Let’s start this post with an apology. I originally wanted to publish this one on Friday – for reasons that will become clear shortly – but I’ve been feeling under the weather over the past few days. One lateral flow test later confirmed I was thankfully not dealing with the dreaded coronavirus.

Last Friday was November 12th. It was the one year anniversary of an article at DJ Mag by Ellie Flynn detailing a series of allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of Derrick May. Another article appeared on Resident Advisor the next day, written by Annabel Ross. Both pieces made for difficult, uncomfortable but absolutely necessary reading.

As far as I’ve been able to establish, May has not sued either publication over the allegations. Infact, the only person he has pursued through the courts is Michael James – and May dropped his own libel case against him after a judge disagreed with his description of himself as a “private person”, amongst other things.

Before the pandemic, Derrick May was seen as a charismatic and highly talented person whose name sold tickets anywhere he went. During 2020, this started to change and by now, things couldn’t be more different. The calls for interviews have stopped coming. The emails for bookings are pretty thin on the ground as well.

And now I’m hearing that May’s latest complaint is that a lot of his “friends” aren’t answering the phone anymore. A very reliable source in Detroit says “Derrick’s old fashioned. He prefers the phone to emails or messaging. But a lot of his calls lately aren’t getting returned. Even social calls too. And it’s really starting to f*** him off.”

“Derrick is still insisting he didn’t do everything he’s accused of doing. He thinks he’s starting to see who his friends really are – and there’s a lot less of them than there used to be. It’s no wonder him and Sofia are back together – it must be lonely being Derrick May right now”.

May might not have worked it out yet, so allow me to spell it out to him. His “friends” might have finally realised being associated with a person with this many allegations surrounding him – and whose response to the whole thing is silence – isn’t a good look. Short of openly disassociating themselves from him, there’s not much else they can do…