<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"FacebookPinterest\n\n\"People don't know exactly what I do, they just know I'm 'cool.' \" That's Diplo, a.k.a. Wes Pentz, the producer-DJ-remir, on his peculiar version of fame. Primarily, he's creating music. Though being cool is probably just as important. And this year\u2014after nearly a decade of mining (some have said exploiting) far-off dance music like Brazil's baile funk, London's dubstep, and New Orleans's bounce\u2014he's finally having a pop moment. The laconic 32-year-old Floridian is experiencing a rare level of exposure for someone who doesn't sing, rap, or dance, thanks to brain-bending bangers for Chris Brown, a reunited No Doubt, and Beyonc\u00E9, not to mention the torso-throttling success of Major Lazer, his cyborg dancehall group. \"My whole crew has been the catalyst of a lot of things, but we don't capitalize on that stuff,\" Diplo says. \"We're happy to be on the underground, making influential records.\" Whether that's modesty or a persecution complex at work, he is capitalizing. Though he's a self-saboteur, too. Like this spring, when he missed a session with Beyonc\u00E9 thanks to a bar fight that landed him in jail. \"I had to go to anger-management courses in Compton with teenage gangsters that beat their cousins,\" he says. \"That was pretty grounding.\" Still, that persecution thing doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon. \"I never planned to be the face of the ghetto,\" he says. \"I'm a fucking white dude from Florida. But as long as people pay attention, like, Fuck this guy, at least they know who I am now.\" While he was traveling to the Kanrocksas Music Festival (seriously) to perform on the same bill as Eminem, we talked with Diplo about his insane touring schedule, the night he was arrested and blew off a Beyonc\u00E9 recording session, and why the critics have got him all wrong.\n\n\n\nGQ: How many days a year are you booked for shows?\n\n Diplo: Probably like 300. Maybe more.\n\nGQ: Do you feel like you're going to burn out?\n\n Diplo: Nah. This week, I'm having a hard time. I'm having a hard time fuckin' coughin' a lot. I've had like one good night of sleep. I've been fighting a cold for like a month. But, uh, I'll get over it soon. I have a day off tomorrow.\n\nGQ: When someone asks you what you do, what do you tell them?\n\n Diplo: I'd say I'm just a creative person, I like to make stuff. Music, art, film, but the best way to reach people no matter what is doing shows, where there are a thousand kids in a different city every night. I'm a distributor of different things, whether it's the stuff we do on our label or stuff I produce. I'm a cultural distributor, I guess.\n\nGQ: How do you find the time to make music? \n\n Diplo: Today I was trying to sleep, it was a tiny jet that took us from San Francisco to Kansas, but I usually work on the planes. I get rough ideas. With a good Bloody Mary I can watch whatever Miley Cyrus movie is on the plane, work a little, and get inspired that way. I'm home a lot. I spend most time rushing out ideas, like when you put an idea together, it's the tip of the iceberg, the rest of the iceberg is mixing it and delivering it, you know? There are so many iceberg tips, for every ten thousand tips, I have a hundred icebergs. Big, giant icebergs, you know? You gotta weed out what works, what goes which way, and just kinda wrap it up.\n\nGQ: Will you pass them onto somebody?\n\n Diplo: Recently, I've been doing more and more of that, with this guy Derek who programs my computer for me, fixing stuff for me, being there for like five years, he's my right-hand man and I work with him in the studio doing chord progressions. I do a lot of collaborations and productions, whether it's Switch or Steve Aoki or No ID or Will Smith or No Doubt\u2014I always like to collaborate and be a quality control person for the people 'cause I have my own taste in music and bring that to other peoples' brands and help them learn a little bit. I do that a lot these days.\n\nGQ: Is it hard to not be too selfish in that situation? And has it been hard to manage some of those bigger personalities?\n\n Diplo: I don't say no to anybody, really, I'm pretty eclectic. If you're gonna look for me, you gotta know what you're getting into. I'm not a commercial machine, I do a certain type of thing. I usually want to collaborate. No Doubt, I just got lucky, I wanted to do something for them, I'm not telling them what to do, their record speaks for itself, we're just trying to make it the best record. Sometimes, like with Beyonc\u00E9, I'm not there to give her a lot of direction or coaching, like, This is what's hot right now or whatever. Sometimes I'm star struck. Working with someone like Sia, a songwriter like her, I let her do whatever she wants. She's weird enough. She has her own thing, and I try to take that and make it something I can use after we write a song. You gotta feel it out, man, you gotta feel how much you can push and pull, you know?