Diplo: "Labels just want to jump on EDM dick"

[Cupe]

Story by Katie Cunningham

If there’s one man you can count on to consistently deliver memorable one-liners, it’s Diplo. Sure enough, when the ever-acerbic Mad Decent boss sat down with The Huffington Post last week, his opinion on all things label-related didn’t come sugarcoated. A few days before he opened up about how Baauer’s chart-topping, viral hit Harlem Shake “saved” Mad Decent from going under (“a year ago we were going to fold because we couldn’t figure out how to make money,” he told the same outlet at Coachella over the weekend), Wesley Pentz talked through the label’s game plan.

“We are a label that exists on the internet, so when something like that happens, we know how to incubate it and make it go crazy,” Diplo told Huff Post about that YouTube-dominating meme. “There are no rules to running a label anymore. We have, like, seven people working for us, but Interscope probably didn’t even have a record as big as Harlem Shake last year and they have thousands working for them.”

“Interscope dropped Major Lazer when we asked for money for a video for Get Free, and we sold 150,000 copies of that song,” he continued. “So that just proves that labels have no idea what’s going on anymore. They just want to jump on EDM dick – shit that sucks because they don’t feel the music but think it’s happening. We are in these streets.” As he puts it: “When it comes to dance music on the fringe, there’s no A&R that can teach you or guide you.”

But dance music’s renaissance man wasn’t done dropping quotable gems yet. “Dance music is so interchangeable,” Pentz added. “There’s not a lot of face to it. It’s a bunch of Dutch DJs with the same haircut. You go see a dance stage at a fucking dance festival and I’m bored out of my fucking mind. That’s not going to last very much longer, because kids see that it’s the same shit every single time."

[russell]

You go see a dance stage at a fucking dance festival and I’m bored out of my fucking mind. That’s not going to last very much longer, because kids see that it’s the same shit every single time."

It's been going not too bad since the early 90's so I dunno what the fuck he's talking about.

[mattus123]

yea i dunno if i can agree with him on all of that

[legunner]

I agree with most of what he's saying. I think he just sees the industry as grossly over saturated. I know way too many dillon francis, shm, nicky romero wanna be's.

[Tomy]

yeah all true and I honestly don't know how any labels make money these days.

[GREMM1S]

Diplo is such a wank lol