This is what a Libra fanboy moment looks like: praise and scorn, both sides of an issue that doesn’t even require one…

I’ve heard Diplo praised and denigrated for traveling around the globe, looking for what has been described as that “100% pure, world ghetto party sound”*, from the hoods of Chicago, to the wards of NOLA, to the favelas of Brazil, and for doing all this from the privelaged standpoint of a white dude, but I love it. I’ve seen dude put on secret shows in Chicago with Flosstradamus and Ghetto Division, and bounce around NOLA (no pun intended) with Rusty Lazer and DS@STER and DJ Musa, actively promoting and absorbing all these hyperlocal sounds.

*That quote, the “pure, world ghetto party sound”, is not a quote from Diplo, and it’s more of a paraphrase than a quote, I think from someone on metafilter [because I refuse to even pretend to hold myself up to any “journalistic” standards and do a goddamn google search], but I think it’s apt, meaning in essence, that he’s looking for party music that is aesthetically pure, if dirty, untouched by the mainstream, untouched by money.

Diplo produced Nicky Da B’s new track “Express Yourself”, a bounce track whose video properly depicts that blending of scenes that’s happening in New Orleans right now, with some intense rippling booties set against backdrops of Bywater art walls and 8th(?) ward bodegas, with some kids who shouldn’t be out and dogs wandering around off their leashes, and unflappingly laid back G’s and insanely hyperactive freakfuck whitefolks.

Nicky Da B’s visual style is as loud as his music, thug mugs and shit-eating grins and militant pastels. There’s definitely some genderfuckery involved, and he occupies that same space as artists like Katey Red and Big Freedia, but he’s too masculine for that quickly-becoming-unnecessary qualifier of “sissy” bounce.

Check out Nicky Da B online at NickyDaB.com and check out the parties we’ve done with him on GlitterGuts!

In Dani Deahl’s fun, nonsensical new track with Oh Snap! (appropriately titled “Diplo Hates You”), Diplo and his weird, online cult-of-personality take center-stage, with Diplo as a petulant chairman-of-the-board who needs a taste of his own medicine, by which I mean, a raucous ass party to take him down a peg.

It’s a fun song, full of weird bon mots like “Diplo hates your shoes. He’s got Kanye West makin his shoes custom” and “Diplo hates your mailbox. Who even uses a mailbox nowadays when we all got compooters.” And then for some reason there’s headless gorilla suits and Pete Wentz. It’s not Mozart, but it’s a fun few minutes, and the video has a classic nineties Aphex Twin feel, minus Richard D. James and Chris Cunningham’s penchant for grotesqueries.

Check out Dani Deahl online at DaniDeahl.com and some of the parties we’ve done with her at GlitterGuts

And if you’re in Lansing, MI, Lexington, KY, or Columbia, MO, look out for us at the Redbull Just FKN Rage tour with Dani Deahl and Zebo, doing silly shit all through April.