\n\nGQ: Are you surprised when folks like Beyonc\u00E9 or No Doubt reach out to you?\n\n Diplo: I was surprised with No Doubt, and Gwen Stefani knew a lot about my personal life because she had M.I.A. on tour with them four, five years ago, and they used to talk about their relationships and stuff. That was definitely pretty weird, that someone like her, knew anything about me. Most of the time people don't know who I am or what I do or what Major Lazer is. It's just a bunch of names or idioms for a lot of people because they're so caught up in their own things. There are so many names and everything nowadays with culture and the Internet, it's hard to figure out who's responsible or the history of things. People don't know exactly what I do, they just know I'm \"cool.\" I did stuff with Shakira and she just learned about the XX and the Pixies for the first time in her career\u2014it's weird to me that people don't know those kind of records. Even with Beyonc\u00E9, she's an artist, but she doesn't know a lot of stuff, she knows R&amp;amp;B and pop, but they don't stray from it. They're at the top of the tier within their genre so they don't need to know a lot of stuff. They have cool friends. Major Lazer was just everywhere last year, but not on the radio. Every club played our records. We were the fuckin' retarded stepson, never got on the radio, me and Switch and my whole crew have been the catalyst of a lot of things, but we don't get part of it. We're always inspirational but we don't capitalize on that stuff. We're happy to be on the underground and make influential records. We're breaking through now with some of our influential stuff and writing records that reach more people. We've always been the black sheep, making things that inspire people, to write more records and be out in the open.\n\nGQ: Was the Beyonc\u00E9 opportunity an awakening?\n\n Diplo: I still haven't really slept since that whole thing started. That week was so crazy. I was working with Roc Nation and they wanted to produce some other stuff\u2014I was there, I did a show, got arrested, had to go to jail, after jail had to fly to Vegas. Every weekend is just getting weirder and weirder. I feel like I'm a snowball, I don't know what is going to happen. I'm not catching up to what is going on in my life. I got in a bar fight and the guy pressed charges. Nobody in Beyonc\u00E9's camp knew about it, but I thought it was embarrassing. I had to go to court a bunch of times and had to go to anger management courses. It's the one part of my day or week that's all fucked up\u2014going to some anger management class in Compton every Tuesday with teenage gangsters that beat their cousins and listen to them talk about their lives. It's pretty grounding.\n\nGQ: Do you fit in at your anger management classes?\n\n Diplo: Definitely not. The first thing I said in my anger management class was, \"I know everybody's gonna say this, but I definitely don't belong here.\" The lady was like, \"Yeah, whatever. Shut up and read this book.\" It really is a bunch of teen gang members that beat their moms and stuff. It's depressing. I'm always grounded. I smoked DMT last month and that grounds you really quickly. That's ego. It's all bad things. It's like, every ounce of paranoia you get from smoking weed magnified by a million. You also get like a tripping-out, crazy, intense experience. It's mind-blowing. That's my advice for all celebrities. Go to some anger management classes, smoke DMT once every two or three months, and you'll be good.\n\nGQ: What led you to smoking DMT?\n\n Diplo: I'm not into those kind of drugs, no hard drugs, but that's something that's inspiring, to do other things. It's a catalyst for a lot of ideas. I don't even know how the ideas come anymore; we had Bruno Mars in the studio and were going to make a Bruno Mars record but he ended up rapping on a totally different record that made no sense, and it ended up being a really good record. Nothing ever comes out like how you expect. It's not pop stuff. It was like a joke accident. For [The Major Lazer song] \"Hold the Line,\" it was like, how did it end up like this? We did a record with Vampire Weekend. Everything we do is an accident. Everything that we have, that happens, just happens in a certain way that's inspiring to us. We don't dismiss anything. We take advantage of anything strange that happens. All the underground guys...it's how we developed. We're not the best songwriters, we're not good singers, we're not the best looking, we just see the little cracks that need to get filled.