“Listen, let me tell you,” he smiles. “This story is so funny. Xavier [de Rosnay of Justice, another French outfit] told me: ‘Man, I love The Alphabeat, it’s so crazy ... Jackson [Fourgeaud, of Jackson and his Computer Band] sent me the album, saying: ‘I. Can. Not. Fucking. Believe. That David Guetta did this.’ That put a smile on my face, because people like to put a stamp on what you do.”
Guetta’s latest project is a new record label, which he wants to showcase more of this side of his music. “I’m starting a label called Jackback Records, which is kind of back to my roots. It’s going to be only electronic music.” His first signing is Dutch DJ Nicky Romero and the first release, Metropolis, an instrumental collaboration between Guetta and Romero, is out now. “I don’t do this for the money, I don’t do it for record sales, I don’t really care about that, I just want to make beats.”
Guetta doesn’t think it matters that many of the young American kids experiencing an epiphany with dance music don’t appreciate its history. “It’s just different now,” he says. “To us it was underground, it was a subculture, it was a lifestyle, it was all of these things. But these days, it’s not really working like this any more. It took me 20 years to do what I did. Avicii, last year, no one knew who he was. Now he’s the biggest thing on the planet. You understand? It’s totally different.”
For Guetta, dance music’s newfound popularity can only be a good thing. He won’t convince everyone, but few in the industry would deny his phenomenal success in the US has given the industry as a whole a healthy financial boost. “Listen, some people take themselves very, very seriously,” Guetta says. “I’m not a politician, you know what I mean? You remember in the old days you had people like Underground Resistance [a late 1980s militant dance collective from Detroit]?” He pauses and smiles. “I never took myself so seriously.”
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