Diplo: College Dropout To World's Most Iconic DJ
Guests: Diplo
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
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§01Transcript — part 1§01Transcript — part 1
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If I knew now what I knew then, I would have done a different journey. I just remember I did this whole circuit working with all these young rappers and they were really young—they were like 19, 20—and these rappers all started to die. You know, Lil Peep overdosed, X was shot.
Nobody really cares about all the adoration you get; you care about the people that don’t like you, and you get caught up in that. It’s not a consistent paycheck. Music never is, and it wasn’t for me for three or four years. One month I’m not doing good, I can’t pay rent. I’m homeless.
What’s the sacrifice or the cost in terms of personal life balance?
I have to answer that?
Whenever I do this podcast, I always get really intrigued by the formative years of someone’s life. In your story, it seemed like a very, very humble beginning. When I look at where you started under the age of 14, I couldn’t quite piece together myself how that early upbringing had led you to becoming who you are today. Is there anything from below the age of, say, 14 that you can point at and say, "If that hadn't happened, or if I hadn't had that experience or that interaction with a family member, I don't think I would be here today"?
I didn’t start really producing or releasing music until my mid-20s. It was pretty late. I was doing things, but not actually at a level where I could quit my job and have it be my main source of income. But when I was younger, I was a pretty bad kid. I was bouncing from high schools to different middle schools, and I was actually sent to a military school at one point, at that age, like 14.
I even got expelled from there, and then that was like my last shot. I came back, and they let me back in because it cost my family a lot of money—it was like $3,000 for me to go there because I was getting sent out of every school. But going to the military school, maybe if anything, it taught me how to, if I was going to do something criminal or something bad, I had to be a little smarter about it.
Everybody there was a criminal. The whole military school was just a bunch of terrible kids and they really knew what they were doing. So if anything, I kind of learned from the school of hard knocks. But I think being in military school, even though it was only for one year, and my father—he was a Vietnam Vet—I think I can attribute his concept of discipline to it.
No matter how bad I was or how much I disagreed with my father, he gave me the most complex rules of what discipline means, what it is, and what it is to apply it in whatever you’re doing. I didn’t realize that until I was older. What makes my story successful, what makes me a better DJ or a better songwriter, is that I don’t have the technical abilities, but I always apply myself to find a goal. I really feel like that's what my father gave me before I turned into an adult because it's just something I had inside me that separated me from everybody else when I got into the music business.
Work ethic was such a clear thread throughout your story—relentless, almost at times it seemed somewhat obsessive work ethic. It’s funny because when I hear about your early upbringing, my assumption is—because it sounds quite similar to mine, getting kicked out of school and being the only kid out of four siblings that was always getting bad grades—did people around you think you were going nowhere at that point?
100 percent. I mean, even until my mid-20s, my father was like, "How did you buy this house? What are you doing? There is no way possibly you’re making money with music." He was like, "There's just no possible way." I went to college; I went to UCF, a little community college because I couldn’t afford a real school. I did two years there just basically being in a school so that I could have something to advance forward.
Then I went to Temple University in Philly and I ended up dropping out of that school, but I went for anthropology and filmmaking. So it was like two other degrees that would literally turn into no job. But I was obsessed with documentary filmmaking and I thought that would be something I could do. I was obsessed with culture, obsessed with humans and people and the study of culture.
When I was a young person, I was reading National Geographic all the time and watching documentaries, so that was something I thought, "How do I apply that?" My father was also like, "This is a huge mistake. What are you doing? What about accounting? That’s a great degree to have." In the end, I think what I learned at that university was—because in the film program, there were a lot of creative avenues to learn from—the people who were professors were almost like filmmakers that didn’t make it and they had to be professors.
So I was like, "What am I doing here? I don’t want to learn from these people, they aren’t even in the business." The real business is going out and making it yourself. I think I just did that. My third year, I was like, "I'm out of school." I kind of wish I had dropped out of college earlier and had a head start, because it took a while when you’re paying your college tuition and working. It’s so time-consuming.
Eventually, I started to do music and do little odd jobs like DJing to where I was like, "Oh, I can kind of quit my jobs now." Also, if I knew now what I knew then, I would have done a different journey. But I think that’s what makes you who you are, no matter how long it takes.
Eventually you make that decision to start heading towards music, even though it’s not paying you at all. I was reading about the jobs you were doing in that period of your life. You worked at a zoo at one point, and you were a social worker at one point. How long was that period of your life when you’d made the decision to move towards music and that music was going to be your thing?
