This week, Joel Zimmerman, aka Deadmau5, has arrived on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. This event marks a ginormous step in Electronic Dance Music, where a North American DJ has arrived on arguably the most prestigious magazine in the entire music industry. This shows how quickly Dance Music has solidified itself in American Culture, but it also brings light the fact that many people, and DJs, are just becoming band-wagoners.

He brings up the argument that many DJs, such as David Guetta, “just [have] 2 ipods and a mixer and just plays tracks.” But luckily, as the exposure of EDM increases, the intelligence of the fans increases as well. Zimmerman goes on to say that “people are smartening up about who does what – but there’s still a million button pushers getting paid half a million. And not to say that I’m not a button pusher. I’m just pushing a lot more buttons.”

Another topic brought up was the whole Madonna fiasco at the Ultra music Festival where she asked “how many people in this crowd have seen Molly.” Making an apparent reference to Ecstasy, but also referencing the track ‘Molly’ by Cedric Grevais. But Zimmerman goes on the rant to Madonna that “you want to be ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ and ‘funky grandma’? Fine, It’s not my place to say you’re irrelevant. If your gonna come into my world, at least do it with a little more dignity. I understand she has millions more fans and is way more successful than ill ever be. But its like talking about slavery at a #!%&*@ blues concert. It’s inappropriate.” Which Zimmerman is right. Dance music does have this stereotype of hard references to drugs, but Madonna of all people has no idea what she is talking about when it comes to EDM anything so she just needs to but out of it.

As part of the release of his new EP ‘The Veldt,’ he has essentially collaborted the entire thing on Soundcloud, and offered live streaming of him working on it in his studio. Zimmerman said he would rather create one track that everyone can see and offer feedback on, than the traditional process of ‘going to a studio in Denmark and somehow leaving away with 12 tracks.”

All in all, this is a great moment in EDM history, putting someone on the cover of Rolling Stone is an enormous feat, and even someone like Deadmau5 never though he would get here, saying ‘I didn’t think I’d make the cover of anything, so its cool.”