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On the newest episode of And The Writer Is… with Ross Golan, Diplo pulls the curtain all the way back on the real origin story of Major Lazer — and himself as a solo act.
The episode, Ep. 234: “Diplo | Branding Decides Who Wins” (released January 6, 2026), plays like a spoken memoir. Diplo recalls Vybz Kartel walking into the studio at the last possible second, freestyling a record, and accidentally igniting an early spark of what would become the Diplo universe.
“Like my first session ever was at Larry Gold Studios with Vybz Kartel…”
Not his first dance record. Not his first album session. His first studio session ever.
Diplo continues with a detail-heavy story : “Because he had played at this club in Philly, West Philly, big Jamaican community. I was like a huge… I was like a big Dancehall fan at the time, because I just liked Dancehall, grew up in Florida.”
At the time, Diplo wasn’t trying to fit into what radio wanted. He was chasing the raw energy he grew up around — the kind of music that felt alive long before it was marketable.
He says it happened fast:
“Got Kartel’s number… rented the studio at Larry Gold’s. I rented Questlove’s room. It was like 500 bucks. for like three hours…”
Then came the part that nearly derailed the whole moment.
“Three hours past, Vybz Kartel just show up. He shows up like 10 minutes before the session’s over.”
Kartel had already emerged in Jamaica as a rising figure — on the verge of becoming one of dancehall’s defining voices — and here he was arriving late, with the clock expiring and Diplo, still a first-time producer, waiting to see whether the dream would turn real.
Diplo says it did.
“That’s my first song ever recorded. We make a song, he just freestyles a song real quick. That’s my first song ever recorded.”
Then he names it:
“It’s called Diplo Rhythm…”
And just like that, Diplo’s origin story becomes dancehall, not EDM — Caribbean diaspora culture, not a Top 40 playbook.
The track later appeared on Florida, Diplo’s debut studio album released on Big Dada in 2004, later reissued in 2014 as F10rida, with 10 extra tracks added, plus bonus commentary.
Big Dada, Ninja Tune — and being early, really early
Diplo briefly places himself inside a label ecosystem that shaped his experimental instincts:
“I got signed to Ninja Tune… around this time. … But I wasn’t actually signed to Ninja Tune, I was signed to Big Dada, the rap label under Ninja Tune…”
Big Dada historically operated as Ninja Tune’s hip-hop imprint — more left-field, more boundary-pushing — and Diplo makes clear his career didn’t begin in the mainstream. It began on the edges, where genre rules were meant to be bent.
Why “Diplo” and “Major Lazer” had to be separate
Later in the episode, Golan asks Diplo why he split identities — why “Diplo” isn’t the same machine as “Major Lazer.”
Diplo says Major Lazer grew out of a specific creative orbit:
“Major Lazer was an extension of working with M.I.A.,” he says. “I was with Switch, another producer who taught me a lot.”
Switch, Diplo implies, didn’t treat music software as a tool. He treated it as something to be broken open and rebuilt into new shapes.
“Switch is like, let’s turn the song backwards and put reverb and then sample it and start over again.”
That mentality became the Major Lazer blueprint: break the song, rebuild it weird, make it dance anyway.
“We just like find the dumbest… like whatever, like let’s make a surf rock song. Let’s add a dance hall drum.”
Major Lazer was the sound of permissionless creation — a project built less around polish than collision.
“It was like, let’s make a character and let’s go to Jamaica. Let’s record a bunch of records and find a bunch of people to work with.”
Movement first. Monetization second.
Vybz Kartel: the recurring thread
Even before Major Lazer fully launched, Kartel’s career had already taken off as one of the most prolific in dancehall — and Diplo circles back to him not as a cameo, but as a constant.
“And it was Vybz Kartel as well, who was always fucking with me. He was like the biggest legend of Jamaica.”
Diplo points to the early Major Lazer record “Pon Di Floor” as a key moment, describing its spread through diaspora routes rather than traditional industry pipelines and the takeoff that happened after Beyonce sampled it.
“The song went from Jamaica to London and Toronto,” he says — a reminder that for Diplo, the music has always traveled the same way it began: scene to scene, city to city, carried by people who recognize energy when they hear it.
English (US) ·