Diplo ready for a new approach
DJ is spending more of his time pursuing idiosyncratic projects that emphasise his artistic obsessions
It’s not that Diplo doesn’t like Kanye West and Lil Pump’s ultra-lewd hip hop hit in which the two rappers enthusiastically describe a woman. “Look, it’s a fun song,” the popular DJ and producer said of the thumping I Love
It, which has racked up hundreds of millions of plays on YouTube. “I can see why people want to hear it.”
But in Las Vegas, where Diplo holds down a regular nightclub gig, he just can’t be the guy to give it to them.
“A bunch of frat boys singing about how you’re a [expletive] it’s kind of cringe-y,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m too old to play songs like that.”
Not so long ago it was hard to imagine Diplo cringing at anything.
A fixture at pop and dance music festivals around the world (often with his group Major Lazer), the musician born Wesley Pentz has been viewed by many as the quintessential EDM bro.
He’s posted videos of women twerking to his beat-driven songs. He’s trash-talked peers online. And he’s responded blithely to charges that his music, which borrows from the far-flung locales he’s always visiting, represents an act of cultural appropriation.
Yet that’s not quite the guy who opened the door at his Southern California home on a recent afternoon. It’s an airy, tastefully decorated place.
At 39, he said he’s simply aged out of some aspects of the wild lifestyle he began cultivating a decade ago, when Paper
Planes — his thrillingly rowdy collaboration with MIA — crashed the upper reaches of Billboard’s Hot 100 and opened the door to a world of glitzy parties and private jets.
But he also sees changes in music that call for a different approach.
The last time I spoke with him, in 2015, he’d scored a pair of monster hits in Major Lazer’s Lean On and Where Are U Now, which he and Skrillex made with Justin Bieber. After years of work, Diplo looked set to join the ranks of the A-list producers creating tracks for pop’s biggest stars. Since then, though, the EDM boom that helped elevate Diplo has started to hollow out.
“The new stars took the place of the old stars,” Diplo said. “Three years ago, you knew you could count on Taylor [Swift] and Katy [Perry]; you knew you could count on Max Martin and Dr Luke,” he added, referring to two producers with whom Swift and Perry are closely identified.
“Now if Taylor puts a record out, it’s actually like rolling the dice: Is it gonna be big or not?”
Diplo’s response hasn’t exactly been to check out of the pop scene. Just recently he released a new single with Ellie Goulding and Swae Lee, two figures familiar to any follower of the Top 40.
Nor has his residency at XS in Las Vegas suddenly turned into some kind of scholarly retreat. But in deciding not to “chase No 1’s,” as he puts it, Diplo does seem to be spending more of his time pursuing idiosyncratic projects that emphasise his artistic obsessions over his commercial ambition.
One is Silk City, his duo with fellow DJ and producer Mark Ronson, which last month put out Electricity, a pitch-perfect homage to 1990s-era house music featuring vocals from Dua Lipa.
Another is LSD, a deeply quirky psychedelic-pop outfit he shares with Sia and the English singer and producer Labrinth. For Thunderclouds, the group’s latest single, Diplo said he was trying to copy Sturgill Simpson, of all things.
Major Lazer, the group in which Diplo is joined by DJs Jillionaire and Walshy Fire, recently returned from a long trip to Africa, where Diplo said he was gratified to play shows as improvised as his festival sets are predictable.
“We put out a couple of Major Lazer records this year,” he said.
“Nobody heard them in the States, but when we went there and I saw how well they worked, I was like, ‘Damn, I’m glad I made these songs. They belong somewhere.’”