FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

What We Talk About When We Talk About Miami Music Week

This is what it feels like.

Now that the beautiful shitshow known as Miami Music Week has wound down, and we've gotten a chance to rest our bones for like, a minute, let's look back at what this great gathering of dance music heads really means for us and the human race. This is the ultimate recap. Are you ready. Put your hands up. Let's go.

Credit: Robert Snow/Red Bull Content Pool

Miami Music Week means sharing a cab with New Jersey juiceheads who don't have tickets to Ultra because who has $500 just lying around like that, but someone is definitely going to die this year, bro. Also, can't wait for Space tonight. How do we get acid? Wanna see my vape pen?

Advertisement

Miami Music Week means pulling up to your hotel which is actually just a glowing neon club that happens to have beds in it. In the lobby, a DJ plays bangers every night till 5AM to no one.  At the bar, $15 shots of Jack. That's so Miami.

It means Skrillex and Richie Hawtin and Seth Troxler and Maya Jane Coles and Green Velvet and Gareth Emery and James Zabiela and Bassjackers and "friends" all playing their own parties on the same fucking night. The same night that Ultra is unfolding in a park, 15 minutes away. Thus, it also means abandoning yourself to FOMO, embracing it, letting it spool out of your corrupted veins so you never have to feel the horrible burden of a better party happening elsewhere.

It means watching A-Trak riding a golf cart out of a yacht. It means riding in an Avicii golf cart with Avicii's publicists, going towards the Avicii Hotel. It means Paris Hilton dancing in a pop-up club from Ibiza, wearing leopard-print cat ears. (That's so Miami.)

Credit: Robert Snow/Red Bull Content Pool

It means eating baked cod fish that Matthew Dear cooked for you on the Red Bull Guest House's sunny rooftop, as you sit next to strangers debating the merits of using MDMA for PTSD. And then finding out those strangers are Dusky and Umek.

It means finally getting a tan, but being too goddamn tired to enjoy it.

It means being offered drugs, constantly. What types of drugs? Whatever the stranger on the dance floor presses into your hands. Whatever the kind middle-aged tech guy rolled into his spliff. Whatever the music label's intern offers you in a litte plastic bag (but only if you hug him first).

Advertisement

It means Red Bull employees running around like, aaaah, Waka Flocka brought a posse of 20 people to the party and we're at capacity, can someone call the label? Fuck, the fire marshal is here, FUCK!

Credit: Robert Snow/Red Bull Content Pool

It means dancing with Spank Rock, whose eyes can't seem to focus on your face.

It means Steve Aoki shushing his PR person because he wants to talk to you for just five more minutes about punk rock.

Credit: Robert Snow/Red Bull Content Pool

It means laughing as a crowd of three hundred people stampede the gates at Ultra. And then finding out that a 28-year-old security guard was trampled underneath them, and was found "screaming in pain, with blood flowing from her ears."

It suddenly became less funny.

It means fist-pumping to Armin Van Buuren in the rain. It means thousands of people overjoyed to be soaking wet and huddled together, overwhelmed by the sugary strains of trance synths.

It means watching 50,000 people salute the gods of EDM as fireworks crackle overhead. It means witnessing a cultural revolution unfold in real-time while being pummeled by confetti.

Everyone, together now, jump.

Michelle Lhooq is on Twitter - @MichelleLhooq