It definitely wasn't—I mean, at 22 years old, I was already working 9-to-5s. The social work job was my first job that felt like a good thing to do. I’m working with children, I was going between teaching kids and then after-school programs. It just felt like, "Okay, this is cool. It feels like I’m doing something for somebody instead of working at Subway and making money for the head of Subway," which was kind of a waste of my energy.
But working with kids, I felt fulfilled. I think then you run into the bureaucracy of a city like Philadelphia. It was just so much corruption even in the social work world. It was crazy. Eventually, I was getting beaten down at that job too. I was like, "Is this my life? At 22, this is all I can look forward to is building my way into this job or this job?"
I started DJing on the side at parties and learning from the DJs there, because Philadelphia is a famous city for DJing. It's culturally one of the most important cities in America for hip-hop and for DJing. I just started doing parties and then I saw what you do if you do your own party—you can invest in yourself and promote a party and then you take everything. I started learning small little business acumen from just doing parties.
Then eventually, I started thinking, "I can quit my job." It was a huge step because at that point you don’t know when you’re doing music and parties full-time, it’s literally up to how much you’re working or what you’re doing to keep the money flowing to pay the rent. If I don't—one month I'm not doing good, I can't pay rent. I'm homeless. It’s not a consistent paycheck. Music never is, and it wasn’t for me for probably three or four years. But it took just putting your boots to the ground and doing the work, and failing at it and learning what makes you better and what makes you more money.
How do you grow this business even in these little small steps? That’s kind of what I did in those first years of my career. I wasn't even really making my own music yet. I was just DJing and making mixtapes and making edits and learning how to use computers still. I had nobody to teach me. I was buying hardware or, in high school, shoplifting from Sam Goody and Sam Ash and Guitar Center for samplers to use. It really just came down to the grind to figure out what works and what doesn't.
It was so evident when I was hearing about you in the record stores and ultimately selling records to Kanye. Were they vinyls you were selling to Kanye? Samples and stuff? But throughout that, even the story about you reading William Faulkner’s book, you had this clear hunger for learning. Teaching yourself how to make music, teaching yourself computers, teaching yourself the business side of things. Most people don’t have a predisposition just to figure stuff out. And that, again, when I’m trying to figure out exactly how you became this global superstar, that feels to be a consistent thread.
I think when you think about what a DJ is now, they’re like David Guetta, they’re headlining festivals. Even me, I’m headlining my own shows. But back when I was growing up, the big DJs from Detroit, like The Magician or Afrika Bambaataa—people that were DJs were like the selectors. They were like the guys who did all the work to know what music is there, how this music exists, and they were the cultural benchmark. They were the guys who cataloged everything for distribution in the scene.
I loved that. I was like, "I love music. I love what it is." I went to parties and I remember seeing people like Questlove and Cash Money and these DJs like Cosmo Baker playing crazy records—playing Fela Kuti and then playing a disco record and then playing something new like a local hip-hop record. I was so obsessed with how they could connect these things that don’t make any sense musically.
That’s what I always thought was the great story of what DJs do. They’re guys who can process all this culture and give it to you in a certain way. Now it’s more streamlined—if you go to a house party, you hear house music; you go to a bashment party, you hear dancehall. But the really special DJs were able to do everything. So when I learned that as a skill set, I started looking at vinyl. I started learning about different music. I would ask DJs, "What is that record you're playing? Who are these artists? What is Fela Kuti? Where’s Nigeria? Why do they make music? What’s it sound like?"
Then I’m like, "Who are the producers? Oh, the guy from The Who went to Nigeria and was a drummer there, and then he went back and did this, and then James Brown heard this guy and then hired another drummer." This became like a web of music. I started following everything and reading liner notes. I was obsessed with gaining all the knowledge about music whatever I could and using that to apply to being a DJ. That obsession just led me to being a record collector.
Like I said, I traveled a little bit. At the end of my university, I went to India with one of my professors to work on a documentary on the border of Pakistan and India in Gujarat. It was this little valley called the Rann of Kutch. There was a huge earthquake there around 2000, and I was there doing some building work and working with Red Cross and things like that. Then I just kind of bounced and took a motorcycle and went all over India and explored on my own.
I bought a bunch of vinyl. At the time, the most expensive records in the world were these Beatles 78s. If you find good ones in India—they only made them in India—if you find good ones, they’re worth a couple thousand dollars. But I was finding Indian soundtracks and I was finding things like a classic Indian soundtrack called *Shalimar* with crazy spy themes and breakbeats on it. At the time, if you find one of those at a record shop, you pay a couple rupees, you could bring it back to London and sell it at Poland Street for 300 pounds.
