Diplo Quotes

When I first started producing, all I had was this little crappy sampler called a S20, which had, like, a minute sample time. 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. I was a schoolteacher for a while, and it was the worst job.

- Diplo

I was a schoolteacher for a while, and it was the worst job.

- Diplo

I put out this record on Ninja Tune called 'Florida' when I was about 22. And at the same time, I was DJ'ing and beginning to mix stuff up and promote shows in Philadelphia and New York and my own parties and make mixtapes, put out bootleg white labels.

- Diplo

Dancehall has always had a homophobic problem, but you go to dance parties in Jamaica, and some of the biggest dancers are kinda gay, just not outspoken about it. Dancehall was the first kind of music I was DJing, and it was always more about the rhythm.

- Diplo

Every day is work for me, but it's also a party. I'm the luckiest guy in the world.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

Classic rock, psychedelic rock - I like to dig up old music and see what I can get influenced by.

- Diplo

To me, rap music is bigger than who's the coolest rapper, the biggest rapper. It's everything about your personality.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

I just love to collaborate with people who take my ideas real serious, and they don't put up walls around them.

- Diplo

The traditional media never gave Bernie Sanders the time of day. But he went viral the same way hip-hop and new dances go viral. And I'm part of that culture.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

Snapchat's the place where people are hearing and learning about culture.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

I was playing hip-hop when everybody else was playing the giant rave music.

- Diplo

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 think Usher is a bonafide superstar because he's very honest in his songs, and people can relate to that, especially in the feelings and textures of his voice. He is one of the best.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

When I worked with M.I.A., who was, like, the coolest person back then, she was just a girl I met on the Internet. Or even when I met Azealia Banks on Myspace, I never thought, 'Oh, she's cool.' I just loved what she was doing. So I've always been like that. And I think, as a producer, that's what you've gotta do.

- Diplo

I think you can't really beat Bob Marley, especially the stuff he was doing with Lee Perry. Just that kind of clubby and dark and crazy stuff, even with the Wailers... Some of the songwriting was phenomenal.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

Klaus from the Teddybears, Bloodshy and Avant and Mike Snow, they've done lots of Britney Spears production. They went backwards from production to being in a band, which might be cool. I might do that, too, one day.

- Diplo

I never got tied down to any social scene. I was just into creating stuff. And I think, even today, that's how I'm able to work and move between so many different genres - I want to be part of what's happening, I want to make new things.

- Diplo

Every time I want to impress someone about samples and hip-hop, I play 'Portrait of Tracy.' It's one of the greatest bass players ever doing a whole composition with only the two harmonics of electric bass; then a three-second loop in it became every great R&B song in five-year intervals.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

90 percent of the records I make are spontaneous.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

A lot of DJs don't realize they're here today and gone tomorrow. They're literally taking jets to every show. It's crazy how much money they're spending.

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People like me, DJs and producers, have a bigger say and a bigger voice than we've ever had before.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

I love Marvin Gaye. I like jazz and all that stuff.

- Diplo

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.

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You can never judge any music by their audience. That's the main reason people in England have a prejudice against someone like Skrillex. You judge people by their music. That's always been first and foremost.

- Diplo

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.

- 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.

- Diplo

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?

- Diplo

If anybody is excited about my music, that's all I care about. I care about people who are excited about new music.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

Selling MP3s or physical copies, it's still cool, but I think it's slowly becoming outdated to where people just want to build a culture.

- Diplo

I'm not a superstar, per se... but I'm a musical creator - a producer in the same vein as what Quincy Jones was, or Pharrell and Timbaland were.

- Diplo

All I know is don't ever get into a feud with Taylor Swift. She has, like, 50 million people that will die for her. You can't step into that arena.

- Diplo

Gucci is a rapper that doesn't try and be anything he's not - he's straight up. Yeah, maybe it's ironic and all, but I'm just a fan and have been one since day one. Gucci Mane is the cool uncle I never had, even though I'm sure I'm probably older than him.

- Diplo

Man, I don't got any real fans. Just fair-weather ones and groupies.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

I was in Fort Lauderdale from about age 7 to 14. And that's where I learned the most about music. My favorite DJ was this guy named DJ Laz and the Miami bass guys. I was super into, like, Arthur Baker, that kind of stuff.

- Diplo

I've realised that if I aim for a successful record, I probably won't have any success. But if I keep making weird things, then hopefully the audiences will come to us.

- 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.

- Diplo

It's funny - some producers ask me, 'Man, how do you work on a Bieber record? That would kill my career.' I can work on any record there is as long as they are good records and you're pushing things forward.

- Diplo

When we think about big records, a lot of producers are thinking of how to make it as standard as possible. I think those days are gone. I think you have to surprise the audience in 2015.

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I used to be a record collector. Mark Ronson, Questlove and I used to be part of, like, a record-trading crew.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo

I've been in jail a couple times. I've been caught shoplifting.

- Diplo

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.

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I never became a producer to go to parties or wear nice clothes or put sales figures on my Wiki page.

- Diplo

When it comes down to helping kids, a lot of ways for education to move forward is through music because that's exciting to kids. Reading books and going to a bookstore is not that exciting.

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If I make a song, and it's my song, like 'Lean On,' we're going to make money off the synchs, the Spotify, and we get to headline festivals on it. That's the model I want to explore.

- Diplo

In Philly, there are a lot of social programs. If you have a degree, you can go and apply. I was basically a social worker, but I became sort of a sub teacher in a special program, helping kids with reading or math. But we would also do plays, learn about music... We were doing lots of fun stuff, but that was such hard work.

- Diplo

We first started to rent old VFW halls in Philly or whatever; we rented kegs and did parties and played our own music. We had to find a way to do it because nobody else was helping us, and I think now it's important to keep those dialogues happening, those parties happening.

- Diplo

PC Music is a really post-modern attempt at pop.

- Diplo

I appreciate people who are authentic. Someone who just wants to be cool, I can tell when their intentions aren't right.

- Diplo

I wish I played guitar so I could start a band with great musicians.

- Diplo

You always have to evolve - the minute you start building a moat around you to keep yourself safe, you're going to lose.

- Diplo

Good bands won't get famous anymore unless they get really lucky.

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Sometimes I make more money in a weekend than my grandpa made in a year.

- Diplo

Even in America, we're not a huge act by any means, Major Lazer.

- Diplo

Man, the only thing that's important is what is due tomorrow. I don't care what it is as long as it's good.

- Diplo

My first production job after M.I.A. was actually the xx, but they didn't like what I did, and at the end of the day, we used their demos.

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I'm trying to always do new things because if you stay behind and fight the future, you are just going to be left behind.

- Diplo

You can never figure out what the future sounds like. As soon as you make it, it's the past.

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K-pop is a weird term because K-pop has everything - rap records - it's very pop-sounding; there are really boy-band-sounding records.

- Diplo

People don't know exactly what I do; they just know I'm 'cool.'

- Diplo

Man, I don't read books! I just read a bunch of 'Walking Dead' comics. I don't even read comics, but zombies are something I just can't get enough of.

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All of the best songs happen on a whim.

- Diplo

The best gift you can give to a girl is your devotion, not some Louboutins. But buy those if you're busy, for sure.

- Diplo

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.

- Diplo