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Back in 2007, Diplo and Switch were ready to launch the music they’d been working on together; they just needed to figure out what to call themselves. They each chose a bunch of words at random, wrote them on pieces of paper and threw them in a hat. They pulled two out, first was “major” and the second was “lazer.”
With that, one of the most influential dance music projects of the late 00s and 2010s was christened.
Billboard News recently spoke with Diplo and Switch for a rare joint interview, with the duo discussing the origins of Major Lazer and the 15-year anniversary of the group’s debut album, Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do.
The pair first met at Fabric London, realizing, Switch says, that “we both had a soft spot for Jamaican music at the time, and we were both doing our individual sounds, so it was a good excuse for us to come together and do stuff.”
Both producers had been working with M.I.A. on her albums Arular and Kala, with Diplo calling her “the catalyst for our music.” Shortly thereafter, the guys were making monthly trips to Jamaica to make music, falling into the local music community and having Jamaican artists including Vybz Cartel and TKTK record music that would ultimately end up on the Major Lazer debut.
They knew they were doing something right when they heard their track “Pon de Floor at a gas station in Kingston, realizing that their music was, Switch says, “penetrating this market that we felt was very special.” From Jamaica, they took the sound to the U.K., where the pair played one of their first big shows at London’s Notting Hill Carnival. Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do was released on June 16, 2009, hitting No. 169 on the Billboard 200 the next month.
The catalog of the group — which included Diplo, Walshy Fire and Jillionaire after Switch’s departure and now features Walshy Fire and Diplo alongside Ape Drums — has since aggregated 4.8 billion streams, according to Luminate.
“With our videos and everything we did, [Major Lazer] would be cancelled [nowadays] before we even started,” says Diplo. “Because people wouldn’t have given us a chance. They would have been like ‘We don’t really understand this and this isn’t correct.’ But back then, nobody really gave a shit. They were like, ‘I like the way this sounds.’ Today there’s too many tastemakers and rules.”
The group continued having breakthrough moments, with Beyoncé sampling “Pon de Floor on her 2011 smash “Run the World (Girls)” and Major Lazer and DJ Snake’s “Lean On” becoming what was, at the time, Spotify’s most streamed song of all time.
“We had really invented something with the Major Lazer language,” Diplo continues, “but by the second project we were able to make records that were actually hits. It was awesome to see our trajectory, something so chaotic and then to build something that made sense for people.”
Watch the full interview above to hear the pair talk about why Switch left the group, why Diplo thinks “Get Free” is Major Lazer’s best song and what it’s like working with Beyoncé in the studio.
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It’s been almost two decades since Eddie Murphy released his classic film The Nutty Professor and while many of today’s Hip-Hoppers aren’t familiar with the comedy film, DaBaby seems to be a fan and incorporates it’s storyline into his latest music video.
In his new visuals to “PHAT,” DaBaby finds himself as an overweight scientist who struggles with his social life but instead of slimming down via a scientific formula (a la The Nutty Professor), he goes about his day and turns up every chance he gets while munching on donuts and burgers. DaBaby really do love making some cinematic clips.
Back in Brooklyn Fivio Foreign is still going hard with the drill rap and in his clip to “Jason’s Plan,” double F rolls through his borough while puffing on some magic dragon to spit his bars and before landing in the projects where in interesting story unfolds revolving around his wifey.
Check out the rest of today’s drops including work from Cordae, Zaybang, and more.