So that was this weird hack I found—traveling and buying records. I did it in India, I did it in Philadelphia, I would go to New Jersey, go to New York, and I would buy old records and sell them to different record collectors. Questlove was one of my first guys I sold to. I sold records to Kanye West when he first started producing. Collecting records was a certain business, and then on eBay—that was another hustle I had, selling things I’d buy at flea markets on eBay. A lot of it was vinyl.
One of the things, again, that’s so apparent with you, which is a thread between many of my guests—specifically comedians for some reason—is they at some point make this decision to leave the city, leave their job in finance, and pursue this thing that has no apparent chance of making them any money at all. They just follow this passion and obsession. They spend a year going up and down the country working for nothing because they’re obsessed with comedy.
A lot of young people, when they think about being a DJ or an entrepreneur, they think, "I want the admiration of standing there and all these people clapping for me and the money." But you were so clearly led by this unbelievable obsessive passion, which seems actually to be—if I was to say 95 percent of my guests followed one path, it would definitely be they didn’t really care about the outcome. They cared about the passion and the pursuit of the passion. That’s so clear with you, right?
In the beginning, it was definitely a hustle. I loved music and it saved me from even in high school. I moved from high school to high school and I didn’t have a friend group, so I kind of was leaning towards, "I want to play music," but I couldn’t—my parents wouldn’t even buy me a guitar. I didn’t even know how to play. I was like, "How am I going to learn a guitar or learn piano?" But I was like, "DJing, that’s the future of music." In my head, turntablism was really big. I remember being 16 being like, "I'm going to buy record players. That's what I'm going to do as a creative person. This is like a futuristic way to do things."
I leaned into that, started learning what a DJ was. But in the beginning, yeah, I had to do the groundwork to know what it is I’m going to play, what it is that the music comes from, where do I buy the records, what do the crowds react to, etc., etc. So yeah, these formative years I spent time grinding. But then eventually I was like, "Okay, how do I make money out of this?" And yes, I want to play for a crowd and yes, I want admiration, and yes, I want to meet girls. Of course, that happens later and that’s another drive, but in the beginning, I didn’t really expect to have a job out of it.
Do you think you would have been as successful as you are if someone had taught you how to make music and you had been really mentored by someone? Because sometimes that hurts innovation and creativity if convention is too involved.
I do know what you mean, because I see nowadays kids can literally learn and copy any style of music in a day because they have a tutorial. It's so easy. It's really easy and I wish I had that, but then at the same time, I wouldn't have had such a definitive "who I am." If people always ask me when I do radio shows, "What advice would you give to young DJs?" it’s always the same thing: "What makes yourself unique? What really makes you different?"
Because I could throw a fucking rock and I’m going to hit a DJ or artist in the head in London. I’m not talking about you, but it’s so easy. I literally get demos all the time. I used to actually try to listen to demos and I’m like, "This is all the same shit. People are doing the same thing over and over again." Whether whatever city you're in, there's a "thing." And every once in a while you get a special person that comes out of nowhere and you're like, "Wow, that's unique."
For me, you were talking about William Faulkner, I really tapped into my Southern heritage when I was younger. I loved Miami bass music growing up in Florida. I loved the crunk scene, the bounce scene in New Orleans. I grew up in Tennessee for a couple years, so I loved Memphis rap—it was my favorite thing. So when I went to the East Coast, none of that stuff was happening. Nobody listened to that music.
So I was like, "Let me bring this to the East Coast. Let me start playing this in my parties." And it took off. All these new sounds I brought—even though they’re just a one-hour flight down south to hear Miami bass music—no one listened to it in Philly. So I was playing this stuff mixed with like 80s records, and that was my brand. I was the guy that was doing this mashup culture. Nobody else had that party.
There were urban parties playing hip-hop, there would be rock and roll parties playing glam rock that you could dance to, there would be high-end parties playing house music, but nobody was playing for the art school kids and the hipsters at the time—because "hipster" wasn't even a word yet. I was like, "That's my market." Every little venture I’ve done as a musician has been like, "Why is no one in this market?"
Even when I did Major Lazer, it was reggae and dancehall we were doing, but nobody was really doing it in the clubs in America. If you go to Philly, you want to see Vybz Kartel, you have to go to this one ghetto club in Lancaster and it's only Jamaicans there. I'm like, "This is such crazy music, why don't we do this on another level? Why don't we work with some of these artists and do bigger records?" So I was like, "No one's doing dancehall, let's do this project."
