Roaring Through India with Diplo
From trip-hop to dirt tracks, the DJ and producer takes his beats—and his wheels—on an Indian adventure
“TATA TRUCKS LEGIT DON’T GIVE A F*** ABOUT YOU,” SAYS Thomas Wesley Pentz, better known on every dance floor as Diplo. Leaning back on a white couch in his post-show vanity at Goa’s Royal Enfield Motoverse, the 47-year-old DJ has just, less than two hours earlier, roared onto the main stage atop a Royal Enfield Himalayan.
“I never rode a motorcycle before I came to India in 2001,” he recalls. Then 20-something Diplo, visiting India for the first time to meet friends from Daytona, was tricked into buying one of their old Bullets. “I was stuck with it. Riding around, out of money. We had to fix it every time I went to a new city. If I didn’t, I’d have no legs. I crashed that thing so many times. I just rode around India, buying vinyl. Because I was really collecting India’s records back then.”
Some of the records that Diplo took back to London’s Soho district on his way to the States were Dancing Drums by Ananda Shankar, a rare record from ’80s that was sponsored by a tyre company for $200, and 10 Ragas to a Disco Beat by Charanjit Singh.
But it was riding the bike wearing flip-flops, leg guards, a bad helmet without a visor and sunglasses that took him to old vinyl record shops and gave him the real taste of riding in Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and farther to the infield around Ladakh.
After 10 years, the American music producer is back to dirt-biking through the Seven Sisters, with adventures in Shillong and Kaziranga National Park in Assam. “It’s really crazy to go through that on a bike. Like full-on, untouched nature. Rhinos and wildebeests. Some big-ass squirrels, they said, were really rare. There was a giant squirrel that was like a f****** 50-pound squirrel.”
Now, with a new album drop with Major Lazer—who he first collaborated with in 2014 on the hit Lean On—Diplo also has tracks with Indian artists including Rajveer Kaur, Nucleya and Jati Butta. He’s keen to explore more Indian hip hop. “The first time I came, it was all Bollywood soundtracks. Now, ten years later, hip hop has blown up and really put independent music on the map in India. I remember being in Mumbai six years ago, taking a boat to Elephanta Island. The guys working there recognised me and started rapping. I recorded one of them freestyling, put it on my Instagram, and he got signed shortly after. He was a talented freestyle rapper—really the beginning of Hindi real trap. I just wish I could find him now; he put out a record six months later after signing the deal.”
Looking ahead, as new tech also comes to play, Diplo is nonchalant when he remarks, “Those that signed the [AI] petition against us are losers. I don’t like this petition. F*** you. Go be an Uber driver. Like, whatever. Like, don’t be a musician.”
Yet he is equally adamant about embracing new tech. “Every time a new technology comes, you gotta f****** use it. You know, the first person that f****** made an electric guitar, the distortion changed the world, you know? Before that, it was acoustic. So, move with it,” he says eating a slice of pizza.
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