A Girl Named Leroy: A Personal Essay on the Inspiration that Dariacore is to Me

TW: Deadname used for educational purposes

Felt like putting this out there for some reason.

Growing up, I didn't listen to a lot of unique kinds of music. If anything, really, I could categorize what exactly I listened to:

• Worship music, both contemporary and traditional
• Latin music
• Pop music/popular rap music (mostly clean versions)

That was me growing up, at least for the most part. And HUGE emphasis on contemporary worship music. That was all that we listened to sometimes, my mom would put on K-LOVE or Star99.1 and that was our soundtrack to family trips, on the way to church getting dropped off at school, getting dropped off anywhere, just anywhere we went. As a young kid, it felt like secular music was a treat, almost like McDonald's or ice cream. There were hits that I knew that weren't Christian, like 'We Are Young' by fun. and Pitbull's 'Give Me Everything', 'Break Your Heart' by Taio Cruz. Can you guess when I was born by the examples I list here? LOL

Anyhow, growing up Christian was unfortunately not always fun. A young transgender girl who, for most of her life didn't even know she was trans until recently until the pieces lined up. Having to grow up with an overbearing mother and a stepfather who, when he learned what fun was, realized he hated every cell of its body, kinda sucks. And it bled into the music taste they had too.

Outside of their wedding and some 80's hits and bachata my mother would put on, I never got to freely listen to secular music until around middle school.

My middle school was cool. They had enough money to give all the students laptops. My own laptop? As a kid? That was amazing! I could look up stuff on my own and play games in class instead of doing my homework! (Which I still do in college.)

Anyhow, that was my introduction to YouTube. I knew what YouTube was as my stepbrother would go on it when he was in school (he was one grade above me). And through him I discovered Trap Nation, and two songs that stand out to me from that channel is BOXINBOX & Lionsize's remixes of Jon Bellion's 'All Time Low' and twenty one pilot's 'Heathens'. That was my first exposure to music that I chose.  Followed by Rae Sremmurd, Marshmello, and XXXTENTACION, three very big influences for me in the sixth grade.

Come eighth grade, I start making a playlist of all my favorite songs. It has not stopped being updated and is almost 400 hours long last I checked. I realized over time that I really enjoyed electronic music, especially dance music. And it hit me that so much of this music was gatekept from me as a kid. I understand not wanting to expose a young kid to vulgar content at such a young age, but it becomes a bit much when they start getting older and want to listen to more than Star99.1 which plays the same songs over and over again.

Anyway, pandemic hits when I'm fresh out of school freshman year transitioning to sophomore. 100 gecs and the hyperpop scene really emerge. Porter Robinson drops arguably the album of the year in 2021, influenced MANY of those artists. It was around this time that I realized I wanted to make music. But the issue is, I missed out on this era of music almost entirely because for reasons that would be too much to get into right now, I was groomed into thinking this kind of music was evil.

But the more I got through high school, the more I ended up rediscovering this era. This bendy, more playful and jokey version of pop and rap that was so cool and new to me was really freaking cool. If I could point out any artists that really stood out to me in that era, it would be Dazegxd, roxas358, ericdoa, kmoe, glaive, underscores, tracey brakes, and Jane Remover.

I didn't discover Jane Remover until my first year of college. But this essay is about her. Specifically a side project known by the name 'leroy'.

https://soundcloud.com/c0ncernn/sets/dariacore

Dariacore dropped in 2021. Jane, who went by the name 'dltzk (Delete Zeke)' at the time, was a hyperpop artist fresh off of her releases in that year which were the EP 'Teen Week' (containing the influential song 'homeswitcher ft. kmoe') and her Jersey Club mixes under the at the time mostly anonymous Twerknation28 collective. But that's besides the point. What is 'Dariacore'?

Jane insisted 'Dariacore' wasn't a genre, but it would be putting a lot of discredit to her name if we didn't consider it one. Getting the name from the 90's MTV adult animated show Daria, the first Dariacore LP was a compilation of 16 singles released in order. Each one was a hyperpop-y and EDM-y mashup of songs, using breakbeat samples, EDM tropes, meme sounds and acapellas from popular and nostalgic music of the 2010's as well as songs from Jane's own contemporaries (one song is quite literally a remix of ericdoa's '2008'). The song titles were somewhat normal and referencing the samples used in them, like 'ricky bobby, 1235, 2on, dessert', or straight up humorous, like 'copyright strike my fucking nuts, virginity rockstar, go white girl go, bluuuueeeee' and others.

These hyperspeed EDM-y mashups TOOK OVER Soundcloud. A bunch of copycatcore projects dropped from artists like marshall4, xaev, elxnce, d1tto, gingus, dashie, ta1lsd0ll, crafter2011, carbine, celsius2004, elwood, coltrane- actually if I kept going I would not stop. There's a LOT.

But there were many of these. It was hyperpop cranked up to 100 with EDM and meme influences and every bedroom producer and their mother wanted to make some for themselves. Each artist had their own fandom attached to it and they would churn out more of these shitposty electronic mashups.

