I've probably got the most eclectic social media there is because it literally goes from hanging out with my son at a park, to, like, Madonna's house, to a rave in Africa.
— Diplo
I used the name Diplo at one show when I was really young, and it just stuck. I never meant to keep it. But it's kinda cool.
That's what I care about is the people I work with and representing them and helping to make their music apparent for the rest of the world.
I was never good at scratching, but I was good at collecting old records. Florida was a great place for that, because it's where people go to die.
If kids can have some sort of social responsibility, that's cool. But if they're not actually having social responsibility, and they're kind of hiding behind it, that's kind of useless, or even worse.
I was a schoolteacher for a while, and it was the worst job.
The best gift you can give to a girl is your devotion, not some Louboutins. But buy those if you're busy, for sure.
I have heard, 'Never go to bed angry,' and that makes sense. Unless you're always checking yourself, a grudge or something small can break apart a relationship, and you start to forget what is so amazing about your partner.
New York is so serious about the creation of work. Everything is happening so fast, it feels like there's another studio, another session on every block, and I love that.
I wish I played guitar so I could start a band with great musicians.
People don't know exactly what I do; they just know I'm 'cool.'
Bieber's so talented, he needs to just be himself and be by himself and work on his craft. He has a lot of people around; he has to find the right team to help him make something that's going to stand alone.
Money, for me, is just to create bigger and better things. A lot of guys in the deejaying world flaunt it, but I don't see any use in that. I don't need anything. I live in hotels. Most of my clothes I get for free. I like to invest in ideas. In people.
There are opportunities that I have because I'm a white dude, and it's controversial because that's just the way that the world we live in kind of is.
The kids that are making the ghetto stuff I can't even reach are the ones that are inspiring me to play music for the other kids in the city they don't even know about. If I don't get those kids making music, there won't be an original kid DJing like me in five to 10 years.
I grew up in Florida in different cities. I was born in Mississippi. My parents moved a lot, so I moved to Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, all through the South. But my family's roots were from central Florida, like Daytona Beach area, so we ended up moving there.
I was playing hip-hop when everybody else was playing the giant rave music.
Attention. That's all girls want.
New York feels like the whole city is into dance music. That's not how it felt when I was younger. There was more of a hipster scene.
How mad would it actually be to do an 'Avatar' type animation film, but about something mundane like a Winn-Dixie cashier's day at work? That'd be something else, I think.
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.
It's cool to play the guitar, but to me it's even cooler to scratch a guitar backward and forward, to manipulate it with a turntable. Guitars can't do that themselves.
I think one of the reasons I've been successful is that I can see things before other people do. I've always been able to do it.
As a DJ, it's my job to break new music. And instead of it just being the stuff that's coming from the major labels or the big pop records, I've always gravitated to something that's just different, you know?
You just have to do; you can't live by the rules of what you're supposed to do. I think every person is good at something, and you just have to push that forward.
I was making crappy beats since I was, like, 17 or 18, using Florida rappers, where I'm from. Then I started DJ'ing because I just wanted to have a new job.
Dance music is so interchangeable. There's not a lot of face to it. It's a bunch of Dutch DJs with the same haircut.
Every day is work for me, but it's also a party. I'm the luckiest guy in the world.
As a youngster, I lived in Philly for 12 years, and I would go up to New York to do shows and make money - it was the dream to maybe be able to survive there and live there.
When I was fifteen, I used to run around reading 'Adbusters' and dumpster diving, trying to find ways to make the U.S. government unwind into chaos through hardcore punk and metal.
I do a lot of collaborations and productions, whether it's Switch or Steve Aoki or No ID or Will Smith or No Doubt - I 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.