Everywhere I went, I was experimenting. How do I do this and kind of make it my own or how do I work this into my sets? It’s been a journey—this is 20 years now I’m doing this since I played my first show at Fabric. If you’re a fan of mine and you’ve followed me for 20 years, it’s a really tough journey because I’ve done reggae music, country music, now deep house. But a few people actually go with me and follow my career. That’s what makes me a one-of-a-kind person, I guess.
Back to my point—when young people ask me questions of what advice I can give, I'm like, "Find a really unique thing and just lean into that. Lean into that so hard. Figure out even if it feels weird, just make it make sense. Make it work for you, because otherwise you’re just going to be one of a hundred clones of different DJs and rappers."
If it feels weird, is that sometimes also an indication that there’s a big opportunity there because it’s yet to break or yet to be discovered? Weirdness might be a sign.
100 percent, more now than ever. Back then it was like, being a DJ wasn't even a "thing" when I started doing it. Being a DJ wasn't a career. There were a few guys on the radio. In Europe it's different, there was a DJ culture here, but in America there wasn't a job description called "DJ." You wouldn't think—there weren't DJs on the radio, they weren't featuring on music.
Now it's pretty commonplace, but being a DJ was unique for me. Nowadays, since there’s so much information all the time, so much media, so many artists fighting for your eyeballs and your ears on TikTok and Instagram, it’s more than ever important to have something like, "Wow, I got to go look at that again." Because just having a catchy hook is not enough. Everybody has a catchy hook—there's a thousand catchy hooks, you can just go and buy them literally at the market. It’s not special.
One thing that really surprised me about you as well is that you’re quite humble about your talent. When I’ve seen in multiple interviews when you’re asked what the biggest misconception is about you, one of them you said is that "I'm talented." I’ve heard you say a number of times that you’re "faking it" or that you’re still looking for validation that you’re a real deal. Even at the start of this conversation, you said, "I'm not technically the best." Where does that—is that imposter syndrome? What is that?
No, I think I’ve always been more of a conceptual artist. I think of music in concepts. I think of music as a math problem—how does this add to this and how do I make it work? It’s always been a riddle every time I try to think of how to combine things. Now it’s a little easier because I’m doing this kind of dance album and I know exactly what works because I’m DJing these records and I’m making collaborations with friends of mine and artists.
But when I was younger, my first album was called *Florida*. It was on Ninja Tune. It's so weird. I remember being just so stoned and just fucked up making this record. People still hit me back like, "That record was a classic." I'm like, "What are you talking about? It was crazy chaos." It was me in my room in Orlando trying to figure out how to make—things weren’t even in key. I’m sampling on this two-channel little Akai S20 sampler.
If you know anything about DAWs (digital audio workstations), they’re so complex like Logic or Ableton. Back then I used something called Cool Edit Pro and there wasn’t even a piano roll or anything. I just had windows, like Photoshop, and I just layered the loops on top of each other and sequenced it in one long window because I couldn't—it was the worst way to work ever. But I learned this ass-backwards way that kind of gave me a little flavor, I guess.
But I never was a musician. I never mastered an instrument. I always thought DJing—and I even wasn't a good turntablist—if you put me in a room with A-Trak or DJ Craze, it’s embarrassing. Those guys are magicians. But I thought I’m the guy with ideas and how do I apply those ideas? It became easy as the technology advanced. These programs make it a lot easier for me. I don’t need to be Scott Storch. I can just literally see the audio—Ableton's my favorite because I see audio and I can work with raw audio. My mind works that way.
So I think, yeah, I’m more of a conceptual person than I am like a digital auteur. Even with production, I always say Skrillex is the guy that blew my mind. He uses a computer like a grand piano. He just does the craziest thing he does. So I think there are people in my generation that are the savants, and I’m not that, but I mixed my talent for new sounds and a talent for songwriting to make who I am.
But to say that you’re "faking it"—maybe it was a joke—but to describe it as being the biggest misconception...
It might have been talking about DJing because literally, you can learn it in ten minutes—the technical side. What I think makes a DJ special is that you have history. That’s what makes it special. I think it’s why you have DJ careers in London especially—these guys like David Rodigan, he’s a guy who’s in his late 60s, and he's still rocks parties playing the perfect records because he has the skill set. He knows exactly—he can read a crowd in Southwest London, he can go to Jamaica, he can go to Italy and play the right songs at the right time.
So there’s something intrinsically beautiful about being a DJ. But yeah, some things it feels like I’m faking it. Even in the beginning, I faked it to get in the studio. That’s what I did to have my foot in the door.
