Diplo (2025)

One Liner: Electronic kingpin with generally uninteresting songs BUT now he is angling for that sweet country bumpkin cash as well.

Wikipedia Genre: EDM, pop, moombahton; country pop, trap, EDM
Home: L.A.

Saturday.

Thoughts: He was here two years ago for the inaugural Two Step Inn, but on the poster this is advertised as "DIPLO presents Thomas Wesley" so this may be something different.  If you search for that on Spotify, there is actually three albums under that moniker.  2020's Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley: Chapter 1 - Snake Oil (Deluxe) is an interesting thing.  Every track features a country (or other) star - Orville Peck, Ernest, Morgan Wallen, Leon Bridges, The Jonas Brothers, Cam, Noah Cyrus, Thomas Rhett with Young Thug?, Zac Brown, etc. - but the tunes themselves are only country adjacent but mainly electronica.

As is mentioned in my bigger Diplo background below, Diplo's true name is Thomas Wesley Pentz.  So, this is some sort of nod to his true identity.  The original song released under this thing was the one with Cam, who has been around ACL in the past.

In all honesty, the Leon Bridges track is really pretty.  But of course, it is the Morgan Wallen track that boasts the mega stream count - "Heartless" has 649.7 million streams (and is terrible clicky schlock).  Wallen sounds like Adam Levine or something.  I have no clue why he is so popular.  

So, this is just a country money grab by Diplo.  Like Post Malone going country to grab hold of those ears and dollars.  There you go.  Vol One also includes his remix of "Old Town Road," so that he can capitalize on Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus.  Wikipedia says this about the album: "Chapter 1: Snake Oil was met with generally mixed to unfavorable reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the release received an average score of 46, based on 9 reviews."  Yikes.

Subsequently, he released 2023's Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley: Chapter 2 - Swamp Savant.  Now we get another strata of country folks (and adjacent) with Lily Rose, Sturgill Simpson, Paul Cauthen, Sierra Ferrell, Morgan Wade, Kodak Black and Koe Wetzel, Elle King, and then, in a deeply strange bending of the norms, all of the songs from Volume 1.  Like, after the ninth song on this album, you get the Intro from Volume 1 which features Orville Peck.  So weird.  I guess it would be cool for Sturgill to take the stage with him and reprise their collaboration here, but I wonder if there is any use when Diplo probably just needs to hit play on his laptop?  The Paul Cauthen and Sierra Ferrell track is the best one, but none of this is very good.  Here is the one with Koe Wetzel, who is apparently a man (which was a surprise to me as I just watched this video), and Kodak Black, called "Wasted."  32 million streams.

That is funny, I had literally seen that name written before in articles or charts, and I always thought "Koe" was pronounced like "Zoey" and was a female name.  It is apparently a bearded, heavyset, tattoo canvas country singer.  Weird.

Finally, you get 2024's Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley: The Mixtape, and things get even freaking weirder (if that was possible).  It starts with a remix of the classic 80's Outfield track "Your Love," which is not country by any stretch of the imagination (although the original freaking rules), and then there are a few new songs (or at least not on Vols. 1 or 2) and then he goes through the songs on Volume 2 and remixes them.  Schizo stuff here.  No clue how to react to the piecing of this grouping of songs together, or why they are released under this county-ish moniker, when they appear to just be normal crappy EDM now?

Interestingly, Wikipedia does not mention Vol. 2 or the Mixtape at all.  Just acts like those don't exist.  Did someone get bored of updating his Wikipedia page?  Or did he ask that they not be included because he is embarrassed?  We'll never know.

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Just in case you want more background of Diplo and his music prior to trying to cash in on the country thing, here is my review of that generalized EDM career:

Could have sworn that this guy had already graced us with his presence at a prior ACL fest, but it looks like he only came through with his Major Lazer project in 2014 and 2016.  (I was not in love with that project, I have a feeling my sentiments will be similar for this thing!).  His real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz, and his list of collaborative groups is actually longer than I knew.  He's got Major Lazer, LSD with Sia and Labrinth, Jack U with Skrillex, and Silk City with Marc Ronson.

