TSS Presents Smoking Sessions With Diplo

Graphics By P.

Some know of Diplo through his DJing, either solo or as a one half of the infamous Hollertronix, rocking the freshest parties and the biggest festivals worldwide. Others know of him through his production, from his down-tempo instrumental masterpiece Florida, or his remix works for groups ranging from The Clipse to Black Lips. Perhaps some may know him through his affiliation with M.I.A., as both DJ (Piracy Funds Terrorism) or producer (“Paper Planes”). Maybe others know him as the head of his own Mad Decent label. And if none of those strike a chord, you can now consider yourself educated.

The Florida born disciple of bass music has accomplished more than most do in a lifetime in the five years since the release of his debut EP, Epistemology Suite. After working his way through the social sector, he found a way to combine his passion for music with his innate nature to give back to people and hasn’t slowed down since. As a DJ, he has been an ambassador of the world’s grimiest and gulliest music, bridging genres and styles together from every corner of the world. His accomplishments through music are further accentuated with his latest initiative, Heaps Decent, which aims to provide indigenous and underprivileged kids with opportunities through music by building studios and offering first hand inspiration. His tireless efforts have parlayed into something so big that we may only be able to fully appreciate it further down the line.

TSS: What was the allure of hip-hop to you?

Diplo: My allure with hip-hop was the idea making something out of nothing. It’s a genre that is made up of every genre. It’s the real post-modern music.

TSS: How influential was the stuff coming out of Miami for you, opposed to the stuff from New York or other areas?

Diplo: Well, the first 12″s I bought were like Pretty Tony “Freaks Of The Mix”, MC Shy D and records like that were the ones I first bought as a DJ. But I grew up on hip-hop just like everyone else. Like my first real hip-hop records were Digable Planets “Rebirth of Slick,” stuff like that.

TSS: Was all the music from Miami something you just heard or were you witnessing all of the culture around it?

Diplo: In Florida the big thing was park jams, like we had big park parties with mostly dancehall and bass music. I was young, like 13-14, and there was a park around the corner and it just happened every Saturday and Sunday. It was on the radio all the time, at the house parties, all the cars were playing it. It was just everywhere. That is the first stuff that really affected me though.

TSS: When did you get your hands on some turntables and start to get into the music on that level?

Diplo: I really just wanted to be a musician. I wanted to make music, and I decided to buy turntables because I thought too many people played guitars and shit (laughs). I thought the turntable was like the future of music, like some crazy scientific shit so I decided to be a DJ. From there I started to use samplers, like my first sampler was a Gemini mixer with this three second loop.

TSS: And there isn’t much you can do with those three seconds…

Diplo: Yeah really (laughs). I would just scratch over a rock loop for hours. Dum-duma-dum-duma, dum-duma-dum-duma, and I’d add my chikk-chikka-chik. That was my first beat.

TSS: It sounds like from the start you were a pretty forward thinker as far as DJ’ing goes, in terms of how you viewed the turntable as an instrument.

Diplo: Yeah, I guess so. I liked the idea that you could do what ever you wanted. I got better as I got older, like I did some really bad gigs. When I was like sixteen or seventeen, my parents and I moved to Daytona Beach and I was trying to get jobs as a DJ. That’s where I got my first gigs and they were bad.

TSS: What did you want to accomplish as a DJ? Were you just out to rock parties and stuff like that?

Diplo: Really, it was just to make money so I could quit my job. The parties came later and I got good eventually but I was just trying to be a working DJ. It wasn’t always easy…I was just always…When I moved to Philly is when I found my identity, I was like twenty-two, and it was like I found something I felt I was good at. And around that time I would develop my own style.

TSS: When and why did you move to Philly?

Diplo: I was like twenty and that was for school. But it was when I was twenty-two that we first started to have some success with Hollertronix.

TSS: When you moved to Philly was there something culturally in the city that you think facilitated your development? Something that spawned that Hollertronix vibe?

Diplo: Yeah, I think that what we did in Philly was pretty special because nobody was really…I mean we came up here at the right time when southern hip-hop was starting to be taken seriously. I remember when “Shut Up” by Trick Daddy came out I was like ‘yo, this is the real shit; this is hip-hop.’ It was the weirdest shit that was happening in music. That shit blew my mind and I was like this needs to happen up here in the North. We started playing songs like that and then Timbaland had those first couple hits like “Is That Your Bitch,” those kind of joints. Just real weird, 139 BPM kinda beats and then mix it up with club or 80′s music, just whatever fit. We were just into weird shit. And then all the way into the Bailie Funk stuff I was bringing from Brazil, I think that we just developed a party that was unique for Philly.

