(Check out this long-form opinion piece I dropped on EDMTunes this week. Give credit where credit is due and hit them up for all of the latest news & info on diplo. In addition to every other DJ ever of course.)
The EDM blogosphere has been obsessed with diplo’s latest “faux pas” this week, for possibly/maybe getting booed. He played Turn Down For What (a Billboard #4/#1 Dance Hit) at Robot Heart, a Burning Man camp/soundstage. Pulse Radio & Consequence of Sound were two of the first sites to break the story, which metastasized and quickly became the only thing dance music internet was talking about. A bunch of armchair DJs & bloggers gleefully complained about how diplo had no crowd sense, didn’t “get” Burning Man, had no idea what minimal tech house (the scene Robot Heart caters to) was, and on and on. By the time Burning Man attendees woke up in the default world Wednesday morning, the internet had exploded about this to the point that you could be convinced nothing else actually happened at Burning Man except Turn Down For What. While editors, bloggers and site admins high-fived each other for getting the scoop, the important people (i.e. the burners who were there, <insert famous person here>) offered commentary on why he did what he did. There’s a whole lot of meta-discussion about how this track selection was a mistake, which I find to be taken at this point, something just assumed. Like, OBVIOUSLY that wasn’t the correct choice. Frankly, the idea that this was a mistake is hilariously incorrect. Anyone making it clearly has no idea just how big diplo has gotten and how much of a social media master he’s become over the years.
Terry Gotham 