E-Mail This Article to a Friend Hollertronix on ice Diplo says farewell to DJing BY CHRIS NELSON
	Diplotronix   Five Diplo Jawns You Missed 1 Thingamajawn | Money Studies seven-inch, 2003 | A sweltering summery single released alongside Never Scared that mines golden horns from the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s "Theme De Yo Yo." 2 Banned in Libya | Turntable Lab DVD, 2004 | The Cure’s "Close to Me" battles with Juvenile’s "Ha" while visuals from video artist System D-128 blaze by. Now out of print, but much of the footage appears on a bonus DVD that accompanies Florida. 3 AEIOU, Pt.2 | no label CD-R, 2004 | Pentz and fellow Philly boy Tony Tripledouble compile a 70-plus minute mix of top-notch psych-rock from the bottom of their dusty crates. 4 Michael Giacchino, "The Glory Days (Diplo Remix)" | Walt Disney Records, 2004 | Diplo gets Mr. Incredible and the family club-ready on this bounce track from the MP3-only Incredibles: Remixed EP. 5 Gwen Stefani, "Hollaback Girl (Hollatronix Remix)" | Universal CD single, 2005 | At under three minutes, a brief but fulfilling Baltimore house reworking that makes Mrs. Rossdale’s shit really bananas.

Wes Pentz is best known as a DJ called Diplo, but right now he’s giving me tips on how to steal jeans from Urban Outfitters. Two years ago, while he was earning a living as a social worker at a North Philadelphia elementary school, he did a lot of shoplifting. He says it was easy — not because he was a master thief but because pilfering jeans was the last thing anyone expected a young, middle-class white dude to do.

Well, maybe not the last thing.

The last thing anyone would have expected out of a young Wes Pentz is that he’d start a series of successful Philly club nights dubbed Hollertronix, school the hipsters of America in untamed strains of ’hood music from Dirty South hip-hop to South American ghetto funk, and in the process generate international buzz for a female Sri Lankan MC/pop sensation. But that’s precisely what Diplo has done, and he’s had a blast along the way. So why on earth is he quitting?

That’s what I’m trying to figure out at 1 am as he IM’s me from a hotel room in Atlanta about his frustrations and future plans. In between conversational outbursts, he’s sending half-completed MP3 snippets and unreleased tracks, the detritus of a dude whose hustle is on permanent overdrive. The man seems a bit faded, but not enough that he can’t type straight, and certainly not enough to make me doubt the unexpected announcement that he’s leaving the scene that’s been so good to him — a scene that’s spread from Philly to NYC and beyond over the past three years.

"I’m trying to just stop DJing, ’cause it sucks the life out of you if you’re a truly creative person," he tells me. Since founding Philadelphia’s Hollertronix as a series of monthly parties with fellow DJ Low Budget in 2003, Diplo’s genre-splicing style has earned him gigs from Toronto to Tokyo. This month alone will find him in Chicago, Stockholm, Dublin, and Tel Aviv. But in between mapquests, he’ll be in his home studio assembling an as-yet-untitled mix that he says is his goodbye to this hectic lifestyle. He may be quitting the decks, but he wants to make one last masterpiece. "It’s gonna be a farewell to DJing, ’cause I started a lot of this shit kids are doin’. So I’m tryin’ to crank it out on some ‘Y’all can’t fuck with this, but keep makin’ mash-ups anyway’ kinda mixtape to end it."

If Diplo sounds cocky, he has a right to be. Along with DJ Ayres and NYC crew the Rub, Hollertronix is the gold standard, the king of the kitchen-sink style that’s permeating so many East Coast DJ nights right now. The debut Hollertronix mixtape, Never Scared, is regarded as a classic despite being only a few years old and virtually impossible to find. (The mix, a blend of everything from the Cars to crunk, violated copyrights like Negativland off their Ritalin; it went out of print soon after its release.) Along the way, Diplo has attracted an unusual audience that cuts across genres and seems willing to follow him anywhere. Diplo’s Favela on Blast mixtape popularized "favela funk," an esoteric Brazilian dance music that had been virtually unknown outside non-Portuguese-speaking audiences.

But zeitgeist directing is tricky, and not everything Diplo’s done has been so well received. His debut solo album, Florida (Big Dada), was released last year to mixed reviews, and for good reason: it’s a major departure from the Hollertronix style. Composed instead of spliced, it’s also a concept album, a document that has less to do with a DJ named Diplo than with the young Wesley Pentz and his experiences growing up in the title state’s swamps. With a few exceptions, Florida offers a murky mélange (you heard me: it’s classier than a mix) of downtempo beats and bass more likely to move you to tears than to move your ass. Fans didn’t want it. Critics didn’t get it.

"People don’t like Florida," Diplo admits. But as his jet-setting has progressed, he’s realized it’s even more important as a memento than as an artistic statement. "It was a long time in the making, since I was like 17, so about five tracks I really feel like I want to take with me to the grave. I’m glad I made that record, ’cause the more I go places, I gotta recognize that I did that out of purely personal reasons. That record is the sound of where I grew up, what went down in my mind, what I heard with the first girl I fell in love with. There’s really something that’s just magical about all of it. Or at least I felt that. And then people try and tell me it’s not. Maybe it’s like some Van Morrison Astral Weeks shit. After I become a complete drunk, at least I made that."

When Diplo abandons the decks later this year, his prime objective will be a follow-up to Florida. Although he describes the album he’s about to make as the one he thinks everyone wants — "Florida but with mad club music and epic shit" — it’s also clear he’s got thoughts of drifting even farther into left field. One idea is to spend a few months hopping freight trains recording "all on my laptop, plugged in at rest stops and meeting kids and workin’ with them on the streets." His itinerary over the next couple of months runs from working with dancehall star Mr. Vegas to remixing Bloc Party’s next single, "Helicopter." But first he’s gotta finish up what’s sure to be his most eagerly waited release (it’s expected next month): M.I.A.’s Piracy Funds Terrorism 2 mixtape. The first Piracy was the most talked-about mixtape of 2004, and it generated enough street-level buzz to propel M.I.A. from white-label unknown to major-label covergirl. The heat is definitely on.

In the wake of Diplo’s success, the Hollertronix gospel has reached likeminded DJ duos like Providence’s Certified Bananas and Paris’s Radioclit. Inevitably, too, haters have sprung up. Critics have labeled him a cultural thief who takes music like baile and crunk — supposedly made for and by lower- and middle-class minorities — and repackages them for white America. The New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones even accused him of a duplicity that bordered on a new form of minstrelsy. It’s an old argument, but it isn’t one that seems to bother him much. Listening to his mixes or watching him spin, you can tell that the only items on Diplo’s agenda are flexing his skills and making people dance.

"Why would someone be mad at me for that?" he types, as the sun starts to come up. "Music is for people. Who’s to say what’s too cool for people? I’d rather get paid five bucks to DJ a birthday party for some lil’ kid than play at a posh party any day."

Really?

"I meant 50 bucks."