Review: David Guetta's MLK House Remix
The House DJ's schtick of taking a subversive form and making it mind-numbingly boring is taken to new and greater ironic heights.
“The world is going through difficult times, and America too, actually,” began French DJ David Guetta from a rooftop in New York, where he would proceed to make said times even more difficult for the following two hours.
Looking very much like the bully from a movie about people that drive go-karts professionally, David proceeded to do that thing with his hand that DJs do in between pretending to fiddle with buttons while they play songs on their laptops through speakers that are normally used to tactically subdue protesters. While he did that EDM dance-thing, he also debuted a brand new song featuring Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech like it was a spoken word viral video type beat. And with Dr. King’s famous words, Guetta invited all in attendance to remember George Floyd, encourage his family, and drop that ass.
I saw people making jokes about David Guetta on Twitter a couple days ago, and, to be completely honest, I assumed they were just fictional jokes made about David Guetta’s online house party, sponsored by MLS. I thought to myself, “it’s absolutely preposterous to thing that David Guetta would actually make an ‘I Have A Dream’ song for the people to shake that laffy taffy to.” But lo, David Guetta had indeed done such a thing, and tens of people in a Zoom call did indeed clap those cheeks together like it was 7 pm in a major city, including Robert Pires.
The track itself is the predictable banal affair we’ve come to know and mindlessly love from David. It is a song I expect to hear in an unlooted American Eagle, protected by three random men for the last 36 hours who have had nothing to eat or drink, and are surrounded by the cans of Monster Energy Drinks they’ve been peeing into in order to maintain constant vigilance. It’s reliable, something that you can nod your head to while not thinking too hard about David Guetta saying “shout out to [George Floyd’s] family,” perusing the clearance rack and trying to contain the gyrating of your hips while your unconscious mind yearns to throw that Denny’s Grand Slam in a circle.
Guetta also chose not to acknowledge the Black American role in the history of House music, namely, birthing the entire genre into existence, and instead made his own song with the MLK-type beat.
In this, we see Guetta subverting the subversive, bringing light to the plight of Black Americans by erasing the Black American. Shout out to his family, indeed.
Ultimately, the track is too short for anything of note to truly develop within its bounds, and Guetta fails to fully flesh out any ideas from the two remaining brain cells still begrudgingly thumping themselves together within his skull. Still, the germination of a thought that the work does conjure is complex, in its own pulsating way, and deserves further consideration. We give the track a four out of ten, and would invite everyone out there to remember: stay safe, and whenever you think of Martin Luther King Jr, be like David Guetta, and make that Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese and the Big Mac Sauce add-on bounce like the inflatable castle that idiot Jimmy Taylor had for his birthday party in the second grade, which you did not get invited to.
Seriously what the hell was Robert Pires doing on the stream.
