He's the guy right now: DJ Diplo milks his moment
American - a regular in Hong Kong at Dragon-i and Volar - is under no illusions about the fleeting nature of fame, as he works on albums with Justin Bieber and Madonna
When Diplo travels to Las Vegas for his regular gig at the nightclub XS, he doesn't take a private jet as many of his peers in Vegas' cash-choked club scene do. Instead, the Los Angeles-based DJ and producer usually trudges through security with the plebs at Burbank's Bob Hope Airport, not far from the recording studio where he does much of his work.
"My family growing up was so cheap that I feel dumb blowing money on something like that," he says. Nevertheless, Diplo splurged a few weeks ago, bringing his personal trainer with him on a chartered jet. "That was an extra 30 minutes to get to the airport, and then we sat on the tarmac for an hour," he recalled. "I was like, 'Ten thousand dollars for this? I should've flown Southwest.'"
The problem, one gathers, wasn't that he couldn't afford it. As much a translator as a creator, Diplo has emerged over the past decade as an important (if polarising) presence in both hip-hop and electronic dance music, guiding popular taste with his ahead-of-the-curve sound and enterprises including a record label, Mad Decent, and an endorsement deal with BlackBerry. He has also made regular visits to Asia and Hong Kong, playing DJ sets at Dragon-i and Volar.
Now, at 36, he's having a pop moment, with two song-of-the-summer candidates near the top of Spotify's Global Top 50 chart: Lean On, a slinky synth tune from Major Lazer, Diplo's reggae-inspired group with producers Jillionaire and Walshy Fire; and Where Are Ü Now, a futuristic ballad by Jack Ü, his duo with the EDM star Skrillex, featuring Justin Bieber.
"He's, like, the guy right now," says Gary Richards of Hard Events, which is putting Diplo and Skrillex in front of an estimated 65,000 fans at the Hard Summer festival in Pomona, California, this weekend.
Diplo can feel the heat around him, but he knows it's fleeting. "You only have a certain amount of time as a person making relevant music," he says. "There's a window, and I'm in the middle of it." In other words, it wasn't money he was wasting on that private jet - it was time.