Diplo

• Genre: Instrumental (East Coast)
• Hometown: North Philly
• Diplo Website

About

A few turntablists aside, DJing has always been as much about what you play as how you play it. And Philly-by-way-of-Florida DJ/ producer Diplo, perhaps more than any other artiste from this decade, is adept at locating the sonic correlations between culturally disparate sounds. His sets effortlessly oscillate between Rio de Janeiro's favela funk, U.K. grime, Baltimore club music, Southern crunk, indie-electro and other as-yet-unclassifiable music. The aim is to get feet on the dance floor, but the effort also rewards listeners with new contexts for appreciating music. Diplo has blurred the line between artist and critic, and his mixes bring up questions of propriety, exploitation and the relationship between the third world producers and first world consumers. His debut, 2003's Florida, was a bit of a tepid redux of late-1990s DJ Shadow-influenced trip-hop, but his 2005's Fabric mix is excellent.

- Sam Chennault