TSS: So you were bringing in the Bailie Funk stuff all the way back then?

Diplo: I think it was like 2004 when I did my first mixtape Favela On Blast, but I was I listening to it like six months before. I had just got it though; it wasn’t like I was sitting on it. I had just found it and was like ‘yo, this is crazy! I gotta play this!’

TSS: Yeah, that seems to be the common response by people when they hear Bailie Funk, like ‘what is this?!?! This is dope!’

Diplo: Yeah, you know, and it just fit for me. It sounded like Bass music. I recognized all the sounds and the samples, and instead of a rapper going “pop that pussy, pop that pussy” it’s a little kid going “rararwarawrarawrawrawrarwr” (laughs). They’d add a rock guitar sample in there…It was just crazy to me. I thought it was the perfect music. They’d sample Yaz in there and just a bunch of loops that I wanted to hear, the kind of stuff we were playing at Hollertronix anyway.

TSS: I’ve read interviews where you have briefly discussed this, but I was in Brazil about a year back and when I’d ask people about Bailie Funk, they’d all pretty much look at me in disgust and tell me that I don’t want to hear that music. It was obvious that the music isn’t embraced by the country on a whole, and being as that you’ve been there so many times, can you talk about that relationship between the music and the country as a whole?

Diplo: Well, it’s Black music and it’s a racist country. It’s poor Black music. That’s how people view it outside of Rio. Rio is different though. It’s 12 million people strong and the whole city is into funk. It’s like Miami in that sense. In Rio, everyone likes the music, but outside it’s just the poor music from the kids from Rio. It’s a racist country, that’s it. If you talk to someone they’ll say stuff like that is ghetto music, that it’s ‘shit music. We have Jorge Ben’ and all this stuff. When they say something like that you can tell they got some money, like you know their status.

TSS: Yeah, it was crazy. I wasn’t really aware of the magnitude of things when I got there.

Diplo: Language is crazy, you know it sounds like bass music stuff when you translate it. It’s like “pop that pussy, shake that ass, let me fuck” stuff Luke would sing about. Some of it is a little more clever, but there is a hell of a lot more of it than we have bass music. There are like 12 million people making that music, so it’s a big industry. I think that…It’s just a racist country. It’s a country that never had a civil rights movement. It went from slavery, to no slavery, but they never had people going like ‘yo, I’m black but I want to have the same rights as a white person.’ We had that in the sixities, and they’ve never had anything like that.

TSS: From what it seemed to me though was that those views were very much ingrained in society, like things weren’t changing anytime soon.

Diplo: I mean, there are inclusions like there’s not…I mean, half the country identifies themselves as black. It’s such a mixed up country, you don’t have black people and white people like you do in America. You have so many shades of mixed race people all over the place. The country doesn’t know where people fit in. There are poor white people, so racism and poverty have no color, but the majority of the country is still living off a racist, kinda like slave state mentality. You can see what would could have happened if they had a revolution. And you know they tried; they had like three actually if you look at the history. There is a movie about this priest that had this colony of free slaves that had their own country in the northeast, trying to start their own shit, but they were massacred by the government. I can’t remember the name right now, let me get back to you with that.

TSS: No stress. To switch gears a little bit, and this will be a very broad question but did you ever think that you would be at the level you’re at, doing what you’re doing now? Did you plan to travel the world as a DJ and be this ambassador of sorts of music?

Diplo: I always knew that I’d…At like twenty-two, after working at spots like the Zoo, Pizza Hut, Subway and then to some real jobs, like I was a teacher for second, and a social worker, but I realized like ‘yo, I gotta do something else cause this shit is wack’ (laughs). I felt like no matter what I did, even if I wasn’t successful in music, I thought I was witty enough to get by. I ended up being successful by doing music, so I got lucky. I just got in where I got in, that’s all. I didn’t expect to have this kind of success, no way. But, I thought I’d at least get by. I wasn’t afraid of not being successful.

TSS: You may have already said it, but is there a character trait that you attribute to your success?

Diplo: Maybe just not being afraid. Not being afraid to take chances, cause I’ve failed at shit too. Not being a phony, not faking it.

TSS: At the root of it all, you’re a DJ. I read a quote of yours that I thought was kinda ill, you said, ‘right now is good time to be a DJ.’ I want you to elaborate more on that, as I feel we’re watching this new movement with DJ’ing right now.

Diplo: I think a lot of times DJ’s…right now we’re at a point in the music industry where all the power is gone. I was just listening to the new Missy single and it sounds like something we would have made a year ago. I like it because she makes everything sound better, but I just realized our stars aren’t our trendsetters anymore. It’s the poor people, the ones who make shit like fuck it; it’s the people who got nothing who are making the shit that’s hot.

All you need is a laptop now, you know. It’s like the playing field is even now for everybody. You have the internet to promote yourself, you don’t need money. If you got a wi-fi signal, you can fucking do whatever. Right now people are just making money on shows, doing things to promote their events because no one is spending money on CD’s. I can either go buy a CD for $15 or go to a club buy a few drinks, maybe get laid, and have a great night and then bootleg the CD tomorrow. But for DJ’s, because of the internet and the way things are changing, audiences are way more intelligent than they used to be.

TSS: What about the circle of DJ’s that you run with? Do you feel that you guys are pioneering a new movement?

Diplo: I don’t know. There are a couple of us who create and there are a lot of people who just take advantage of what’s going on. Aye yo, the movie you need to see is called “Quilombo.” Yeah, “Quilombo” is the name…But yeah, it’s a good time for DJ’s. We’re all doing our thing right now. If you’re just making mixes and are a superstar for just being a DJ that’s one thing. But if you’re actually out there changing shit, I give a lot more respect to DJ’s like that. Like Flosstradamus, those dudes are doing their thing. But a lot of dudes just bite shit.

TSS: How much time do you get to actually practice or just sit down and focus just on the the DJ aspect of your life?

Diplo: I don’t get practice at all, and I’ve been fucking up a lot lately cause I’m trying to do different shit…You know I just want to hear something I haven’t heard before, that’s the whole idea. That’s why I got into it. I want to bring new shit to the table. That’s why Afrika Bambaataa was a superstar. He was playing Kraftwerk at all black clubs in the Bronx. He wasn’t playing the fucking same songs the radio was playing or the label dick heads gave him. He was playing what he wanted and changed this whole shit with it.

TSS: I want to talk about your role as a producer for a minute now. You have a creative approach to DJ’ing. Is it the same for production? Is there a method to the madness?

Diplo: I’m always trying to learn different programs so it’s not always the same. But I’ll find a loop and if I can listen to it for like ten minutes I know it’s right and I can get down with it and start working on a song. But I try to have like two ideas and then think about what is the stupidest thing about these two ideas and then I’ll put em together (laughs).

TSS: That goes with another quote of yours that I read where you said, ‘hip-hop is beautiful mess, and [I'm] just trying to continue that.’

Diplo: Yeah, I’m trying to. It’s a ‘no rules’ music. There is no theory, if it’s hot and people get behind you, that’s what it is. It’s not like how mathematical can it get, or how shiny it is. It only matters how hot it is. Like DJ Blaqstarr, the stuff he does is dirty and mix-wise it sounds fucking terrible. Yet we still drop it in clubs and people are into it. It’s just the raw attitude of what hip-hop is about.

TSS: Let’s talk about you label, Mad Decent, for a second. What was your vision for the label when you started out?

Diplo: I don’t know, the whole thing came out of Hollertronix, and trying to do something tangible because we were making bootlegs, so just to make something we could release and put a legacy behind. We just try to do things… it’s just crazy shit. It’s a hip-hop label to me even though we got house music and Brazilian world or whatever you want to call it. But it’s all with a hip-hop aesthetic.

TSS: Can you run through the roster, because as you said it’s a real diverse catalog.

Diplo: Yeah, we got DJ Blaqstarr, and then Rye Rye. They’re both from Baltimore. We got a reggae crew called South Rakkas Crew and they’re between Jamaica and Canada and Florida. Bonde Do Role, who are from Brazil, they’ve got that funk sound. We got Boy 8-Bit, which is like cool electro-house stuff, and then The Crookers, which is these Italian dudes doing hardcore type stuff. I’m on the label of course. We’re doing mixtapes too, some stuff with Paper Route from Alabama, and some stuff with Santo Gold, a girl from Philly.

