You might want to grab some popcorn before you read this!

Joel Zimmerman is the last guy on earth you’d want to mess with. Deadmau5, who is not known to censor himself in the press, has a notorious record of controversies his fans are well aware of. He’s one producer who is not afraid to speak his mind. And we ought to respect him for that.

 

1. Deadmau5 vs. Lady Gaga

Last month, Deadmau5 received online death threats by Lady Gaga fans for tweeting about ‘The Abramovic Method’ (a series of exercises designed to heighten mental and physical self-awareness) practiced by the pop-singer. The two-minute video, which Gaga claimed is ‘art’, involved clippings of her moaning naked in the woods and hugging a giant crystal. Here’s what Zimmerman had to say:

“What the actual fuck? If some idiot howls in the woods and noones around, does it make a sound? MYTH BUSTED! I’m inspired….gunna go bark at the moon for a bit, get back in the studio, bark at my computer screen and make some duck noises. I’m an ARTIST!”

 

2. Deadmau5 vs. EDM Artists

The Canadian has always had an agitated relationship with the EDM industry. He feels EDM artists need to step forth into undiscovered terrain. When asked about the current state of EDM, he blatantly stated:

“I don’t think enough EDM artists are taking risks right now and that’s the big problem. Everyone wants to be safe, and do that thing you know is going to work. Someone, please take the wheel and turn it. Not to say I’m going to be that guy and I’m going to crusade on that journey of making turbo-dub-neo-pro-step but I would just like to encourage a bit of diversity and the way that I do that is the only way I know how, which is to make some down-tempo thing…and just, like flex, engineering muscle on a piece or two.”

 

3. Deadmau5 vs. Forbes DJ List

When the US business magazine Forbes revealed its list of ‘The World’s Highest-Paid DJs’ last year, Deadmau5 was ranked at #6 with the an annual income of $11.5 million. Here’s what he said in an interview:

“If I was making $11 million, do you think I’d be fucking sitting right here, right now? No fucking way. You’re putting the whole industry on one article written by one dude, who does not have access to any of our accounts.”

In another interview with Spin, when the mau5head was asked about the production costs involved in a tour, he said:

“It’s bullshit. I had to call my manager and say, ‘Yo! Where’s the other 10?’ Sure, we’ve seen $20 million in the past two years, but that’s gone back into the studio, into tours – they cost up to $10 million alone. It’s money in, money out for all of us, but the list makes us look like a bunch of overpaid dicks. The cool thing about it, though, is that it says, ‘Invest in this shit because it’s hot,’ to the idiots with more money than all of us put together. It’s a self-propelling stupidity that’s now influxing big industry money into the previously small EDM market.”

 

4. Deadmau5 vs. ‘Button Pushers’

Another one of Zimmerman’s many victims was the bunch of ‘button-pusher DJs’ in the dance music industry, for whom he reserved some cutting remarks:

“David Guetta has two iPods and a mixer and he just plays tracks – like, ‘Here’s one with Akon, check it out!’”

“Even Skrillex isn’t doing anything too technical. He has a laptop and a MIDI recorder, and he’s just playing his shit. People are, thank God, smartening up about who does what – but there’s still button-pushers getting paid half a million. And not to say I’m not a button-pusher. I’m just pushing a lot more buttons.”

 

5. Deadmau5 vs. Madonna

During last year’s Ultra Music Festival, Madonna gave an awkward intro for Avicii’s set by asking the crowd if they’d ‘seen molly’. Deadmau5, who has closely worked with Ultra Music, wrote on his Facebook page:

“Very classy there Madonna! ’HUR DUR HAS ANYONE SEEN MOLLY???’ Such a great message for the young music lovers at ultra. quite the f’n philanthropist. but hey, at least yer HIP AND TRENDY! fucking cant smack my head hard enough right now.”

And that was not it. His incessant rant continued:

“Seriously, I giveth not a fucking single FUCK for slating on Madonna for reaching an entirely NEW level of idiocy … I can appreciate her meteoric career, and all good deeds done, but WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT? That’s your big contribution to EDM? That’s your big message to Ultra attendees? Hipsterspeak for looking for drugs? Fuck off you fucking IDIOT. fuck.”

 

6. Deadmau5 vs. Pop Stars

Joel has an obvious distaste for collaborating with commercial artists. On a late night program called ‘Last Call With Carson Daly’, the mau5 bragged:

“Dude, I’ve turned down some hilarious things lately. Let’s just say some of the biggest acts in the world. Dude, like, bigger than big. I can’t do it. It’s not something that I feel is going to help anyone, except for myself. With any fucking luck, creativity will prevail and new, original acts will become bigger and better.”

Following his footsteps is the young Porter Robinson who turned down an offer to work with Katy Perry. The fast-rising Porter admits he gets the notion from Deadmau5. He said:

“I admire him because he’s yet to release a song that sounds like he’s trying to fit into something.”

 

7. Deadmau5 vs. Dubstep

After the release of his >album title goes here<, Joel had an interview with Fuse where he outspokenly expressed his distaste for Americans embracing dubstep:

“Dubstep: I don’t hate it for the culture; I love it for the culture. I don’t hate it for the artists. I hate it for the fucking sound. It is a fuck you to every audio engineer in the world because these kids go out and they want it loud, loud, loud. You’ve got a volume knob for that, dude. And if it’s not loud enough buy an amp and some better speakers.”

 

8. Deadmau5 vs. Flo Rida

Flo Rida, who isn’t exactly someone you’d look up to in dance music, recently released a peculiar and unnatural ‘DJ tool’ called Beamz by Flo (sort of reminds you of ‘Beats by Dre’) and called it “the hottest music technology to hit the market.”

Deadmau5 took to Twitter to mock this… thing. His already colorful Twitter feed got more amusing – check out his tweets from September 10th to 11th – you will know what we mean! Later that night, he took to Instagram to ridicule it further:

9. Deadmau5 vs. Zedd

Last week, Deadmau5 interviewed Clarity-producer Zedd in his Ferrari. He seems to have a new segment called ‘Coffee Run’, which might be an ongoing thing. So if you’re wondering what the guys at the top guns of EDM talk about, it’s mostly just messing around with each other.

Watch the interesting dialogue between Zedd & Zimmerman: