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I’ve been close friends with @bassnectar for years. Ive been his studio assistant for the last 6. I’ve worked with other female friends of his, and I’ve been friends with sexual partners of his. I’ve personally never heard of anything close to predatory behavior, from anyone.
Lorin’s always been a very compassionate, open and empathetic guy. He made the entire Bassnectar ethos, before it was woke to do so, about empathy, compassion, kindness, activism and giving-a-fuck.
The Bassnectar community, at least during my time on the road 2010-2014, reflected those values. It sucks to see him not get those same values reflected back to him, especially after his response to all this. This twitter shit isn’t about social justice, it’s about dopamine hits.
The level of discourse about social justice in the dance music community is abyssmally low, and Lorin was one of the early and biggest pushers to raise that level. He was highly motivated to use his music and platform to make the world better.
It’s often frankly embarrassing to be a part of a community that is so consumed by spectacle, image and entertainment. I know Lorin felt that too, and while we worked on music all the time, he was most invested in ways that could make being a DJ feel not embarrassing.
Which is to say to mobilize the community and change the party scene to be a force for good instead of a scene of pure excess and solipsistic hedonism. He started a nonprofit, and me and him were in the process of producing short documentaries about political injustices in the US
- work that I hope continues at BeInteractive. I’m pointing all this out to say it sucks he’s not getting met wit the same compassion he’s shown his whole career. If he hooked up with underage girls, hold him to account. If he failed to properly navigate the ever-evolving...
And complex consent hierarchies between artists and fans that all of us are just now beginning to debate and discuss, hold him to account. Instead people call him a rapist and pedophile. Lorin would be the first to call himself out and seek to correct his actions.
This isn’t a sad yarn about Lorin. He’s a wealthy white guy who (as he says time time again) has been very, very lucky in life. He’s going to be fine. But this twitter shit isn’t justice, it’s just more spectacle, more entertainment, more farce.
I’m sad because someone I love as a brother might have hurt people, and I’m sad for those people who might have been hurt. I’m also sad for a community so poorly equipped to ameliorate this pain, one that’s so eager to turn to sensationalized, shallow posturing...
Instead of doing the work. Watching an entertainment-community awkwardly grapple with new ideas of wokeness and social justice and artist-fan relationships wouldn’t be so painful if people at least seemed to care about getting it right. Whatever, Bassnectar is canceled, party on.
