Genres are dead... they're completely useless for electronic music.
Dubstep didn't even sound like a new genre to me.. just sounded like the good ol' London and Bristol sounds, done slower. Skrillex has almost nothing to do, musically, with Burial or Digital Mystickz (eg. what I considered dubstep). Genre names are just terms for people to latch on to so they can feel part of some trend.... usually by the time a style is well established enough to have a genre-name it's already going stale.
And how can 'dubstep' die? There was no dubstep organization... just people making music and organizing club nights... most of those people are still active in music. That's all that scene ever was, really... there was no signature dubstep sound at first. Having massive mid range wobble bass was precisely NOT the point because we were all tired of being pummeled with machine bass at d'nb parties for years... "come meditate on bass weight". Simply put, there was a lot more 'dub' and a bit less 'step'. But when it went big, of course chugga chugga basslines were instantly recognizable and marketable... subtle notions about minimalism, dub aesthetics and performance (soundclash) went out the window in favour of big room impact and beatport chart appeal. That's all good.. but it lost exactly what made it originally appealing to me when it crossed the ocean and into the mainstream. I know that a lot of people that were around then (and even earlier, I got into jungle around 96/97) feel the same way about it... but at the same time we don't really care because it was never about being part of 'jungle' or 'dubstep' or whatever the next thing is... or having that dictate what's cool or not. There's never that pretense... it's just an ongoing thing where you make a cool beat and I try to top that and then you do something completely different and I go 'hey, that's cool' and put my own twist on it.
