Doing Diplo

The DJ-mogul-cowboy-dad is all grown up and ready to party.

- By Allison P. Davis

The plan was to spend the afternoon in a hot tub with Diplo. The activity was offered to me. I didn’t even ask. But it seemed like fate. Like, of course it was the only way to interview an omnipresent DJ producer who’d just recently started posting a lot of high-caliber shirtless pictures on social media and posing in Calvin Klein underwear ads. It was easy enough to picture: a galaxy of chest freckles in which float planets of bad tattoos, abs like freshly grouted bricks, muscular thighs, skater-boy-length blond hair, all wet. I chose my bathing suit with care.

But the conditions for a hot-tub party weren’t optimal: L.A. was locked in 98-degree weather, and nobody (besides me) was willing to suffer heatstroke. Plus, Diplo had other things to do, which is how we end up in the last place you’d expect to find him: a rent-by-the-hour conference room at a co-working space, where the snacks are free and the water bottles are branded with a pet start-up’s logo. Apparently, Monday-morning meetings are a fact of life even for DJs.

Diplo needs to meet with the writers’ room for the relaunch of