How Diplo Became BTS & BLACKPINK's Music Producer (Ep. 37)
episodePreviously titled “How Diplo Became BTS & BLACKPINK's Music Producer (Ep. 36)” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
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What unconventional path did Diplo take to become a music producer?
If you want Diplo to work on songs, you're not going to get a hit. You're going to get the weird song on your album that's going to help to reinvent you.
You're going to get the song people talk about. One of the most successful men that there is in the music market.
Diplo. The man behind a string of hits.
Justin Bieber, Snoop, Usher. Three-time Grammy winner, 34 platinum records and counting. A track.
has spent 29 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. The most listened to streaming song on Spotify. I didn't know how to make pop music, honestly. I learned it from just trial and error. Like when I met M.I.A., I didn't even have a laptop. Whenever something got big, like Paper Planes, it was like completely random. Yeah, that song's crazy. Listening back to Where You Now, when it was fully finished, we're just in the studio, me and Skrillex, we're like, oh dude, we should play that again. Lina and I did spend a lot of time on that record. I was like, damn, this cannot go out. It has to be perfect. There was a lot of versions of that song. There's like at least 100. That's crazy. My first Billboard number one was actually this Blackpink song.
I've never had one. This is crazy.
I will hold this. Are you down to talk about it?
Yeah, I can talk about it a little bit, I guess. If we have to push it out, it's cool.
How did Diplo's collaboration with M.I.A. shape his music career?
I will hold it as long as needed. The last day of BTS is today. It's like the weirdest session. It's like...
Super excited today because many know him as Diplo. Some know him as part of Major Lazer, LSD, Silk City. His friends know him as Wes, but I've learned to know him as Diplodocus.
Yeah.
I saw a Diplodocus one coming in here.
Yeah, someone gave me that as a gift and I just left it. Now it's so sun damaged, but it's starting to like mutate into something else.
I didn't know that. I always thought they were called long necks.
Yeah, well, Diplodocus means to double beam in Latin. And I don't know why I know that, but it's... So Diplodocus at one point was the largest dinosaur in the world, but then they made so many more advanced dinosaurs. There's one called Argentinosaurus. There's Ultrasaurus, way bigger ones now, but for a while it was the biggest one.
What made you decide on Diplodocus?
The name has a pretty lame story. I had this girlfriend and she had these like really like long prehensile kind of like lips. And she was like, I always looked like a giraffe when she was eating food. And then she said I had the same problem. She called me a Diplodocus. And then I was into dinosaurs. And then I got this tattoo bad when I was like 16. And it was like my logo. And I started making music as Diplodocus.
What year? Like how old were you when you decided on that?
What lessons did Diplo learn from producing for major artists like Justin Bieber and Usher?
16, so 17. It must have been like junior in high school, senior high school. Sick. Yeah. Yeah, probably senior high school. It was only $30 back then to get a tattoo.
Oh, wow. I don't know how much it is now. I've never gotten one.
It's expensive. All my tattoos are really bad. They're like basically biker bar kind of tattoos. They're only one color. They're a lot on my body, but I stopped getting them like a couple years ago.
So the first question I always like to ask, because I think it's a good representation of every artist is, for anyone who doesn't know who you are, what are the songs that they would know you from?
Well, I've done a lot of production for other people, but I really am proud of the things I made in my own projects. Like you mentioned a lot of the names, like Jack U, Major Lazer, Silk City. But Major Lazer, Lean On is a big record. Jack U, Where Are You Now. Recently, Blackpink, Jump. M.I.A., Paper Planes, Beyonce, one of my favorite records, All Night Long, Sia, Elastic Heart. What else have I done?
You did Like Jenny.
Yeah, Like Jenny.
You did a lot of songs that are crazy. You did Look at Me Now.
Yeah, Chris Brown, Look at Me Now. There's a whole era. Usher, Climax, one of my favorite records I did.
That's crazy.
How does Diplo define creativity in music production?
That whole era of like R&B. I became like the R&B guy for a little while in L.A. because I had met Usher through Scooter.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What unconventional path did Diplo take to become a music producer?
0:00–0:57
2
How did Diplo's collaboration with M.I.A. shape his music career?
0:57–2:36
3
What lessons did Diplo learn from producing for major artists like Justin Bieber and Usher?
2:36–3:58
4
How does Diplo define creativity in music production?
3:58–5:31
5
What unique risks did Diplo take in his music projects?
5:31–7:02
6
How did Diplo's experiences with Major Lazer influence his production style?
7:02–8:44
7
What insights does Diplo share about the evolving music industry?
8:44–10:19
8
How does Diplo view the future of music production with AI?
10:19–1:36:18
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Behind The Wall
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