Skrillex: F*CK U SKRILLEX YOU THINK UR ANDY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!!

Then he was the nicest guy in the world, pretty handsome with his new haircut, and good at making what Justin Bieber called “expensive” sounds. Even Skrillex naysayers were forced to come to grips with his staying power, especially in the wake of his 2023 charm offensive that culminated in a headline slot at Coachella. But wait. You thought he had matured into an auteur? Bam—after barely a minute, FUCK U SKRILLEX YOU THINK UR ANDY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!! <3 swerves into one of his nastiest dubstep basslines in years, the kind that brings to mind matter disintegration rays and malfunctioning hydraulic machinery.

The album never looks back from there, peppered with increasingly stupid DJ tags from Trap-a-Holics legend Shadoe Haze in the guise of Skrillex sidekick DJ Smokey. There are way too many examples, so I’ll just pick one: the Wuki collaboration “BIGGY BAP,” a trap-dubstep hybrid with three beat switch-ups. “I have Skrillex trapped in my basement! Play this at full volume or I’ll put him in the hole,” Haze says, before another voice halts the music: “This beat drop has been seized by Atlantic Records and has been replaced with silence.” We hear crickets that are quickly molded into a whole new beat, interrupted by more voiceovers: “Microwave meal for one type dubstep beat! My life is in shambles! I have severe depression!”

If that sounds exhausting, that’s because it is. This is the album equivalent of a YouTube party where everyone plays their favorite tracks for 35 seconds at a time and screams over them and sniffs a lot. The voiceovers get tiresome, and sometimes you wish a track would last longer than a minute. But there are so many ideas, so much life packed into every second, that it’s hard not to be bowled over by the sheer force of will. You will listen to these next 15 seconds of dentist-drill dubstep, and you will enjoy it.

As it careens towards climax, FUCK U SKRILLEX YOU THINK UR ANDY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!! <3 suddenly turns serious. Skrillex, who was once in an emo band, sings about “the voltage that lives inside of us” on “Voltage.” Originally the title track from the album he lost on his stolen hard drives, it’s a bit of feel-good closure, though the sickly sweet sincerity is almost abrasive after 40 minutes of relentless inside jokes.

But then again, Skrillex is remarkably sincere, and that’s why he’s still the king of this shit. He’s 37 years old and making music that runs laps around dance music producers 15 years his junior, youthful and seasoned at the same time. It’s hard not to love him when he’s singing something so earnest and hopeful, and warmth and purity radiate from the album; it feels like he’s throwing a party and at the top of the invitation list.

That feeling is what melts even EDM haters eventually, allowing him to infiltrate the corners of underground music that once tried to bar him entry. FUCK U SKRILLEX YOU THINK UR ANDY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!! <3 is a victory lap, the most fun “I told you so” you’ll probably ever hear. The title is a red herring, because no one would confuse Sonny Moore for an artist like Andy Warhol. He’s just Skrillex, writing some of the most ridiculous dance music ever made and making even purists fall for the wubs. If that’s not Pop Art, I don’t know what is.