Diplo Quotes

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.

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.

It sucks for me, because now I have to not be as crazy as I am on the Internet. Which totally sucks, because it's not going to be fun anymore. But the repercussions are really bad. Like, Taylor Swift fans are really crazy. They threatened to murder me and stuff. It's really bizarre, and disgusting. They're the worst people in the world.

It's never too late to change your luck

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I see the value in every kind of music, even country.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

The monsters in my head are scared of love ...

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

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 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.

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

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.

If anyone takes me seriously then they actually must have a problem .. Music is fun its not algebra.

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.

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.

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

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.

Someone should make a Kickstarter to get Taylor Swift a booty.

I think kids have got to learn how to work with what's happening, work with social, work with everything. To complain about how things aren't the way they used to be ...

And I'm scared. I'm scared for my life.

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

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.

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.

Attention. That's all girls want.

America's definitely a trendsetter, and it's where a lot of information goes out to the rest of the world.

Because I can go to Vegas and make the money I do, I'm able to spend a lot more time producing music that I love.

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

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.

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.

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.

Spread ya legs, arch your back. Go up and down, and make it clap.

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.

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

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