\n\nGQ: You're probably one of the most famous people in the industry that doesn't sing or rap.\n\n Diplo: A lot of producers get famous because they decide to be superstars for their own reasons, but I'm inspired by Timbaland and Pharrell and Swizz Beatz 'cause they're doing things that are so different. I like how they're introducing ideas I never would have thought of. The same way I love Radiohead. We're in a different world where we aren't selling as many records as we used to, but everything I do has gotta be a part of the brand, a part of the Internet presence, the art side of things, you work really hard being just everywhere. The new tool is doing everything. Putting out everything you can. What Lil B does, he puts out thousands of songs. It's not about the quality, but it got him famous because you can't get away from him. They were so obsessed with his honesty and his outright craziness, you know? It's not even about quality. You just gotta do everything you can.\n\nGQ: At this point, what's your dream collaboration?\n\n Diplo: That's a question, no matter what interview it is, I'm always asked. I don't understand the fascination with that question. I always go out and stalk people like I did with Lykke Li, Vampire Weekend, I Twitter 'em and do it all the time for inspiration, for an idea, I never take no for an answer. Radiohead was really great, we just did stuff with them, and did a mix for [Thom Yorke's] album, that was really cool and happened to come from his side. I used to say Cat Power is one girl I stalked for a bit and hung out with her\u2014she's hard to pin down. I love her voice and her songwriting. I could find something about any artist that I can take advantage of. I wish I played guitar so I could start a band with great musicians. But I don't give a shit about any of that. One thing I learned with M.I.A., we were on tour with her and she was opening for this rapper and said, \"Nobody likes me around here, he's good and skilled, but I'm 90% attitude and 10% the music.\" She had the attitude without having the musical ability, and that's half of what you have nowadays! You don't need a lot of music anymore. I like to fuck with people's brands and attitudes because music quality has decreased and as far as songwriting and things, other than Bon Iver, it's very packaged. It's very tight with the way you make music. It's like G.I. Joe figures and X-Men; they have their own cultural personalities. It's ideas and people and characters and stuff.\n\nGQ: Did you feel like you learned some of that attitude from M.I.A.?\n\n Diplo: We learned it together. It was like, Fuck it, let's do it, it's cool. We had an understanding of the pop culture, the media culture, we had a strategic plan. We were just savvy. You have the savvy and take advantage of it. We saw this lane that was open. I feel like I look for the open lane and take it. Don't sit in traffic!\n\nGQ: Is it strange to be doing stuff like the BlackBerry ad?\n\n Diplo: No, it looks really cool. I was using a BlackBerry a lot and wanted a free phone. They spent $10 million on advertising, putting it in the World Series and shit. I just wanted a phone to use for free 'cause my bills are so high. They haven't shut it off yet. Everyone thinks I'm rich 'cause of that! That's not it at all! I don't have any leverage on those things. I'm lucky to even be in that. I didn't understand the gravity of it, I thought it was more of a creative thing with a bunch of people, but we ended up being the only ones, it was much different than what I thought.\n\nGQ: Why were you the only person in the ad?\n\n Diplo: Following Major Lazer, which was really exciting, the other people were like pawn shop owners selling stuff on the Internet. It was normal people stuff. But what we were doing was more visually cool for people to look at. It was Hollywood.\n\nGQ: Can you tell me about the next Major Lazer record?\n\n Diplo: Finishing that is important. I'm still producing other records, collaborating with other artists and songwriting. I'm working on a Diplo record and some film records. Major Lazer is the most successful record we have. Not in terms of sales, but it's very tight and it didn't make sense when it started, but I want to follow it through and see how great it can be. But I want to open the lanes for more ideas. The more I tour, the more I take advantage of those outlets so people notice me. So one day when I have a film idea and pitch it to Paramount, they'll take me seriously. I'm staking my claim as much as I can right now to be taken seriously as a creative person. I just want to go as far as I can as a creative person.