Pages tagged “diplo”

It sucks to be short at Bonnaroo. It sucks to be short at any concert, really. And at my meager stature of 5'3'', my typical view is all dreadlocks, all the time. With a year's practice, though, I've nearly mastered the art of squeezing through the throngs of unshowered neo-hippies.The key is to start from the sides and angle in toward the front, shamelessly taking every pathway that presents itself when the folks suffering from bad trips decide to exit the tents for much-needed timeouts. In the past, it's gotten me inches away from Lupe Fiasco and Iron and Wine, to name a few.

Following in the wake of bands like Grizzly Bear and Wilco, DJ collaboration Major Lazer is currently streaming its upcoming release on MySpace.

With their debut album, Guns Don't Kill People, Lazers Do, out June 16, long-time DJ collaborators and producers Diplo and Switch are gearing up to bring their new beats throughout the U.S. and Europe this Summer.

First came Edgar Allan Poe. Then, after a long interval indeed, came the double-whammy of The Wire and Michael Phelps. And now, in a sign of its possible ascendance from the depths of the cultural abyss, the fair city of Baltimore has given us the girlish rapper Rye Rye, who in her short life has already become muse to Blaqstarr and protégée to M.I.A., and whose sassy rhymes are reason enough to get excited about 2009.

Here are four reasons to get on the bandwagon now:

1. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (Beggars/XL/4AD)

Check out Paste's top 50 albums of 2008...

With a summer tour already in full swing, M.I.A. co-conspirator Diplo would have earned a month or two of downtime come fall. Yet, like his music, he soldiers on in one long crunky grind, gliding across states and continents as effortlessly as he mixes songs and genres. His new outing is a tour for his label, Mad Decent, titled as such. Joining him in this quest for the freshest beats will be post-punk primas Abe Vigoda who, while not on the Mad Decent label, are nonetheless mad decent themselves.

In the East London neighborhood of Shoreditch, a music festival called Stag and Dagger has invited more than 100 artists to perform on a single night in a variety of venues, one of which—the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen—is positively convulsing right now, with hundreds of thronging bodies all scrunched into a black-walled, back-room performance space. The evening’s headliner is a Philadelphia DJ named Wes Pentz, who is billed on the poster as Diplo, and whose set is driving one young reveler, in the heat of the moment, to strip down to his boxer shorts and dance.