When you are asked about your creative process, I was looking through the huge wealth of traveling that you’ve done: Brazil, India, London, various parts of the world. How formative is travel and going to these different cultures and understanding the way they do things to the art you ultimately created? When I think about creativity from a marketing standpoint, I see it as pulling together lots of little pieces to form something new. And because of your obsession with vinyls and samples, you seem to have this huge wealth of artistic reference points.
I'm just obsessed with the conversation that's happening all over the world. Whether I go to Brazil or London—London is a good example where you have this Pan-African, Jamaican, Caribbean, and then European thing happening that's drum and bass, that's funky, that's now drill. There are all these genres that if you look into why it exists, you can literally pinpoint the first creators and where they come from and why they make this kind of sound.
So I was always putting together the equations: why are these things happening? Brazil's my favorite place to talk about because I was hearing this music, it was called Funk Carioca, for a long time. There were girls that were doing a party in Philly and I remember they gave me a mixtape and it was this sound that was a mix of Miami bass and samba and heavy metal—because they’re screaming songs, there’s bass beats, but they’re using these *tamborzinho* drums.
I was like, "What the fuck is this?" I literally couldn’t find any information on this music. So I went to Brazil, and I actually had a magazine fund this trip—it was an article for *Fader* magazine—and I went down there and met the big DJs and I just became immersed in that scene. Producing with some of those guys, learning to produce with them, and moving that sound forward a little bit.
I think my first real production was with M.I.A., it was called "Bucky Done Gun," and it was a Funk record that we did. I remember we actually went back to Brazil and played it at this huge festival and it was a massive hit in Brazil. It actually helped, I think, maybe validate some of the Funk music in Brazil because before that it was a Rio thing and then it became an all-over-the-country thing. Now you go to Brazil, Funk music is the most commercial thing. Back then, 20 years ago, it was a pretty underground genre. But yeah, everywhere I go, I want to learn more.
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In terms of your creative process, in two different interviews, I saw you talk about creating music that lasts a lifetime—really timeless pieces of art. How do you do that? How can you even anticipate that a piece of music is going to be timeless? Is there something in the design of it or the inspiration?
There’s a few times I've been in the studio and a song I might be working on gives me goosebumps. That happens. It was like when I did Justin Bieber’s "Where Are Ü Now"—something like that was just like, "Whoa, what the hell are we doing?" And then "Lean On" for Major Lazer—that was a record that I probably spent a year on the production because I did so many different versions. I’m like, "No, this isn’t right now. This isn’t what’s happening right now."
As a producer, my job is to predict the future. When I release this record after I make it, it’s going to take like three months to actually get to the people because you need to go through labels, clear the record. It can’t just be like back in the day where I’d make an edit and DJ it and it would hit people right in my little local neighborhood. A producer’s job is literally to try to be futuristic sounding. That’s what the greats have always done: Prince, Timbaland, Pharrell. They’ve always made records that trendset because they were so futuristic.
My goal has always been to follow them, never to follow a trend. And those two records were ones that we did and were like, "Yes, this is going to work, even though it's fucking crazy." Or even "Pon de Floor," I remember listening to that and driving around in the car—it was a song I did for Major Lazer—I remember driving around LA and looking at the guy who produced with me named Switch and we were just like, "Is this going to work?" It was so crazy. Then four years later, Beyoncé sampled that record and it became a massive hit. My career's always had these little moments where we do things and then the ramifications happen later. You feel the effects.
Having classics is important, and a couple times you know when you’re in it and you’re like, "Okay, this is worth the time. This is worth the effort." Learning songwriting with some of the great guys like Dr. Luke—having to be in the studio with him and Cirkut and a lot of his writers—I was like, "Man, you spent three days on a second verse? This is what you do now?" That’s what pop music is. You literally, if you think a record is a big record, the effort is so concise. How to make this the best record ever. Everything is like a perfect addition, like an architect. Every little corner of the house has got to be perfect.
I learned that process, which I don’t use very often, but when a record's big, I follow through. And then otherwise, just do a shit-ton of records and one of them's going to be good too. That’s another process you can do. Just randomly I put records out, and a record like "On My Mind," which is another house record on my album that was a huge TikTok record, which we would never have guessed. You can't even guess when those records happen.
Because you can't guess when one's going to be a winner, as a creator, do you try to not harm your piece by trying to predict too much? Do you just focus on the process itself?
There's a lot of process to making a great record, but there's also like diplomacy when you're a producer. You have to know the artist. You know Ed Sheeran, "Do you have an extra record we can try to work on?" and then he gives you songwriting. That’s how a record like "Cold Water" happened—another Bieber song I did. Then you’re like, "Okay, can we ask Bieber’s manager, can he maybe do this record? We'll do a trade for production."
