What ever happened to Pretty Ricky?

For those of you who grew up in the 90s, today we're going to talk about Pretty Ricky, an R&B band formed in 1997 that gave us such wonders as "Grind On Me" and "Wet Dreams." They were one of those groups that all the hip hop ladies called "Sexi" and "

Mixed feelings about Skrillex.

I've been hearing a lot about Skrillex recently, and I thought I'd sit down and give him a try. I like to give all kinds of music a try, and I don't like to dismiss something before I listen to it. Even though I'm not a big fan of Dubstep, I gave it a shot.
I discovered that Skrillex does a lot of remixes, and, frankly, many of them sound quite similar. I suppose, though, there's only so much you can do with somebody else's song, so I decided to give his original music a try.



This (below) is a photo of our friend Skrillex.

As you can see, he seems to have decided that screamo is no longer "in," and decided to shave half of his head and be a Dubstep DJ instead. I usually acknowledge the fact that looks have nothing to do with sound, but in this case I believe that he was suffering severe headaches due to the constantly thumping bass that must be coming from his place of residence and had to shave part of his head to relieve some of the pressure. Perhaps that also explains why he's turning to caffiene to satisfy his migraines.

Though I am not as cultured as some people who will listen to anything just for the sake of doing so, I have listened to Dubstep before, namely Deadmau5. I have to say that Skrillex and Deadmau5 have a lot in common. It might just be the nature of the music, but it's hard for me to distinguish between the two. (I even tested myself by creating a playlist and seeing if I could tell one sound from the other. I could not.)


While I was less than pleased with some of his remixes, I did find one Skrillex song (do they call them "songs" in the super-hip Dubstep world?) that I feel is appropriate enough to represent his music in general. It's called "Disco Rangers." The title itself might have been the reason I selected it over "No mercy, only violence" and "Drugs are cool."

Usually, at this point I would critique the artist's lyrics. But, after googling "Skrillex lyrics," I realized that I am silly. This music, while not specifically "instrumental," would fall under that category. There are very few words at all, which I guess is part of what makes it difficult for me to understand it. I prefer music that I can sing to in the car on the way to class. It's hard to make fax machine sounds in my car.
For example, here are the lyrics to one of Skrillex's songs:

That's worse than Justin Bieber only because of the tiny amount of words actually used. (Though, in Skrillex's defense, At least none of his words are repeated. i.e. baby.) An exception to this is Bangarang, which actually does have some words like, "Yo, I'm eatin' fun dip right now."

Over all, I have to say that Skrillex is not going to be on my playlist any time soon. While I do appreciate the steady beat and can rarely resist bobbing my head like a funky chicken, I'm just not that big a fan of Dubstep in general. I must just not understand it, because clearly it's very popular with people who are cooler than me.

Sidenote: If any of you readers are into Dubstep, be sure to leave a comment and explain it to me.