The thing about this was, Jane didn't really like it at first, it seemed. Jane had insisted this wasn't a fucking genre. It was a solo project by her, just with this cool new sound. But then she REALLY leaned into the happier production from others with Dariacore 2: Enter Here, Hell to the Left.

https://soundcloud.com/c0ncernn/sets/dariacore-2-enter-here-hell-to

The song titles are much more humorous than the first project, with '...during pride month?, the dariacore to YTP pipeline, starbucks employee vs. niche twitter personality @c0ncernn, dilf repellent' and others permeating the tracklist. Like I said, the sequel to Dariacore was different from its darker production and it further cemented the force that the genre was. Song titles became inside jokes. The samples used ended up being used by others because of how ICONIC the placements were in leroy's songs. Alongside this ran the Twitter account c0ncernn, which I didn't really get to experience but from what I know and have seen it was really just some funny posts from leroy here and there.

Come November, Jane drops her acclaimed debut album 'Frailty' as dltzk. A slight pivot from her hyperpop sound, but still sounding VERY Jane. She was starting to go a more shoegaze route, but her hyperpop trappings and EDM influences were still there. Some dariacore techniques, and even samples ('FLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR' from Drowning Pool's 'Bodies' is a very popular one) were used, across songs like 'your clothes, movies for guys, search party, buzzcut, daisy' and others. It was even acclaimed by fucking Anthony Fantano, who, knowing that guy, a 7 is great but at least more was deserved.

Alongside this debut album came the charity compilation daria vs. core: it's giving charity! with a leroy song as well as others. Knowing how slightly distanced leroy was from the dariacore community, it seemed a little out of left field. It even had an appearance from Twerknation28, a good treat for fans.

Then c0ncernn, the twitter account, announced that Dariacore 3...At least I think that's what it's called? would be the last leroy album in 2022. And it came with a bang.

https://soundcloud.com/c0ncernn/sets/d-core

Twelve songs that were longer than 2 minutes, and sounding even more danceable than before, with tracks like 'her head is sooo rolling!! love her, night of the living midtempdo edm bro, the joke is on you, i hate when BOYS lie, and damn! we got it bad: you'll never guess what happens next' consisting of the tracklist. House, dubstep, electro, Jersey club, midtempo EDM, ambient and even ROCK music makes its way into the songs. This was dariacore at its peak. It was the height of the scene and everyone mourned that it would be the last album. It was so influential and so amazing and different from many things happening around the electronic and hyperpop scene, why would it end?

I mean, of course it had to end at some point. Hyperpop was becoming a little stale. Many artists in the scene wanted to distance themselves from the label. It wasn't a really popular thing anymore.

Jane had her own personal reasons too. Coming out as trans in the same year, she dropped the leroy & dltzk Memorial Service on the music collective 'GOOP HOUSE', one last farewell to not only Dariacore, but her former moniker and sound as well. She was ready to move on, and that's perfectly valid as an artist. She ended up dropping her second album in 2023, Census Designated, amazing shoegaze rock that melted your ears with how noisy and beautiful and raw it was. Released in October (with a poorer score from Fantano for some reason, booooo), this project was well appreciated and endorsed by artists like Quadeca and Danny Brown, two bigger figures no one would expect to hop on the Jane train.

A little before that though, sometime in July, leroy came back for some reason.

Grave Robbing, an hour long album styled like a DJ set, was released silently on leroy's Soundcloud and on NTS Radio a day later.

https://soundcloud.com/c0ncernn/sets/nonstop

12 tracks that fused into each other with back to back nonstop hard dance energy. These were the longest songs in leroy's catalog, songs as short as 4 minutes and as long as 6 spanning the tracklist. This was the hardest dariacore could ever get, mixing new samples with old ones as Jane finally put the project to rest with one more bombastic goodbye. It came out of nowhere, and it reminded everyone why leroy was such a force of nature. Grave Robbing was stripped of the humor from the other three leroy records, as it was a serious and bonafide electronic dance music album.

It's also one of my most favorite albums of all time. Actually, it's my 2023 album of the year.

Discovering Dariacore was so important to me. Not only do I wanna make my own, but the concept of all these things that I felt I lost out on as a kid, as well as my love for EDM I learned to claim as my own, and the intricate ways in which everything was compiled and sampled, I loved it! But also, the journey that leroy took, as well as Jane as an artist, really inspired me.

In a family where none of the important people will accept me as who I really am, music was really an escape. During the pandemic, I ended up missing the outside and how much I took it for granted. When I was outside by myself, I ended up listening to ANY kind of music I wanted. I was free when I was walking the sidewalks of my neighborhood, soaking up the sun or the moon and blasting my ears out with songs of MY CHOICE. That MEANT something to ME, nothing that most contemporary Christian music could give me in years. I don't hate the genre, but I don't really love it anymore. It's just another genre to me now, and I think that's okay.

It took a lot for that to be 'okay', even. I thought it was a sin to enjoy secular things at one point. My parents became concerned when I wanted to never consume any other secular media, when they were the ones constantly telling me to 'guard my heart'. They didn't want me to guard my heart, they wanted me to build a stone wall. I had to tear it down myself. And the music helped me do that.

Dariacore matters to me because to me, it's a celebration of all those influences coming together into something manic, beautiful, and full of purpose. If music is an artform, Dariacore is avant-garde. It might not appeal to everyone, but it deserves to be recognized as a genre. Even if Jane disowned it. Even if it's called 'hyperflip' now. Even if looking back I might not listen to it as much anymore. But Dariacore changed my life. And it helped me find freedom in sound.

Thanks, leroy.