Meet smutstep, the unlikely mashup of dirty talk, growling and dubstep that's turning one musician into a viral sensation — and leaving the internet deeply divided. The man behind it is DARQ DAGR, a dubstep musician and voice artist whose real name is James. The genre he accidentally invented is called smutstep.
He told 404 Media it is not meant to be taken seriously. It started with BookTok, the book-loving corner of TikTok where romantasy series like The Fourth Wing and A Court of Thorns and Roses have built huge readerships. James told 404 Media his wife is a BookTok devotee, which is how he found the community. He had already spent years as a professional vocalist, including eight years in a touring country band, and had just fallen hard for dubstep. His first viral video came from a hunch that "a lot of these BookTok boys are getting the growl wrong." He demonstrated the growl from his metal days, and it blew up.
He says he wasn't the first to growl on BookTok. He credits another creator, Michael Ayok, with doing it long before him. His contribution was putting the growl on a dubstep beat.
"Most of my content is based off of people making requests in the comments," he said. Smutstep, he added, is "like the KISS makeup. It's a gimmick. Everybody needs something that makes them stand out."
KPBS reported that romantasy book sales rose 33% last year and that romantasy novel sales topped $600 million in 2024. Netta Baker, an advanced instructor in the English department at Virginia Tech who teaches popular romance, told KPBS that skepticism of romance is old news, dating back to 18th-century worries about what novels would do to young women.
Smutstep draws its own skeptics. James said the hate is heaviest on Instagram, where he has limited comments to people who follow him, and he acknowledged it takes a toll. "People react very strongly to what I do," he said. "I think that's effective art." He draws a line, though: Marilyn Manson in the 1990s made art meant to be taken seriously, and smutstep is not.
He also reads the books and doesn't want to do this "just for the views." As for what the two scenes share, he said: "It's just letting your freak flag fly in a way. It's accepting and embracing what you're into within a safe and healthy space."
His stated goal is escapism. "I'm just so disillusioned with reality and I constantly want more escapism for myself, and want to give others more escapism as well," he said. Next up, he told 404 Media, is a Scream mask growl for spooky season, assuming the mask arrives in time.