Just when I think I’m out, the past pulls me back into the mud-encrusted phat pants and rave campsites of yore. A steady reminder that artists enjoying financial success came from humble beginnings.

Picture a wide-eyed and fresh-faced French duo playing to thousands of crusty Midwestern ravers in a big leaky tent. Then picture this happening in a campsite. In Wisconsin. This was best captured in the recent Spin article coinciding with Daft Punk’s new album release.

Love it or hate it, the Daft Punk boys made 1990s ravers lose their minds without trying very hard. And they did it without an overabundance of technology, just really savvy sampling and proven production techniques. These two young producers of dance music fine tuned their sound in front of thousands of ravers from cornfields to campsites to warehouses all over the world. They captured the DIY ethos that ran like a heartbeat through the rave scene back in the 1990s.

Point being, they paid their dues. They weren’t manufactured in a boardroom or lifted up into stardom on Kanye’s Prada coattails first. They didn’t buy clicks on Soundcloud to show up in Beatport rankings. Quite the contrary, they were stars to thousands before anyone even knew who they were. And that’s the ideal situation: prove yourself to have actual talent and the rest will follow naturally. You can’t fake the funk.