Sometimes it’s literally like being an ambassador—talking to all these people to try to put a record together. That’s another process that I had to learn. When a record’s already done, you take a song and you dress up the production. You still have to find all the keys to make that record work. So every record's a different journey. With dance music, I’m literally just in the studio hearing records and trying to figure out what sound I want to make for a live effect and then I apply that in the studio. I’ve literally probably every kind of songwriting you can do, I’ve done it—from sitting with an acoustic guitar with Madonna to recording field recordings in a favela.
What’s the cost of all of this? "Cost" might be a bit of a presumption, but what’s the sacrifice or the cost in terms of personal life balance? You are obsessed.
I was probably running at like 200 miles an hour till COVID happened. I don’t think I would have ever taken a break. That was probably the best thing that happened. When the lockdown happened and I couldn’t do shows, I was like, "Shit, let me actually buy a house and let me actually figure out what’s my next steps in life." I kind of needed that break because I was just going—everything was breakneck speed. It was the Grammys this weekend, "Oh yeah, you have a session with this person this weekend," "Oh, we got to get back on this," "I got to go to Jamaica and do this."
Everything was happening; I never said "no" to anybody. A musician has the same life as an athlete—you have a peak. If you’re a linebacker in NFL football, your career's maybe three or four years because you’re getting beat up. A quarterback can play until he’s 44. A producer or artist—they’re just hot for as long as they’re hot and then they have to come down. Some of them can just continue to always go there, like Madonna or Taylor Swift. Every record's going to perform. But a lot of times you’re on borrowed time. You don’t know when your window's going to close. So for me, I was like, "I got to keep going, keep going." I feel like I never had hit my peak, so I was like, "Let's keep pushing it forward." Eventually, I was like, "You know what? This isn't that important. Let me actually enjoy my life."
COVID was very much the same experience for me. It’s actually why I resigned from my company because I actually got to look at my life. When you think about your pre-COVID life, now you’ve had time to pause, were you happy in that phase of your life?
I was, because it's weird—I was losing touch with other people. I felt that. So I was very insular. But my life, I run the best when it’s chaos—when I’m doing 300 shows a year and I’m just like getting up and doing the emails and going to the gym and then I’m just like... I just work under pressure. I don't know what it is, that's my best forte. So I was into that, and then I was like, "This is a very unhealthy way to live."
Now it feels like I’m back on a promo tour and it feels like I’m back on this fast track and I’m like, "Ah, kind of want COVID a little bit," but you know it’s all part of the process. If you put a record out, it’s important for people to hear it. You only have one chance for a record to be released and you should give it every opportunity it has to reach people. But don’t waste your time on every song. You have a good song, I have this song with Miguel that we’re promoting, I’m like, "This song's worth the work." Other songs, maybe like, "Eh, I'll put them out and maybe something will happen."
I’ve been doing this for so long and I’ve made a really great team around me. I have these great women that always work with me and work for me and I think it just feels like it's a big family now. People are always looking out for my best interest. I got lucky—I’ve been doing that since day one. My first manager worked for me for free for the first year because he just believed in what I did. I was making so much money before I paid taxes just selling mixtapes and DJing. I bought a property in Philadelphia in my first year of learning how to hustle the system of being a DJ.
He was like, "There's more to be done, though. There's more you can do than just living in Philly and being the biggest DJ here." I think he gave me that motivation to be bigger. From him, another management group happened and then I’ve had a lucky journey. I’ve been with the same team for 20 years. A lot of people don’t get that.
But I also think I was very visionary in what I want to do. If you’re a young person and you get sucked up by management, they might have a vision for you or they might not, or they might not have the right vision for you, or they might not give you the room to be yourself. Then you’re going to switch 40 managers and you might not ever find the success you need. It’s important to find people that really believe in you, but also let you be yourself.
Reminds me of the Avicii documentary that I saw. I spent four weeks at home in 2019 and I was very much being dragged around. We had a thousand employees so I was being dragged around the place, and that documentary taught me the importance of saying no to stuff.
100 percent. Avicii, I feel like he—he was probably one of my biggest influences even though he was younger than me. I remember hanging out with him a couple times and I was just like, "Man, this guy's a genius, but he just doesn't feel like he's in his own skin." Because I don’t think he ever had that chance to be what he wanted to be. He became like a machine because his success happened so quick. But that happens a lot. That’s the one story in the DJ world, but in the pop world, it happens way too much.
Are you good at saying no to stuff?