\n\nGQ: You haven't made a Diplo record in a while.\n\n Diplo: I want to do a deeper, headier record. I can't release tracks like that until I have a two-month period to sit and write on them. It's such a finite road, it just goes from a certain place, and people kind of miss it. I've been thinking of that for like five years. That's such a finite road, like, did you write that? It goes from a certain place and then people kind of dismiss it. Like Flying Lotus has built something so amazing, but that guy lives and dies behind that ethos. I really respect that. Me? I just do whatever, I love so many kinds of music, I don't want to pigeonhole myself. People hated my club mis, the dance mis I was doing, but I thought I could do it 'cause no one was doing it in a cool way. Just doing it and taking advantage of it. When the lane's open, take it. But when you're far enough ahead, you can go offroading and explore. You can't start offroading. You have to build a big car that has big tires so you can monster truck on top of other cars.\n\nGQ: When people say you took advantage of M.I.A. or dubstep or baile funk, does that bother you?\n\n Diplo: It used to bother me a lot. Even when M.I.A. used to say that to me, she got mad, that was her way to attack me. When it comes to dancehall, when white kids and journalists tell me that, it's so over my head. I'm in Jamaica DJing every three or four months, those kids love that music, there are artists that make this music that journalists are defending, but those kids are excited that dancehall is being heard, because it went off the radar. I'm in the streets, in the studio making the music. The journalists are just sitting at home, they have nothing else to write about. I'm such an easy target. I'm a white dude working in black music in general, but Jamaica's always been a mix of everything. Look at Chris Blackwell selling \"My Boy Lollipop,\" which is not even a reggae record, around the world, which signed Bob Marley and then making him a rock star, which Jamaica hadn't had, and then taking that and making U2, making Tom Waits. They don't take advantage of artists, they make them happen. I've never had an artist complain, I've always had journalists and academics who I hate. I hate people who put art in genres, like it's an outsider thing when all we want to do is be taken seriously. When people put me in genres and catalogs and things, it's like putting a body bag over genre and no one takes it seriously. They're just doing more harm to the culture I'm working with. I used to get really hurt and heartbroken when people disrespected me, but I can't take it seriously anymore 'cause I'm the one doing projects and looking out for these artists. I think with baile funk, I wasn't just making records, taking these guys on tour, making films about it, selling the culture. I wasn't selling myself. I was trying to give people names and faces to the music because before it was just crazy, screaming Portuguese kids. I never said to myself...I was never a guy in the back room of a label going, \"How can we fuck over these people?\" Which is what these journalists are saying. I just can't. It pisses me off. Now I think about it. I hate journalists for that reason. Especially when you work with the people and see what the situation is really like? People who don't know are journalists that sit at home in New York like Tom Breihan, and these dickheads working at The New York Times. And Jon Caramanica especially is a fucking total fucking dickhead cocksucker that has no idea about music. All he likes to write about is fucking shitty indie rock\u2014he has no idea what music culture really is.\n\nGQ: Have you confronted either of them about that?\n\n Diplo: Tom Breihan, I used to. But Jon Caramanica is just a fucking shithead. I don't talk to him at all.\n\nGQ: Do you wish you weren't the face of some of these movements?\n\n Diplo: I'm so lucky, I never planned to be the face of the ghetto, I'm a fucking white dude from Florida, as long as people pay attention like, fuck this guy, they just wanna give me the middle finger, at least they know who I am now. I remember once I was with XL and did the M.I.A. record, they were like, \"Yo Diplo, we want you to host this worldwide ghetto music comp, we're gonna send you all this stuff.\" I was like, \"Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit!\" Just hang out with me and stop being a little bitch!\n\nGQ: OK, thanks for your time.\n\n Diplo: Make sure you put that quote about Jon Caramanica being a cocksucker in there."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/diplo-interview-gq-october-2011?currentPage=2>