. I’m just one person its all about all of you people, it’s amazing energy in this room. This music is for everybody – it’s for the outcasts, it’s for the cool people, it’s for the fat kids, it’s for the skinny kids, it’s for the gay kids, the straight kids. The aliens! The yellow people, the purple people, the black people, the white people, No matter who you are this is for you. If you see someone at your school, or at your work and they look left out man, all you gotta do, our New Years Resolution is hand a hand out, in 2015 and say ‘Hey, it’s alright. I know how it is.’ Make some noise for love in 2015.”
When one of dance music and culture's most significant names is willing to take the time to stand up and be counted as a leader in both times of joy and strife, it's noteworthy. With his headlining set as Jack U with Diplo forthcoming this New Year's Eve, it's becoming more apparent that Skrillex may be willing to take the lead as a brand name, front-line star of the culture-as-genre.