No, I say yes to everything. But I’m also—I have really thick skin. My personality’s enormous. I can find my way through things. I’ll always say yes and then I’ll say no for the next time if it sucks. I’ve done everything and I’m like, "Ah, this isn't the right thing," and I move on. My management knows me now to where they—some things don’t even get to me. The questions don’t even come because they know it’s a no.
Thick skin. You started talking a lot about mental health over the last couple of years—your partnership with Calm as well. Mental health in the DJ world, mental health among men anyway. What's your journey been with your own mental health?
I think just being put as whatever celebrity or whatever it is, being attention always on you, you’re going to have so many critics. The love is cool, but nobody really cares about all the adoration you get; you care about the people that don’t like you. And that bothers you, no matter who you are. Eventually, I had to just like... these people suck. Whatever. You’re never going to get away from the people that want to always be critics. They just want to get a rise out of you.
Eventually you just got to say, "Fuck it, the people that are around me, their opinion's what matters." When it comes to social media, it’s like a game. I was talking about Conor McGregor earlier today—he’s like the biggest heel, most paid athlete last year even though he didn’t fight, because people love to hate him. So he built a brand out of just being that person. But you got to take the good and the bad with it.
Have you made a conscious effort to shorten that circle by logging off? I read somewhere that someone else has your Twitter password, you don’t really have it.
I haven’t been on Twitter in five years. But I think, yeah, it kind of sucks. Hit or miss because even TikTok, I was slow to do that, but then if you want your brand to exist, it’s got to be there. There’s more eyeballs on TikTok than there are on YouTube nowadays. So you really have to be part of that conversation with the audience. It took me a while; I had to find people that actually can help me run that because I couldn’t do it myself. I don't stay on social too much, but of course, during this album cycle, I’m on there and having to always participate. Every once in a while you have to take your mind off it because you can get caught up.
What made you start talking about mental health?
I think probably after the Avicii situation. And then, I work with a lot of rappers. I think I had a hip-hop album that came out called *California* and it had Lil Xan and Lil Peep on it and Trippie Redd and I was working with XXXTentacion. I just remember I did this whole circuit working with all these young rappers and they were really young—they were like 19, 20. These rappers all started to die. You know, Lil Peep overdosed on opiates and X was shot, but he also had such a crazy vision on life and experience, and he went through so much.
I saw what was happening to these young guys because they were getting so popular so quick. I just felt like, "Damn, these kids all need like a big brother." So with those guys, a lot of them, I was helping them out making decisions. But just seeing how crazy it is to be a 20-year-old right now—it’s much more difficult than when I was there. Now everybody knows who you are and has some kind of opinion about you.
Have you ever felt that crippling anxiety?
No. I mean, I deal with people close in my life who have anxiety and they have attacks and I have to talk them down sometimes. So I know how it feels. Me, I feel like I still like the stage. I’ve also made a concerted effort to make the team make me comfortable. That Avicii documentary—I’m not going to talk about the people on the team, but they just didn’t care. No one cared about him or what he was feeling. I remember being at shows and he played before me in Vegas and he would just be missing. He would play like two hours later and he would have to get fucked up to get on stage because he just couldn’t do it. I could feel that way sometimes—on this tour, just jet lag alone, you’re nodding out at dinner and you’re like, "Oh, I got to go be excited for this crowd." I’m really good at making that work for myself now because these people, I owe them this experience.
I guess for you, a lot of that was your kids as well, right? When your first child was born, you talked about that being a really pivotal moment. It taught you the value of time.
I think my first kid, when I had my first son, Locket, I actually went faster. I did. I was like, "I got a kid now, my life's about to get really complicated." And I think all my best work happened around them because of that time management. I was like, "Okay, I have Saturday/Sunday or I have Wednesday off, I’m going to go to the studio for 16 hours every other day because I don’t want to do anything else." Those five years, I did all my biggest records.
Now my boys are entering the teenage years—they’re 11, 7. They’re asking me questions now that they never would before. I’m having to give them boy and man advice. We’re having conversations that I can relate to them as much as they can relate to me. Before it was like baby shark and Legos.
You did this really sweet post giving a shout-out to their mothers. In that sentence you said, "I'm still a work in progress." Why did you say that?
Because my boys, I want to instill in them the same discipline that my father has given me, which I don’t know how to do. I remember going to my father’s rooms and he would have books about like *Being the Best Dad*. I thought that was so—it seemed silly when I was younger, but I think about it a lot later. Maybe I should check that book out. I’m like the crazy person that comes over and takes them away to do crazy stuff all the time and it’s a big distraction in their life a lot of times. So I’ve got to figure out how to *be* with them, more than just be their insane sports dad. I gotta be their friend too.
