the bus stop

Five years after teaming with M.I.A. for the Piracy Funds Terrorism mix and making his excursions to favela funk balls in Brazil, Diplo seems oddly underespected these days. Perhaps it’s because he’s a better DJ and producer than remixer— and in the immediate aftermath of his rise to fame, it was as a remixer that he got his most work. Perhaps it’s because to either those who want pop/youth culture to be somehow segregated— or to those who believe they’ve graduated from collegiate suburban solipsism into something more open-eared and less purely straight and white, yet still remain suspicious of other white kids who also enjoy disco/hip-hop/dancehall/pop— he’s an easy go-to negative representation of young white urbanites and their encroaching interest in global black culture (which, historically, is the definition of hipsterdom right there).

Whatever the case, he and Switch are kicking off summer with an armful of perfect cookout-, top down-ready songs.