Before he had a handful of Grammy nominations and a satirical TV show about his life starring a former resident of Dawson’s Creek, Diplo was one half of the DJ duo Hollertronix. With a series of parties and mixtapes, Hollertronix, which also featured Philadelphia-based DJ Low Budget, made their names by mixing raucous lo-fi club music together with rap and garish pop hits past and present, a sound that found its apex on canonical tapes like 2003’s Never Scared and M.I.A.’s Piracy Funds Terrorism from the following year. On a recent episode of his Diplo and Friends BBC Radio 1Xtra show, Diplo spent an hour revisiting what he calls “that vintage, retro vibe” in a new mix.
If you’re the type of person who has a collection of Baltimore club DJ mix CD-Rs from a decade ago stashed in a shoebox somewhere, or you still occasionally bump Spank Rock’s YoYoYoYoYo for old times’ sake, you’ll find a lot to love here. Within a few minutes, my memory was viscerally triggered by a squelchy synth track sandwiched between an R&B remix and a sampled barrage of Lil Jon shouting “What!”, which turned out to be Diplo’s own “Way More (Johnny Blaze remix),” from 2007. There’s a lot more of that sort of thing–listen to the full mix below via Core News, and check out the tracklist here.