Why Safe as Fuck Loves Pop Music More Than Fake Underground Artists

There’s a funny myth still floating around electronic music: that the underground is “pure,” and pop is “fake.” That if you’re grinding in some sweaty basement set, you’re somehow more authentic than the artist selling out stadiums. It’s a comforting story for DJs who don’t release music and for local promoters who confuse exclusivity with culture. But the truth? Pop music is often braver, more honest, and more punk than the fake underground.

Pop Stars Actually Fight the Machine

Take Taylor Swift. Her entire catalog was sold to Scooter Braun against her will. Most artists would have folded. Instead, she re-recorded her originals—“Taylor’s Version”—flipping the entire industry on its head. That’s the kind of maneuver underground DJs fantasize about but never pull off.

The long-awaited resolution comes years after Swift and Braun's saga began, when the music manager purchased Big Machine Records from Scott Borchetta, which gave him control of the "Karma" singer's first six albums.

The sale led to a complicated battle between Swift and her former record label, and eventually inspired the superstar to re-record her first six albums as a way to regain ownership of her music catalog. While the singer has re-released four out of six of the albums, she added in her statement that the remaining two can "still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right."

Full piece HERE

Or look at Chance the Rapper, who bypassed the traditional label machine altogether, self-releasing until the majors had no choice but to pay attention. Or Frank Ocean, who finessed Def Jam into thinking they were getting one record, then dropped Endless as a contractual throwaway before releasing Blonde independently. These moves aren’t just smart—they’re rebellious survival tactics that underground DJs claim to stand for but rarely execute.

The seemingly strained state of Frank Ocean’s current relationship with Def Jam Records has a long history, and the label has gotten what it deserved, says the man who originally signed Frank to Def Jam. Earlier, it was confirmed that Frank’s new visual album Endless “fulfills Frank’s obligations to Def Jam and Universal.” That meant that his other new album, Blonde, which is available as an Apple Music exclusive, was self-released, and Def Jam will not profit from it.

Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Why These Moves Matter for Underground Musicians and DJs

These aren’t just smart business decisions—they’re rebellious survival tactics that many underground DJs and curators talk about, but rarely act on:

• Chance didn’t shy away from the spotlight or compromise for radio play—he leveraged streaming and independent mojo to go mainstream on his own terms.

  
  

• Frank Ocean played chess with his

  contract, used a decoy to escape, then dropped a masterpiece—and owned it outright.

  
  

These are the kinds of power moves underground scenes claim to champion—creative autonomy, structural resistance, cultural impact. Yet so many DJs hide behind exclusivity or branding without constructing anything resilient, cunning, or actually owned. The real break comes from making music, owning it, and pulling off your own exits.

Covers, Remixes, and Reinvention

Here’s where pop and underground collide beautifully: when a producer flips a mainstream song into something entirely new. A Taylor Swift acapella over a jungle break. A Frank Ocean ballad recast as halftime dub. A Chance verse chopped and stitched into footwork chaos. When a track speaks to the masses and then gets rebuilt, that’s when it truly lives both in the club and the basement.

This is how culture moves forward: not by gatekeeping, but by stealing, re-editing, and repurposing. Pop is a starting point. The underground is supposed to be the playground. But too many DJs hide behind exclusivity instead of creation.

Vancouver Festivals: The Closed Shop

Now let’s get local, because this is where the dirt starts to smell. Vancouver’s festival scene has become a parody of “community.” Opportunities don’t go to the best or the bold—they go to the same safe hands, the same circles, the same last names.

If you arrive in Vancouver as a legitimate immigrant artist, the structural barriers are immediate and suffocating. Talent alone won’t grant you access.

The city’s cultural infrastructure tilts in favor of familiar faces—those with roots deep enough to summon a ready-made crowd. Legitimacy isn’t measured in artistic output but in the ability to mobilize old networks, social capital, and built-in audiences; locally raised legacy figure whose primary credential is the ability to mobilize a built-in network of childhood friends as a guaranteed audience. In this ecosystem, opportunity is less about artistic merit and more about reinforcing existing social capital. As Pierre Bourdieu might note, the scene operates on a currency of cultural capital: not skill, but familiarity, pedigree, and the performance of belonging.

The irony is almost poetic: Vancouver’s “underground” is just the mainstream in disguise. Festivals ask your race because talent alone doesn’t matter—only the right network, the right background, the right look. Innovation is filtered out; privilege gets the stage. And we don’t even want to get into how their festivals are directly linked to their artist development pipelines; No, we’ll save that for another article 👯‍♀️

PSYCHE!

The illustration shows a closed loop where the artist's initial creative and financial investment primarily enriches the festival and the development company. In return, the artist receives intangible "exposure" and development services that are funded by their own work, locking them into a system where they are the raw material for a machine that profits from them.

The Monetization of "Development": The "artist development company" in the infographic is also a real phenomenon. This ecosystem includes PR firms, social media consultants, branding experts, and showcase opportunities that charge artists significant fees with the promise of getting them "festival-ready." They are selling access, or the illusion of access, to the pipeline.

Vancouver’s gatekeeping mirrors patterns seen in other creative capitals—Berlin’s techno collectives, New York art circles—where “insider” status often outweighs innovation. What passes as “curation” in these circles is little more than nepotism masquerading as taste-making—an aestheticization of access rather than the fostering of genuine innovation. In other words, the underground is merely a mirror of privilege, cloaked in irony and coded as authenticity.

Vancouver doesn’t have an underground. It has a neighborhood watch disguised as a scene. It doesn’t reward risk, it rewards familiarity. It doesn’t want producers, it wants placeholders. And it definitely doesn’t want anyone who challenges the borders of its cultural comfort zone.

Why Pop > Pretend Underground

That’s why Safe as Fuck rides harder for pop than it ever will for fake underground DJs. Pop artists at least admit what they are: entertainers navigating a brutal industry. Underground DJs too often pretend they’re “curators”—a word that doesn’t even belong in music. It’s co-opted language for people who don’t actually produce, but want credit for proximity.

Realness isn’t about playing the right party or gatekeeping your SoundCloud likes. Realness is about making something, owning it, and putting your name on it—no matter who tries to take it away.

Taylor Swift fought for her masters. Chance flipped the system. Frank Ocean outsmarted the majors. Meanwhile, Vancouver’s fake underground is still arguing over guest list spots and Instagram clout.

Safe as Fuck would rather stand in the middle of a stadium screaming to a pop chorus than nod silently in a field curated by the neighborhood watch. At least the pop stars know they’re in a fight.

Click Me 2 Subcribe