“DECENT WORK FOR DECENT PAY” Diplo

I love newness. I’m slightly obsessed with it. In music, it’s when you sense that moment of genius when the old forms begin to morph and evolve into something that didn’t exist before. It’s easy to miss, since the process involves elements which are familiar to us. All art is derivative and so, unless you haven’t been paying attention for a decade or two, there usually isn’t a definite moment of jarring disorientation. But we know we’re hearing something just a little different, the language has changed, the elements have been put together in new ways.

Not just any artist can push this process forward. Diplo, the Philadelphian dance music pioneer is one of those artists. As a DJ and producer, founder of the famous Philly club night, Hollertronix, and his own label, Mad Decent, he is the genius behind unstoppable jammy-jams like Santogold’s Creator as well as Newsflash, one of several versions of the Diplo Rhythm which keep surfacing with new vocalists.

He’s done painfully hip remixes for artists like M.I.A. (who he’s also dated), Block Party and Spankrock, not to name a million others and has built an impressive resume in just a few short years. Decent Work for Decent Pay is a somewhat comprehensive compilation of original works like Newsflash along with many of his remixes, like M.I.A.’s Paperplanes.

What’s fresh about a Diplo rhythm is its willingness to party with any genre. Depending on your context, he’s either a Hip Hop producer, a tweaker of hipster electronica, a forger of futuristic Dancehall riddims or a champion of Brazilian Baile Funk and seems to claim as much legitimacy in one as the next. As with most such innovators, his compositions are hot precisely for their fun, no-rules, quality. Beats are built around absurdly twisted vocal samples; comedic, compelling or deeply annoying depending on your taste. There are old school drum loops chopped up in spastic new ways, jittery and anxious like UK Grime but always managing to be euphoric and fun. You can hear a dance floor crowd go ballistic in your head to these stripped down beats and loops, retro-futuristic and irresistibly ridiculous.

Note: the downloadable version has about half the tracks that the CD version does, so try to find one of those shiny little discs people used to buy in record stores, whatever those are.