"Kids in Philly have no idea who Diplo is." UPDATE

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"Kids in Philly have no idea who Diplo is." UPDATE

POSTED: Thursday, July 23, 2009, 10:24 PM

Filed Under: Music

UPDATE: Both Emynd and the author of the article want to share their thoughts on this clearly provocative quote. Check the comments section for them.

That's a quote straight out of the horse's mouth ' from Emynd, a Philly DJ on Baltimore's Unruly Records. It's from an article in the Baltimore City Paper on Brick City, party music, club or whatever you wanna call it, and all the weird in-fighting (whether or not people should keep "Baltimore" in the name to reference its roots, why some are upset hipsters are into it now, etc.) that it spurs. Here's an interesting quote regarding the supposed hierarchies of East Coast cities:

Scottie B, co-founder of Unruly Records and one of the city's most fervent club ambassadors, is wry about the name tiff. "You know when people get mad, though?" he asks. "When you brand something that's already something and brand it something else. Tameil's branded it through his name ' he's bigger than Brick City. [Philly] started calling it 'party music' because New York's first, Philly's second, Baltimore's third, and you can't go up the chain. Philly's not gonna call anything Baltimore something." Fair enough.

And its history as well as how it got here:

Even the path of how pieces of the Baltimore sound traveled up Interstate 95 is messy. It's tied to urban youth scenes that function similarly in all three cities. High-school parties make up Philadelphia's "party music" scene almost entirely. The existence of such a young club contingent, one that parallels Baltimore's own high school branch of club, runs against the idea that it was young, white indie DJs who served as club's musical ambassadors. Still, the hipster-phobic sentiment is, to some extent, justified.

In the early 2000s, Philadelphia's Hollertronix (DJs Diplo and Low-Budget) began a contrarian assault on indie dance culture, mixing regional music such as Southern crunk, dancehall, and Baltimore club into its party sets, confusing the hell out of, but eventually winning over, the butts and minds of cool kids everywhere. Other DJs and producers soon followed suit. The term "Bmore club" became fully marketed, a blessing and a curse to Baltimore's insular scene. It raised visibility for the music, but it didn't always trickle down to the scene's figureheads and originators.

Much of the divide between Baltimore producers and out-of-town tastemakers had to do with resources. The "Bmore club" trend, Booman notes, emerged just after Baltimore "was restructuring itself" in the late '90s into a more tourist city, closing many clubs and forcing the scene into a lower profile, coupled with the emergence of the internet as the place where club's history was being written a few years later. Then a still novel way to distribute music, online message boards and forums where club was discussed weren't as easily accessible to club's core fans and even some of its producers. People that were, essentially, dilettantes became the prime disseminators of "Bmore club" mainly their own remixes in the "Bmore" style.

What do you guys think? I'm guessing you don't buy this Diplo business, right?

Either way, it's got me thinking about the upcoming Mad Decent block party. It's going down on August 15, at the Mausoleum (12th and Spring Garden streets). Peep up top for what it looked like last year.

emynd

Posted 2009-07-24 05:20:54

Ugh. I HATE that this was a quote associated to me. The writer of the article Brandon Soderberg is a person I consider to be a friend and instead of him "interviewing" me for the piece, we were just sort've having a candid discussion about Baltimore Club and its off-shoots in other cities. Of the litany of profoundly interesting things I said in my conversation with Brandon, I was extremely disappointed that he used this quote of all quotes in my two brief quotes in his interesting article. After I read the article online, I immediately commented on the Citypaper website and on the Hollertronix-related messageboard (http://www.low-bee.com/forum) that I feel like I was gravely misquoted and that this quote lacks any proper context to help it make any sense. The gist of it is this: OF COURSE people in Philly know who Diplo is. People of all walks of life know who he is. He's a great DJ and easily one of my favorite producers. I support and hold in high esteem nearly everything he does. Frankly, I do not recall saying the exact words that "Kids in Philly have no idea who Diplo is," but the only thing I can imagine that I was TRYING to say is that the urban high school kids that love Club Music did not discover it through Hollertronix, but that Club music is just built into the fabric of hip-hop and urban culture in Philly. This is not to take away from what Hollertronix has done for Club music on a global scale. I'm sure Scottie B would tell you himself he wouldn't be getting a lot of the out-of-town gigs he gets if it weren't for Hollertronix helping spread Club music worldwide (and Diplo even bringing Scottie on tour with him in 2006). Again, the only thing I can imagine I was saying is that while Hollertronix helped introduce a great deal of the world to Club music, they did not introduce it to certain portions of Philly to the same capacity. Whether or not Hollertronix existed, these high school kids would still be doing the D-Mac to D. Wizz songs and Say Wut songs in the club. But, people like me probably wouldn't be pressing Club records with producers in Finland. Hope this provides some clarification. -e

brandonsoderberg

Posted 2009-07-24 06:02:48

Hey...this is Brandon, I wrote that City Paper article and interviewed Emynd. Just for clarification. The way this is being taken isn't AT ALL how Emynd or I intended it when I used his quote. It's specifically referring to the youth scene and how Diplo, to that youth scene, isn't the root of their interest in Club (Scottie is quoted in the article as saying he was hand-bringing Club records to Philly in the mid-90s). In that sense, Philly youth don't know who Diplo is. AND ONLY IN THAT SENSE. It was not a diss on Diplo and it's unfortunate that the quote can be read as saying that. My bad. That said, the article itself was an attempt at even-handed-ness and except for that very unfortunate re-contextualizing of Emynd's quote it's hardly disparaging of the "hipster" set at all. Additionally, though I see how it can be read that way you're taking it, in its context, it's at least fairly clear that there's no "beef". A context I feel like I gotta add, you avoid by employing two long block quotes--neither of which contain Emynd's quote!!--from my article. Additionally, Emynd politely clarified his point--and he easily could've called me an asshole for screwing up--in the comments of the very article you linked.

truthbinder

Posted 2009-07-25 08:18:06

Who cares whether you were dissing him or not. Noone. Because to attribute the rise of club music/any type of music across the world to Hollertronix/or Diplo itself is not only pathetic, it's hilarious. Amen.

tayyib

Posted 2009-07-27 22:47:13

this is dumb. shut up and dance.

Posted by Holly Otterbein @ 10:24 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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