A depressing truth in the world of dance music is the sheer number of people in it who seem to think it’s acceptable to excuse bad things. For example, when allegations of sexual assault and rape started swirling around Derrick May in 2020, very few names from the dance music world spoke out publicly against him.
The public are entitled to ask why – and Ears To The House can help. It’s because many of them, quite simply, don’t believe the allegations. People forget they operate in quite a misogynistic culture – and contrary to popular belief, this misogyny has been around since the early days of house music. And in it, the bro code comes above everything else.
Most of those in dance music’s higher echelons are there because they understand this code. They ask as few questions as possible – simply because doing so means biting the hand which feeds them. Many of them are not bad people in themselves, but they’re happy to remain complicit in a system which allows bad people to do bad things, and get away with it.
Erick Morillo’s death in September 2020 is another example of the bro code at work. Just weeks earlier, it was revealed Morillo had handed himself in at a Miami police station after a rape kit came back with his DNA. He was due to appear in court in early September, but was found dead only days beforehand.
Oddly enough, this wasn’t mentioned in any of the gushing tributes posted by the likes of Danny Tenaglia, Pete Tong, Yousef, Simon Dunmore, Jamie Jones and so forth when he died. Many of those tributes remain online today – some were deleted without explanation and only Dunmore and Jones were sensible enough to apologise for downplaying the rape allegations afterwards.
But the beauty of the internet is it keeps receipts – something DJ Pierre is no doubt aware of. Yesterday, he published a rather long rant about Erick Morillo on his Facebook page, in an attack on Mr C – although it isn’t clear exactly what Mr C is meant to have said which triggered Pierre’s diatribe.
We publish it here, entirely uncensored…
After calling him a “racist, opportunistic hater”, he proceeds to describe Erick Morillo as “a friend” and explains “if I want to make a post saying something about him, his artistry and his raw talent on the big stage then I can and will.”.
How DJ Pierre – real name Nathaniel Pierre Jones – conducts himself on his own social media pages is obviously a matter for him. Unfortunately, Jones appears to have forgotten the right to free speech also means we can scrutinise what he says and does on aforementioned social media.
Jones then goes on to say something which many of his fellow bros believe, but would never declare publicly. He declares his support for Erick Morillo, saying “I am not obligated to simply believe these accusations just because they were made and neither do you… at this point, the full story can never be known”. Jones then goes on to undermine his own point by explicitly saying “I do not trust nor believe these accusations”.
Why does he not believe the allegations? Well, his own words are “Me being black American, I will always be suspicious of accusations coming from people who for all of [mine and] my ancestors existence have done nothing but hate, steal, kill, and destroy, and rape us, and other people of color”. Does this line of argument sound familiar?
That’s because it is – Derrick May used exactly the same line of defence, albeit with more tempered language, when the first batch of sexual abuse allegations against him appeared in the press two years ago. In other words, this is apparently all a big conspiracy from white people to put the black man down.
Mr C’s response – which came in shortly after this article was first written – is published in its entirety below…
We wonder how many others in the dance music world will now be prepared to defend Jones – especially given we know several of his Chicago friends hold exactly the same views. The comments section on the same Facebook thread is mostly filled with people pointing out how ridiculous they think his views are – and for a man talking about his freedom of speech, he seems very happy to deny others theirs with the delete button.
Perhaps someone can also explain his reference to cancel culture makes no sense – due to the same so-called cancel culture being pushed by the same white owned media he claims to hate. The world of Nathaniel Pierre Jones is a very contradictory place…