He got his start with M.I.A., after she hunted him down and asked him to work with her on some of her music.  He worked with her on "Paper Planes," which is bound to be her top hit. My kids even know it.  Since then, he's produced stuff for everyone from Madonna, Beyonce, and Gwen Stefani to Snoop Dogg, Beiber, Bruno Mars, and Bad Bunny.  More interestingly, just because an electronic guy with a one word name feels like it should be a German or Swedish dude or something.  However, he is originally from Mississippi and lived for a long time in Florida.  He attended the University of Central Florida for a bit, and then graduated from Temple University.  Which is such an odd background for a massively popular electro DJ.

The weird thing about all of that is that it seems like he isn't even really making his own music, he's just collaborating with other people and producing their music.  I guess that means he just does a DJ set of his own tunes?  Like, on his Spotify page, none of the music just lists his name.  They all have other names listed in the artist slot.  I think I found two songs without other collaborators, plus most of the instrumental 2020 album MMXX (which has super low streams).  So, it is weird to provide his "songs," because they're gonna seem like someone else's songs.  Oh well.  Top streamer with almost a billion is "Where Are U Now," with Justin Beiber and Skrillex.  This is the Jack U project.  964.3 million streams.

Just sounds like a Beiber joint.  And a deeply boring one at that.  The freaky little flute sound, which is probably Beiber's voice with modified pitch or something, is the only thing interesting in there.  Also, that video has over 1.2 BILLION streams.  Sheesh.  So, but if he plays that song at the fest, is her pretty much just going to play the song off the album so that the singing part is in it?  How does that work?  The 2018 song "Electricity" is the second biggest streamer with 522.3 million.  It features both Marc Ronson and Dua Lipa (which I guess means this is a Silk City song?):

Meh.  Yeah, another massive pop song with an EDM beat.

I've sat through a bunch of this by now, and it's just fine.  If you've read my previews in the past, then you know EDM is never my thing, really.  Like, "On My Mind" is playing right now, and it's not a terrible song, but it just feels like nothing special.  A throbbing beat and a woman repeating herself over the top for 3 minutes.  But that is his 6th most popular track right now.

Let's just try digging into the newest album - 2022's Diplo.  He's got guest verses from Leon Bridges and Busta Rhymes, which is interesting.  On the other hand, every song has someone on it, and I haven't heard of most of them.  Amtrac, RY X, andhim, Kareen Lomax, to name a few.  The opener, with Miguel, is a deeply generic EDM track that repeatedly exhorts me to not forget his love.  The Leon Bridges one is likewise a very uninteresting song, no matter how lovely his voice is on top of it.  "Promises" 100% sounds like something that you could convince me is a song from 2000 that was popular in London but didn't make it to the States until now.  Just nothing there.  The interesting thing about the Busta collab is that it doesn't even seem like Busta is involved.  His voice is either a sample loop or he is just sitting in a booth repeating the same phrase 3,005 times over two and a half minutes.  "Let You Go" is annoying because it uses the first half of the call/response thing in DJ Rob Bass' "It Takes 2," but never gives the pleasure and release of the second half that is supposed to be there.  That drives me mad.  The top track is one with something called "SIDEPIECE," with 195.7 million streams.

The weird talking over the top in that video is not in the real song.  Just FYI.  There was a great Tweet the other day saying: "dance music in the 90’s was incredible, just a woman putting her entire soul into a beat that had every cell in your body vibrating… then here comes some jacked baldhead dude with a deep voice rapping the stupidest shit you’ve ever heard.  You’d be in a trance at the skating ring having this out of body experience and then “(comically deep voice) it’s night time and my love is hot, I dance, you dance, we dance a lot”"  Hilarious.  I almost wish that these songs at least had that to lean on.  Instead, they are just uninteresting beats and singers.  I need the bad rapping.

Sincerely doubt I'd watch this.