I have watched video of Paris Hilton DJing – there is one online, shot from behind, that enables you to watch her hands – and have tried to follow exactly which controls she uses as she lines up and synchronizes her dance tracks. She uses a professional program called Traktor, and as far as I can tell she is actually doing it. She is picking tracks as she goes, not simply pressing play on a prerecorded mix. She adds filters (which modify the sound) for her big buildups before her bass drops, and she even pulls down the master volume in those moments to save the poor audience's ears from the inevitable distortion. She isn't doing anything sophisticated, and I don't like the music she chooses, but she is not a fraud.
This is important, because that accusation is the one most usually hurled at her by all the envious and bitter male disc jockeys of the world. Hatred of Paris Hilton is, one would have thought, a fading phenomenon, but it is taking on a new, furious form as she embarks on a new career.
In case you hadn't heard, Hilton is now in high demand as a headliner DJ at the kind of huge dance club that styles itself as a sort of glittering sex palace; the kind of place that insists on seated patrons ordering a minimum number of $300 bottles of vodka, where boys are muscled and girls wear little; the kind of place that can afford to pay a celebrity DJ a million bucks a show. This is what Hilton says she is now earning. Indeed, she boasts that she is now one of the top-five DJs in the world in terms of remuneration. She headlines at New Year's Eve parties in Ibiza and Vegas.
These places specialize in a kind of dance music known as EDM (electronic dance music) – a vague moniker for a very specific style, a very noisy and screechy form of anthemic, uplifting pop with some vocals and a booming beat. EDM has more in common with top-40 pop than with house music, but it does mix aspects of trance (repeated arpeggiated melodies in the treble register) and dubstep (a wobbly, arrhythmic, grainy sound). EDM is almost universally despised by house and techno DJs, not just because they don't like the music ("corny," "cheesy") or because it doesn't take much skill to line up one of these fully produced, unmixable tracks after another, but also because they loathe the conservative, materialist, macho culture of the bottle-service dance club. Whereas house and techno thought themselves underground, or at least alternative, EDM is for the popular kids, for the athletes and the cheerleaders. Paris Hilton encapsulates the stereotype.
Bring on the powerful rivals. Megastar DJs, it turns out, have big egos but even bigger mouths. They diss each other on Twitter like 14-year-olds on cough syrup. They know no subtlety and no restraint. These days, watching the social-media feeds of the world's angriest DJs is almost as entertaining as their shows. The biggest star of DJ Twitter is the Canadian Deadmau5, one of the highest-paid club DJs in the world, someone who also spins his share of goopy EDM, who likes to rant obscenely about how untalented Hilton is. When he learned that she was earning more than he does, he used his Tumblr page to launch his DJ-themed J'accuse! The mouse-headed man (real name Joel Zimmerman) compared skilled DJing to Formula One race driving(he would be the race car driver; Hilton is the beginner on the go-kart). He writes: "most 'actual' drivers i know, have invested their ENTIRE lives to their careers. Just like many musicians have … i've done it in my own field." Even if Zimmerman himself has an interest in car racing, he would never dare compete against the trained drivers: "…i 10000 per cent never in a million years wouldnt have the balls to encroach on their scene, and consider myself a professional… enter their marketplace, and profit."
Lack of hubris never got anyone to superstar status, of course, and it's amusing when one egomaniac accuses another of excessive pride. But a key word here is "balls" – Paris Hilton never will have those, no matter how she hones her Traktor skills, so she really doesn't have a chance here.
Zimmerman announced that he would accept nothing less than $2-million to appear in concert with Hilton (not that anyone was offering). His brother-in-balls Skrillex, champion of a forehead-beer can-crushing kind of stadium pop sometimes known as brostep, got wind of the dispute and told a reporter for TMZ that he wouldn't play with Hilton for even that sum: Skrillex would accept an invitation to appear alongside her only for $5-million, and then he would give that fee to "sick people and starving children all over the world."
A debate among intellectual giants such as these is generally not something any of us would pay attention to – indeed, 20 years ago we couldn't have, because they did not have the means to make their emotions so instantly public. These would have been views exchanged over backroom bong hits.
But This public rage is interesting because of its barely concealed sexism, – this is not the first time famous male DJs have mocked women for even trying to enter their club – and also because of what it reveals, once again, about fame itselfand what it does to one's brain. Deadmau5 seems honestly to believe that his skill is on a par with that of Formula One drivers,; Skrillex is convinced not only of his skill but also of a kind of moral purity. Neither is and isn't encumbered by embarrassment at the idea that he they might come across as a little ragey.
It's difficult to picture many other kinds of artists engaging in this constant dissing of their peers – I can't, for example, imagine a successful novelist dismissing an inexperienced, first-time author for winning a major prize. Beginners are usually welcome in art, even encouragedby their elders. But DJing is an art form in which testosterone is as valuable as wisdom.