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Maceo Plex, 'Conjure Superstar': A Grim Tour of Club Culture via Stolen Phone

Remember 'Smack My Bitch Up'?
screen-grab via xlr8r.com

I feel like this conceit could've gotten a better treatment than the "Smack My Bitch Up" meets Blair Witch Project result above—what-the-fuck-that-ending—but perhaps you can derive some deeper meaning from it. I suppose it's the revelation that being a proper club "superstar" means having the spotlight on everything, however gross and evil, and with no need for the smart-phone life-broadcast. But the life-broadcast allows you to fake it well enough, and there are plenty of club culture knobs desperate to fake it.

It helps to have the Conjure background. It's actually a series of tracks from Maceo Plex, known alternatively as Maetrik in full-on techno mode, also taking aim at different aspects of club culture. This is the seventh in the producer's experiment in serial loathing, with the goal being a take-down of superstar DJs, wannabes or otherwise. To wit, the lyric: "A superstar, is what you are, searching for fame, looking for fun, you want respect but you ain't getting none."

And then there's the video's self-clowning USB DJ, in case a listener/viewer hasn't fully tuned into the vocals. It's actually worth exploring the rest of the Conjure series; tracks "Conjure Sex" and "Conjure Bass" turn toward a more distinctive (and instrumental) jacking deep house mode, a shift that points toward the contemporary grimness of club culture better than any lyric could.