@icey wicey 1517
@Myoozik
Warning, this is only my understanding as a young man in Midwest USA. I do not have first hand experience of being in the legendary Big Apple record store of South London or anything like that. However, I have been a fan of dubstep and its various subgenres since about 2008.
Brostep is dubstep made with aggressive synths, and emphasis on treble in addition to the basslines. It was started first by Rusko with the song “Cockney Thug” in 2007. Although dubstep experimentation had been growing a lot in recent years, prior to Cockney Thug, it had never really been something quite that cheeky and with as much “bro” party appeal.
With OG dubstep, the favorite listening pasttimes were often smoking a bowl in a basement with relatively small crowds of people and nodding one’s head or even meditating and contemplating the complexities of life. Also driving or doing other relaxing things. There were still occasional real bangers or the day, like Midnight Request Line by Skream where people might have actually really cranked it and danced on occasion. But overall, dubstep was a more moderate form of music. It was often played loudly, but it was always very very bass and sub-bass focused and appealed to something deep inside people, while giving them breathing room up top in the treble to think. It wasn’t something that was very “catchy” or appealed to most kids or jocks.
Fast forward to the days brostep:
After Rusko’s Cockney Thug landed, there were still artists like Skream, Benga, Emalkay, etc in those early days making traditional dubstep. A lot of the artists who had been making dubstep and pioneering and refining the sound started to get eclipsed by the newer surge of brostep artists. However, the early days of brostep still retained most of the elements of actual dubstep, to the point where it really was a legitimate subgenre. We still had lots of reverb, deep bass, shuffling hi hats and halftime 2-step beats. Artists like 16-bit made absolutely fantastic tracks from 2007-2009 that are still timeless today. They could be described as aggressive at many times sure, but there is a definite real dubstep feel to the music that is oh so good. Brostep didn’t really begin to get crazy dumb and actually something that masses of kids, dudebros, emos, scenesters, etc. thought was cool until the end of 2009, and even then there were still a huge amount of really good tracks alongside the crap. 2011 when Skrillex came along is when it really fell apart. There were good tracks even after Skrillex, but many people became discouraged after Everytime someone tried to show their friends a real dubstep song or even a more moderate brostep song, their friends said something like, “wtf is this?” And then proceeded to show them this “better,
real dubstep” from Skrillex which most of the times wasn’t even brostep. Most of skrillex’s music isn’t even brostep, because brostep at the very least has a tempo between 130-150, usually around 140. It also has to have some kind of halftime beat for at least part of it. You can’t make a track at 110 bpm with a 4 on the floor regular beat and call it dubstep or brostep. You just can’t do that. It’s like someone calling a Chihuahua and a wolf the same thing because they’re both canines.
But yeah, I respect the opinion, but personally I don’t think brostep was ever overrated. I think Skrillex’s electro that everyone
called dubstep or brostep, and the like 1 or 2 actual brostep songs he made were pretty overrated back in the day, but that’s about it. Brostep is mostly “underground” nowadays. I don’t understand how something most people don’t like can be overrated but whatevs lol.