Daft Punk & Pharrell Grace Vibe’s Cover Despite Lousy Interview

Dance music certainly has been getting the short end of the straw recently. After decades of clawing our way out of the underground, fighting angered politicians and scared suburbanites, this genre of music has found its way back to the front of the pack. There has not been this level of mainstream clout behind any incantation of dance music since the height of disco. So considering all of this, how is that we keep getting stuck with interviews by the mainstream press that are lackluster and demonizing?

By now many of you are familiar with the infamous Major Lazer interview with former MTV VJ Kennedy. A perfect case of secondhand awkwardness, she disrespects the trio from start to finish. For all intents and purposes, lets chalk that up as a one-off.

Now lets fast forward a week. Vibe Magazine gave Daft Punk alongside “Get Lucky” and “Lose Yourself to Dance” singer Pharrell Williams the honor of appearing on their 20th anniversary collector’s issue. As part of the cover shoot, they sat down with the magazine and discussed Random Access Memories, Yeezus, and even “Drop It Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg.

While the interview itself is not really a problem- it is an entertaining read- there a couple things that have us frustrated.

For starters, the opening text of the interview is both poor grammar and disrespectful. Daft Punk is famous for their secretive disposition, their whole allure is their hidden nature. So when the time comes to actually speak with the poster children of dance music, might it be wise to take care with the writing? This is especially so if this is the cover story, and twice so when it is for the commemorative 20th year issue. Starting a sentence with “and” is not entirely wrong, but if this the headline for the interview, might a better word be selected? Perhaps complaining about conjunctions is a tad nit-picky, but forgetting a period (after “lucky streak”) is ridiculous.

Grammar aside, we cannot forget the countless number of years we have been trying to distance the dogma of “dance music equals drugs”. The major media outlets have been painting a negative image of drug use in our community – drugs which are equally as prevalent in every other genre of music – as accepted fact. Is it truly necessary to continue to allude to such things? This leads to the most annoying part of all.

You have to be joking.

We are not trying to bash Vibe itself, or the writer. If anything, we applaud them for being one of the rare few who gets to speak with Daft Punk. Perhaps in the future though, show our genre of music the respect it has been desperately trying to earn over the years. We have certainly come a long way, but there is an equally distant road ahead. A road that we cannot completely traverse until the day our media decides to stop reminding us of the drugs they inescapably link to dance music.

To see the whole interview, check it out here.