Diplo

Philadelphia-based DJ, producer, and songwriter Diplo is a veritable musical renaissance man, combining styles such as electronica, Southern hip hop, 80's pop, and Miami bass into one genre-defying sound experiment. In addition to his many musical hats, he can also add label head, humanitarian, and now Grammy nominee to his growing list of achievements.

Born ThomasWesley Pentz in Tupelo, Mississippi, Diplo, short for Diplodocus, grew up mainly in South Florida before eventually relocating to Philadelphia. There, he teamed up with DJ Low Budget to form the music and club collective Hollertronix, which effectively launched the mash-up underground subculture. Also around this time, he released his first full-length solo release Florida (Big Dada) , a sprawling mélange of dance music styles inspired by the pioneering work of DJ Shadow and Tricky.

While DJing one night in a London nightclub, Diplo caught the attention of British-Sri Lankan rap star M.I.A., resulting in their musical (and, for a while, romantic) partnership. They collaborated on the seminal mash-up mix tape Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol 1 , and toured together in 2005 in support of her debut album Arular . Diplo also wrote and produced the track "Paper Planes," off her 2008 release Kala , which has earned him a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year.

In addition to performing his high-octane DJ sets across the globe, Diplo runs his own record label, Mad Decent, which he founded in 2006 as a way to import various world music genres into the United States, and has a non-profit artist development program for underprivileged musicians in Australia called Heaps Decent. He has also produced remixes of songs by artists such as Radiohead, Gwen Stefani, John Legend, Feist, Hot Chip, DJ Shadow and Spoon.

With his boundless energy and his never-ending quest to discover any and all musical possibilities, there appears to be no limit to what Diplo can accomplish.

–Paul Mauceri