Israel Adesanya, the UFC champion, was here two weeks ago and he said the worst day of his life was the day after he won the belt. He went straight into therapy. You said similar—some of the worst days are the day after the high. And you said you have to kind of suppress the high to avoid the low.
100 percent. Always. Because it gets addictive. I have to do 250 shows some years, and every night might be bigger, some nights might be lame. Every once in a while I'm like, "Damn, that was awesome," and I have gratitude for that. But if it’s going to be your lifestyle every night... people always ask, "You don't drink while you're DJing?" I'm DJing 200 nights a year, I can't be drunk. I'll be dead.
If you’re just going to be in these peaks and valleys all the time, that's not healthy. And I see a lot of people that are other creators—it’s crazy, but the best creators really have bipolar tendencies. Some of my favorite people to collaborate with, I’ve noticed they have it and some of them aren’t addressing it and it leads to their failures in some parts. I see that a lot in my peers and I think it’s important to just drown out the noise and just make it more of a job because you can’t live like every night's the biggest party of your life, you know, because then there's going to be a big downer.
Also, it’s hard to sleep. When you do a show like in Vegas, 1:00 to 3:00 AM, and I’m like, "Damn, I got to be up at 9:00 to take my kids." How do you wind down? Because that's really hard to do too. I think you have to take it in strides. I think deep down inside of me, if I lose all of the—if labels drop me, I could start over again. I love furniture, maybe I’ll be a carpenter. Or a pizza maker. I feel like if you have that feeling inside you that you can lose everything and be okay with it, that’s maybe the key to success. Then you know all this is just a facade. I’ll be comfortable as long as I get to do something I love again. It doesn’t have to be huge.
Your new album, this is 20 years into your career now, and it’s your second full-length album since *Florida*.
That happened because once I started going to the studio in LA, I was like, "You don't make solo albums like *Florida*, you make albums for other people." I’m just a DJ. But it wasn't until we did Major Lazer I was like, "Okay, well at least I can own this project also and make the same size records and take all of it." That became kind of just the business side of it. Finally, Diplo's at the point where like, "Okay, I have no other brands to put it in. This is going to be my records now." I worked on it as a songwriter—they’ve got verse, chorus, verse, they’re not straight techno records.
20 years in. What are you sick of?
I think going through Heathrow, the liquids. Come on, what is up with that? If I could not travel ever again, that would—I literally had to spend 30 minutes there yesterday because they were looking for this one tiny eye cream at the bottom of a bag. I wish I could teleport to each show. I love being at home in Malibu now, I don’t want to go on tour anymore. I love the when it was on Twitch—I didn't make any money, but it was cool.
When your three boys get to 16, 18 years old and they come to you and say, "Dad, I need advice on what I should pursue," what is the general advice?
I would take them on the road with me, I guess. That’s the only thing I can do. Be like, "This is what I do every day. Just so you know, you think I’m doing some crazy shit, I actually have to wake up, go to the gym, then we’re doing some press then promo, then get ready for the show, we’re going to do dinner with the promoter as a nice favor, then we’re going to the concert." Just to show them what it takes.
Why the gym?
Because I have to go to the gym to make me feel normal. The jet lag for one, but then also traveling. I just need like an hour to sweat every day to feel normal. It’s been like that for the last 10 years.
How on earth does one maintain good romantic relationships when they’re that obsessed?
It’s been hard. I had a girlfriend during the COVID times and she was great energy, she understood my life. Really, you gotta have people that understand your lifestyle because it's so fast-paced. Also, it’s about *you*—you’re the artist, right? It’s different, and I couldn’t figure that out as a young person.
Are you difficult to be in a relationship with?
I think no, because I’m literally just whatever, I’m along for the ride. But then of course I have these kind of Scorpio tendencies where I have zero emotions. There’s like nothing. You’re going to get nothing from me most of the time. I'm brilliant at emotionlessness. I don't show a lot of emotion. I’m just like a poker face. It’s hard to get through my exterior. Is that a good thing? I’ve found people that can deal with it. Probably not a good thing, no.
My previous guest wrote a question for you: "Why do you exist?"
Maybe it is to bring joy and inspiration to people and maybe have new music and exploration into culture. And then in a more spiritual way, it is to just add something to the world that wasn’t there before, because everything you create in the fabric of time and space is something brand new.
Thank you so much for coming here. Your new album, *Diplo*, is remarkable that someone 20 years into their career can create a project that feels so fresh and relevant.
Thank you, sir. Huge pleasure.