Diplo Tickets

Details of Diplo and the Ticket Luck value

Diplo
Diplo is a Philadelphia-based DJ, songwriter and producer. Together with DJ Low Budget, he runs Hollertronix, a club and music collective.

Childhood and Family Life
Diplo was born Thomas Wesley Pentz in Tupelo, MS. Although he lived in a few different cities in the South, he mainly grew up in south Florida. He spent his youth in his father's bait shop, fixated on manatees, alligators, and dinosaurs with hopes of becoming a paleontologist.

However, he wound up pursuing an education in film studies, starting at a couple Florida colleges but then finishing up his undergraduate degree in Philadelphia at Temple University in 2003. Before his move to Philadelphia, Pentz had moved temporarily to Japan to escape daily life in America.

From Japan, he sent a demo tape of his beat concoctions to Will Ashon, founder of U.K. independent hip-hop label Big Dada Records, and once signed to the label, he relocated to Philadelphia.

After hearing one of his songs, M.I.A. approached Pentz when he was DJing one night at the Fabric Club in London. Diplo also toured as M.I.A.'s DJ during her 2005 Arular Tour. He has also worked with fellow Philadelphians Spank Rock, Amanda Blank and Santogold.

To support himself, during and after graduating from Temple, Pentz took on a few different jobs in Philadelphia: social worker, after-school mentor, movie theater employee, and gig-by-gig DJ. He was barely able to pay the rent, and the frustration was stunting his musical development (although he does credit one of his musical epiphanies to the after-school students who exposed him to crunk and Baltimore club music).

Thus, Diplo and like-minded DJ Low Budget pooled their resources to start up their own club nights in Philadelphia, which they branded Hollertronix. It simply began as a fun night of genre-warping dance music, but it blossomed into an underground subculture drawing out crowds from all over the East Coast.

Under the Hollertronix moniker, Diplo and Budget released the highly praised Never Scared mixtape; it was listed as one of the New York Times' top albums of 2003.

Debut Album - Florida
The following year, Big Dada released Diplo's solo debut album, Florida, a more downtempo piece focusing on melody and instrumentals that was a departure from the melee of mashed-up vocals and beats. His unrelenting work ethic produced a considerable number of acclaimed mix CDs and 12 records; however, none of them accumulated more interest and Internet chatter than the 2004 Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol.

1 mixtape that introduced M.I.A. outside of U.K. borders. Developing a yearning to produce more worldly music, he also began to throw his energy behind the Brazilian youth- and street-based music known as funk carioca (also referred to as baile funk), a derivation of Miami bass music.

So, it was no surprise that when he established his own label, Mad Decent Records, around 2005, his first signee was the funk carioca group Bondo do Role. Becoming an internationally recognized artist, Diplo developed a knack for championing new world music that seems natural given his dynamism and boundless musical outlook. ~ Cyril Cordor, All Music Guide.

The Start
Born in Mississippi and raised across the southern United States, Diplo picked up much of the local culture. Baile Funk or Funk Carioca is a special interest for Diplo, which he encountered while DJing at a house party with Hollertronix and he has used for sampled beats in numerous productions. Diplo can be attributed with playing a key role in bringing the musical genre funk carioca from Brazil to the United States.

After traveling to Rio de Janeiro and experiencing the music first hand in 2004, he released a number of baile funk mixes, such as Favela on Blast: Rio Baile Funk 2004 and Favela Strikes Back, which introduced Funk to some listeners in America.

He later went on to co-author the mixtape Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1 with M.I.A, an underground success which included some Baile funk themes. Diplo is additionally in the post-production stage of producing a documentary on Baile Funk, entitled Favela on Blast, which he hopes will continue to bring attention to the genre.

Own Label Company - Mad Decent
In 2006, he started his own label, Mad Decent, signing Brazilian baile funk group Bonde do Role, DJ Blaqstarr. Pentz has been involved in social relief projects, and in 2007, started the Heaps Decent Project with partners Andrew Levins and Nina Agzarian, following gigs on the Winter 2006 Big Day Out festival tour.

Work has included recording songs with inmates at a juvenile detention centre with M.I.A. and he has expressed interest in taking the project to other countries. Diplo is signed to the Ninja Tune imprint Big Dada. He has gone on to remix and work with other artists.

He attended the University of Central Florida and Temple University in Philadelphia. He has also toured with Switch and Justice. He is also set to release an album collaboration with Switch, recorded in Jamaica which has been in production for over a year. He is currently touring throughout 2008.

Conclusion
One thing of which Diplo is credited is that he is never afraid to experiment with new music. With his mash-up mixtapes, he found and created a sound where his musical tastes -- '80s pop, electronica, Dirty South hip-hop, and his major influence, Miami bass music -- intersect.

His attention-grabbing projects Hollertronix, with partner DJ Low Budget, and the Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 mixtape, with elusive British-Sri Lankan MC M.I.A., made a heavy impact on the alternative electro-pop scene, amassing him rave reviews from music critics and indie kids alike, including Spin magazine, which named him DJ of the Year in 2005.