TSS: And on top of all that you also launched Heaps Decent, can you explain what that is all about and where the idea came from?

Diplo: I’m just a spokesperson, so I raise money from Apple, Serato, and other companies and then organized some people to help me set the bases. I bring in the equipment and sponsors, and we do a workshop. I did one at a jail in Wagawaga, and another in the northern area. We’re just trying to work with kids that didn’t have anything, just trying to do some tracks with them. You can get the one from Wagawaga on iTunes, it’s called “Smash A Kangaroo.” It’s like a funny rap joint. But yeah, I mean I just wanted to give back to the people. Like I said, I was a school teacher first, that’s how I got into the underground stuff in Baltimore and Philly. But I was just trying to help kids out and I wanted to get back to them so that there will be a scene there and inspire kids after I’m gone, and hopefully it keeps developing. We just want to make more homegrown, organic things happen with kids.

TSS: I know it started in Australia. Have you been able to start up a second?

Diplo: Yeah, we’re trying to do the same thing in Brazil, but we’re just organizing it right now with Red Bull.

TSS: You’ve traveled the world as a DJ so I feel like you have a pretty good understanding of the influence of hip-hop throughout the world. I think people are aware of the influence, but don’t really understand just how big it actually is. Is there a way to articulate how deep that influence runs?

Diplo: Well, just the nature of the game. Kids are just able to do whatever they want with hip-hop now. It eliminates having any kind of music theory, any band; it makes it possible for anyone to do anything. It’s like a couple years ago people are like people, ‘I was in Cuba and people are rapping in Spanish, it’s crazy!’ But I’m like Brazil…they have a whole industry based around a subculture of hip-hop. In Angola, you have kids that are influenced by soca, trance, and hip-hop. It’s like the most progressive shit I’ve heard is in the poorest countries.

TSS: Do you feel that US vision of hip-hop is a very ethnocentric vision in the sense that we think it’s just ours?

Diplo: Yeah, definitely. I think that’s why New York sucks now, because they thought like ‘yo, we’re in charge.’ Ain’t nothing happening in New York. They fell the fuck off when they thought they were the big deal. You’re not from New York are you?

TSS: (laughs) Nah, born and raised in Cali.

Diplo: I’m sayin, in Philly we do whatever the fuck we want. We don’t give a fuck about New York hip-hop. When you play Freeway or Peedi Crack in the club, people will freak out. You play 50 Cent, they’re like whatever. I don’t know; they fell off with the ego trippin. What’s cool about the whole internet culture is that kids are able to have access to all kinds of shit, and just hook shit up and find sounds that you wouldn’t find on your side of the world. It also helps develop kids in their own scene because they don’t give a fuck about major radio; they’re thinking locally. I think a lot of kids are empowered to do that, and that to me is really cool.

TSS: Do you think the different sounds that spawned from hip-hop will come back and in turn influence the hip-hop in the states?

Diplo: Yeah, I think it’s happening now. Look at M.I.A., she did a Bailie Funk song. Will.i.Am sampled a Bailie Funk song. Even a Reggae dude doing reggaeton, it’s kinda backwards you know. It’s a Puerto Rican thing which is influenced from reggae, and then it comes back and you have Sean Paul on a reggaeton remix, and believe it or not it’s mash up. I mean shit you had Tim McGraw had Nelly on one of his songs.

TSS: But what are the chances Tim McGraw will do a Bailie Funk song?

Diplo: Yeah, really. Maybe I’ll do one with him.

TSS: To wrap things up, I don’t know how you find the time in the day to do everything you do? Are you ever just tired and want to slow down?

Diplo: Hell yeah, I’m tired everyday that’s why I gotta go to the bar. But yeah, I’m busy as fuck. Doing this shit in Brazil is killing me. Hopefully we can work it out. But I’m just a small level guy. There are people that really do shit. I just do stuff that I love and it’s cool to help make things happen through music.

TSS: So that’s what keeps you inspired and motivated?

Diplo: Yeah, definitely. At the end of the day, I’m happy. I’m working my ass off, but I’m working with music and with kids. How fun is that? My job is to go work and party with kids and DJ. I’m very lucky.

TSS: Anything else you wanted to add?

Diplo: Nah, just that I gotta get outta here and get a drink (laughs).

For more info check www.maddecent.com, www.heapsdecent.com, and be sure to subscribe to his Mad Decent podcast on iTunes.