This Play-N-Skillz Track is Literally Everything Wrong With EDM

In a year that brought us The Chainsmokers' humungous single "#SELFIE," you would figure that those obvious viral EDM tracks wouldn't show their faces

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Complex Original

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In a year that brought us The Chainsmokers' humungous single "#SELFIE," you would figure that those obvious viral EDM tracks wouldn't show their faces until sometime before 2015's Miami Music Week. Sadly, with the release of Texas production duo Play-N-Skillz's "Literally I Can't," featuring Lil Jon and Redfoo (of LMFAO fame), we're treated to, literally, everything that's wrong with the EDM scene right now. We're talking about predictable electro house for the chorus that leads into a generic, bouncy trap beat during the verses—we've been here before. For a pair of producers that have scored hits with Chamillionaire and Lil Wayne, Play-N-Skillz should be past making the same dull tracks that other producers have played out, right? I also have to say it: just because you got Lil Jon on your track doesn't mean you need to use him like everyone else would. Screaming "shut the fuck up!" or just throwing in his signature "what?!" in 2014 is corny, no matter how "turnt" your track is.

Sadly, this goes deeper than the sonics.

Mind you, we're not sure if turning down shots of various types of liquor is something sorority girls would be doing, and we can understand wanting someone annoying to stop talking, but the entire track is designed to tell girls to shut up. As Redfoo so eloquently put it, "Literally I Can't" is a song that's designed for the numbskulls who are just "trying to see what you got, not trying to hear what you think" while taking pics of you getting low to post on Twitter. How Lil Jon can go from wanting to help get young people to the polls to hopping on tracks like these is beyond me. And with a video that paints the women that are turning all the way up for the guys who don't want to hear them talk as "the good ones"—which seems to include the cheerleader that's passed out on the frat house steps—we're wondering who possibly greenlit this treatment.

Look, I don't discriminate: if you want to turn the fuck up, do you; just turn up for the right reasons. Condoning this "shut up and shake your ass" mentality? It sounds like some shit the owner of a strip club would tell the strippers they employ. Many facets of the current EDM scene need to change, but we're not here about long-term goals for the future of EDM; we're here about acts looking to obtain a catchy viral hit by glorifying a multitude of tired and degrading traits within said scene. At the very least, why would you make the concept so one-note? You couldn't make a track about a variety of things someone just can't stand? It HAD to be about this one type of woman who "literally can't" get with any of the liquor or sexual acts that these men are trying to get her to engage in? And the only remedy you could come up with is telling the woman to tell her to shut the fuck up and get drunk?

Is this what the perception of EDM has become in the mainstream? Ponder that while I try and find the person who updated the "solo career" section on Redfoo's Wikipedia page.

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