Assuming you're not yankin me chain:
I think DFW was onto something with his pov on irony and post modernism. The way it creates a jaded, vacuous reality. I'm not sure why but I never really got swept up by all that. Maybe because I'm stunted, still very much a kid at heart, even though I grew up in its most rampant era. No idea... And I don't think I'm better either, don't get me wrong. I can be entertained by it, even participate. But ultimately it feels like a dead end. It leads us to a world of meaninglessness, in art, conversation, human connection. A devil's trick. The wolf licking the hunter's blood covered blade.
My path from darkboi to lovejoy started as angsty teen, harder, darker breaks based club music, to gilles and then jeff to osunlade, eventually landing on theo who finally snapped me into being the disco fiend I am today. Those 4 made the biggest impact, but there were countless others.
The running theme through all of those guys is basically black soul music. Music born of pain and alchemised into medicine. That's how I see it. We all know pain, we can all respond to this music on that level. It's just whether you want to or not. Plenty of people are happy to have it as pure entertainment. That's fine. There's a fun side to much of it. But for me it's more of a guide, a story, allegory. A place to feel connected to that undisputable, cosmic truth. The true beauty of life. Warts and all. Theres so much wisdom to learn from this music. Question is, are you open to receive it? Some people don't feel the need, the desire. I don't know how to flip the switch if you're already way on the other side of the spectrum. For me it was innate from pretty much birth. I grew up listening to black music or if not, music that was heavily derived from black music. Dancing from a young age. Music was always solace. Life source, light source.
I find that a lot of white Europeans tend to intellectualise, categorise and dissect this music. For me this is leading you towards that dead end where all the life gets sucked out of it. It gentrifies, it tidies it up and puts picket fences around the edges. Defangs it. Makes it more palatable. And why? Because they don't have the same type of creativity inside of them so their only way to interface with it, the clearly richer life force, is to try to apply logic & science. Academize it. Build institutions, write books, codify it. Make themselves the authority. Same as the majority of history. Find something organic, beautiful, steal it and make it their own. Why is Eric Clapton the most famous blues guitarist to so many people? Why are there rarely any non white drummers in the yearly top drummer lists? Music got whitewashed. No credit paid. And yet, with all that clear as day and totally fair reason to hate, you still had people like sly stone making multicultured bands, not even making a fuss about it and saying let's all get together and have some fun. That guy had quite the lake of love to dive into. Deep stuff.
Rambling now, but hopefully you can put it all together. Being dark, being hard is easy. It feels cool. Being light, being love takes work. But there are plenty of sages who made the music that tells you all about it. I never had anyone to teach me, so I listened and learned. I was fortunate enough to put some of what I learned into practise. But I know there's still a long way to go. I'm just grateful to know that I'll always have sly's music, John's music, curtis' music ad infinitum to help me along the way. All that can be said has already been said many times over. You just have to want to learn.
P. S. This all sounds very objective. Know that there's always room to wiggle. Like for eg, I know there's black academics and soulful white people. Try not to get sidetracked with that.