You used to have to wait for Drake to catch onto things, now he's very quick.
It's like the Drake affect. He's closer and closer on the trends.
Pretty soon he's going to be trend setting.
Which is like, the big jump.
DJ,
producer,
mogul.
Diplo.
It's actually kind of hard to keep track of all the hit songs and all of the artists
that Diplo has collaborated with over the last few years.
He's said at least, to be worth of 15 million dollars.
He plays over 300 shows a year,
but more importantly,
Thomas Wesley Pence has an almost uncanny ability to shift musical culture
and predict changes that are coming down the pipeline.
But where it all starts
is not necessarily where you might expect.
I wanted to go back.
Once upon a time, long before music, you were a school counsellor
in Philadelphia and I've heard you say that it was both the most
rewarding and the hardest that job you've had.
And I was wondering if you could break it down for me.
Which parts of it were rewarding and
which parts were the hard parts?
I think if you're a young person anytime you have a job
it just sucks.
And you're doing something for nothing.
You know, you're working packing groceries or moving something or cutting lawns and
the work you do doesn't translate into any actual meaning, right?
Right.
That's what you get as a young person.
So the fact that I was teaching and working with children, I felt like every time I went there
at least
my work there could affect someones life and the world could be a better place.
So on the upside I had a job that felt like I had a purpose when I went to work.
On the downside is, Philadelphia is a pretty rough city you know,
I dealt with problems like, kids weren't able to go to school
cause their mother couldn't afford shoes or their mother was arrested,
they were beaten by their parents.
Most of the kids I taught didn't know how to read
they were like 13 years old.
And they faked reading, and they got that far in school without having to read.
So it becomes really difficult.
And in that process of working with the kids
what did you learn about yourself?
If I missed a day of school, or I missed a day of work
it like, affected someone's life.
When I called in sick for another job it didn't matter much.
So I had to be pretty responsible working in a school.
You know, these are kids that showed me a lot of stuff too about music.
And these are kids that influenced me a lot back in those days.
They spent all their time in between classes and recess
looking online at Baltimore and Philly club websites
listening to underground music.
These little kids.
They were obsessed with club music.
They thought the style of music I was playing was still kinda like, another generation.
And I realised how quick music translates and turns over for children,
and how much passion they had about it.
It reminded me of when I first was in love with music.
I've heard you say that music always changes
but it always changes in favour of the fans, not the artist.
And that's something that artists just sort of...
need to deal with.
And as you look around at the music business at the moment
what is it that artists should be adapting to right now?
I've always found my...
The reason I'm here today and even a musician as a fulltime job is because
I've been able to navigate when technology changes.
When bootleg CDs were big in Philidelphia I made a lot.
I bootlegged my own music, I bootlegged other people's music.
I made enough money to buy a house back then, off of selling CDs door to door.
Giving away for free on the internet, when that was a thing.
Attack the streaming services with groups like Major Lazer
when major labels were ignoring it.
I was just trying to find my hustle.
And I've always been someone that's in the fringes of music.
Producing different kinds of acts and working with different artists and
mixing genres.
And mixing with different people that-
You have to understand, that's like, how music is going to change.
Technology's going to benefit the audience always.
I just wanted to go back with your history with Australia for a second.
So, in the year, I think it was 2007
you went to a place in regional Australia called Maningrida
and you worked with a bunch of Indigenous kids
making rap music, making dance music.
Why?
What was it about that group of kids that made you wanna do that?
I think I'd only been to Australia like two times at that point,
and I was really obsessed with it.
Before I was doing it there was a guy there he was recording really cool rap music
with local kids, aboriginal kids and
they just had a really weird, delicate,
they pick and chose different parts of hip hop they created their own hip hop with.
And I
I was always touring Australia, I was always playing for white kids.
So I was like, well how can we
if I do these shows, I do these big raves for all of the kids that got money
how can we do something cool for these little kids that I'm actually like into?
And the cool thing about Australia
they really do a lot of out reach for kids.
Especially through music.
A lot more than America where there's a lot of red tape. So I thought lets do something.
And we just went up for like a weekend to Maningrida.
There was a lot of cool ska music getting made and one kid made like a New Order song.
And I just thought I could use my influence to do something like that with these kids.
Eventually these kids hopefully will be the cultural ambassadors or trend setters
that will influence the rest of the Australian kids.
Kinda just stir the pot a little bit to make different music happen in Australia.
That became a catalyst for what Heaps Decent was.
Think it's still running, this is like 10 years
or more now.
The idea was that if we do that there we could make a
good example of something like that to do in America but
it's really hard in America.
To do anything like that. Honestly they don't-
People think that when music is in the hands of kids it's like a bad thing.
Why do you think that idea prevails in America?
I think Australia seems to be a country whose like,
We wanna help these kids not matter what, this is important to create some opportunities for everybody.
America where kinda like you make your own opportunities, that's kinda like the atmosphere here.
People are afraid, when young kids have
power and music is given to them to empower themselves.
That's the kind of
temperature we have here.
Shouldn't be used to empower children, which is a fucked up way to think about things.
Before I came up for this interview I was watching the video for Jack Ü, 'Where are you now?'
If people haven't seen it before, you literally have people drawing on pictures
of Justin Bieber.
It kinda struck me that, that is how people think about Justin Bieber.
He's not a person he's a piece of popular culture.
Yeah.
And I was fascinated to know, in your experience as a guy who has worked with him,
what is it that people misunderstand about Justin Bieber?
What is it that makes him special for you?
The video, when we first had the idea for it, it was like
even more extreme.
Like we were gonna have a performance art, like have Justin lock himself in a box
in an art gallery, have people throw stuff at him
you know, be around him and he was literally on
display for people because he is one of the most polarizing
figures in the world.
It's crazy cos you either loved him
you based your life around him like some
Beliebers and young girls and boys
or you hate him, he's the worst thing that's happened to music because he's entitled and he's a little brat.
So we wanted to discuss all that, like what it's like.
Even if the collaboration itself is so bizarre.
Like me, Skrillex and Justin Bieber, it made no sense but I just...
I kinda had a master plan about why it would make sense to people.
Eventually it did.
Eventually Justin had the biggest album of his life after this project and
really refined who he was as an artist.
So what was the master plan?
Like how did you imagine it would work?
I just thought like at the end of the day if you make good music,
nobody can complain or criticise who you are or what you do.
Because, the music is essentially the message that affects and you
and its good and it makes you feel a certain way.
You can criticise someones life and what they do and who they are,
you might not understand them
or even know the whole story.
But if the music affects you, makes you feel good,
you can't lie to yourself.
You know, that's what we were thinking, the music is what matters the most.
I'm just fascinated by human beings I think we do such cool stuff.
I think its a fascinating culture that we all created so,
I'm obsessed with humans I guess.
That's why I went to school for anthropology.
I thought there was nothing greater than studying ourselves
like what we do, what we're able to create and be.
What is it that creates culture? How do we create it?
What is it essentially that is culture?
Each person, each place, they interpret a style of music differently.
That's beautiful.
I'm fascinated by how to manipulate it and how to change it
and how does it change and what does it mean?
Cause these things create what we are as human beings, you know?
Hey Diplo,
thank you so much for doing this with us.
-That's it? We're good? -Yep we're done.
Alright man thank you.