Top 10 Bass DJs: Skrillex Rules by 48 Points While the UK Packs the Field

Bass music has never been one thing — it's a federation of scenes that agree on exactly one principle: the sub matters. Our latest credit-score ranking of the genre family bears that out, stretching from club-facing bass to dubstep, drum & bass and breakbeat, and the story it tells is one of a runaway leader sitting above an absurdly congested chasing pack.

Start at the top, because there's no drama there. Skrillex posts a credit score of 923, drawn from 11,460 votes — the largest tally on this list. The next-best score is Sub Focus at 875, which puts the American 48 points clear of the entire field. The streaming picture backs the verdict: 22,231,503 Spotify monthly listeners and 12,083,723 Instagram followers are numbers nobody else here approaches. Whatever corner of bass you call home, he remains its most visible ambassador.

Then the ranking compresses violently. Ranks three through five — Fatboy Slim (861), ILLENIUM (860) and Chase & Status (859) — sit within two points of each other. That's three different arguments about what bass music is, separated by rounding-error margins: Fatboy Slim's breakbeat lineage, ILLENIUM's melodic dubstep (and a healthy 10,115,951 Spotify monthly listeners plus 8,359 votes), and Chase & Status flying the drum & bass flag. Any of the three could swap places next cycle without surprising anyone.

The back half belongs to dubstep and D&B in roughly equal measure. Zeds Dead land sixth at 849 on 8,081 votes, with Borgore a mere three points behind at 846 — the Israeli dubstep provocateur pulling a strong 8,110 votes. Then comes the ranking's genuine dead heat: Andy C and Shy FX are tied at 842. Vote count breaks the tie — 7,682 for Andy C against 7,313 for Shy FX — a fitting photo finish for two artists who have carried drum & bass for decades. Wilkinson closes the list at 839, just three points off that tie.

Zoom out and two patterns dominate. First, this is a British list: six of the ten — Sub Focus, Fatboy Slim, Chase & Status, Andy C, Shy FX and Wilkinson — represent the United Kingdom, and five of the ten fly the drum & bass banner specifically. Whatever globalisation has done to dance music, the UK's grip on the 170-ish end of the spectrum is intact. Dubstep supplies three entries (ILLENIUM, Zeds Dead, Borgore), spread across the United States, Canada and Israel — a reminder that the genre's second life has been an international one.

Second, the scores themselves tell you how healthy the scene is. Strip out Skrillex and the remaining nine are separated by just 36 points, from 875 down to 839. That's not a hierarchy; it's a scrum. Voters clearly rate this field as a cluster of near-equals, which tracks with a scene where a festival bill can move any of these names into the headline slot depending on the territory.

The takeaway: bass music's ceiling is a one-man show for now, but its floor is remarkably high — and remarkably British.