DABABY – “PHAT”
FIVIO FOREIGN – “JASON’S PLAN”
CORDAE – “MAD AS F*CK”
ZAYBANG – “MAD”
JAY CRITCH – “I [LOVE] SL*TS”
JESSIE REYEZ FT. ARI LENNOX – “JUST LIKE THAT”
TEMS – “TURN ME UP”
EST GEE – “GO”
Diplo & Switch of Major Lazer sit down and share everything you need to know about the group. From first meeting to picking out their name, to creating ‘Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do,’ the duo share stories about their time together, their journey over the last 15 years and more! Katie Bain: I’m here […]
Rosé and Bruno Mars brought the MAMA Awards over to their “APT.” on Thursday night (Nov. 21), performing their new collaboration live for the first time at the Los Angeles ceremony. The duo rocked matching oversized grey suits as they sang the high-energy track, backed by a band and supporting singers. The duo later accepted […]
Ever since Taylor Swift began dating Travis Kelce, the multi-Grammy winner has become a mainstay at Kansas City Chiefs games, often seen supporting her Super Bowl champion boyfriend from a suite in Arrowhead Stadium. Beyond her reactions to the intensity of the games, Swift has become known for the Chiefs-themed outfits she wears to the […]
The season of gifting is finally here and we’re taking you through the best gift ideas for music lovers in your life! Tetris Kelly: From a bottle of B to The Notorious B.I.G., we got some of Apple’s best and a country queen with a necklace. If you’re wondering what to get that music lover […]
11/22/2024
K. Dot surprised the rap world with his latest offering on Friday (Nov. 22).
11/22/2024
Few documents are more carefully studied than the annual Coachella lineup poster announcing the dozens of artists booked to play the Indio, California festival each April. So this year, it didn’t take eagle-eyed fans long to notice a rare typographical change to the typically standardized playbill: A band name printed in something other than the poster’s classic Eurostile LT font.
Instead, the name of that band — legendary punk rock outfit The Misfits — was printed in the timeless “fancy horror” font it’s become known for, with oversized M’s, F’s and T’s dominating the other letters.
It’s a subtle yet substantial change to one of the most recognizable lineup posters in music, made to honor Goldenvoice’s long ties to The Misfits — listed as “The Original Misfits” to underline that the version of the band that’s set to appear at Coachella will be composed of the classic lineup of original singer/songwriter Glenn Danzig, original bassist Jerry Only and longtime guitarist Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein. The font change is a nod to The Misfits’ profound influence on live music, Goldenvoice officials say, as well as a celebration of the long history between the band and Goldenvoice, whose roots with the goth-punk outfit predate Coachella itself.
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“The Misfits are one of the first bands we promoted,” says Paul Tollett, president of Goldenvoice, which has been producing the annual music festival since 1999 and whose roots in L.A.’s punk rock scene go back to the early 1980s. Back then, Goldenvoice was a small concert promotion company run by Gary Tovar, a street-savvy supporter of LA’s growing punk movement who was known for promoting underground bands like Black Flag and T.S.O.L. that most venues wouldn’t touch.
In 1983, Tovar managed to secure The Misfits a Jan. 21. headlining gig with the Circle Jerks at a community center in Goleta, Calif. — a small beach town 100 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. The band’s energetic and blitzing performance, supporting their recently released record Earth A.D., was captured by multiple video cameras and a half-dozen 35mm toting photographers — with its most memorable line coming from a young Danzig at the end of “All Hell Breaks Loose” when he matter-of-factly declared, “We f—ed that one up.”
Bootleg recordings from the gig would solidify its cult status among fans, and Goldenvoice would promote at least one Misfits show by having the band open for Black Flag at the Santa Monica Civic Center on June 11, 1983. But by year’s end The Misfits had broken up, and eventually, Tovar’s run would come to an end as well: In 1991, he was arrested on federal drug trafficking charges and later sentenced to prison, handing the company off to Tollett and others to manage.
Fast forward four decades to early 2024, when the partners at Goldenvoice found themselves with the rare opportunity to work with The Misfits once more by staging a one-of-a-kind classic punk festival at the LA Fairplex with a supporting lineup that included Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag, Bad Religion and The Vandals. The festival, dubbed No Values, sold out more than 40,000 tickets immediately after going on sale.
The Misfits are scheduled to headline Coachella’s Outdoor Stage on both weekends (April 12 and April 19), marking their first appearance at the festival. Tickets are now on sale at coachella.com.
When director Jon M. Chu shared that Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo had been cast as Galinda and Elphaba, respectively, in the long-awaited movie adaptation of Broadway’s smash musical Wicked back in Nov. 2021, reactions were mixed. No one doubted Erivo’s thespian credentials: She’d won a Tony (lead actress, musical) for The Color Purple in 2016 and been nominated for a best actress Oscar in 2019 for playing abolitionist Harriet Tubman in Harriet. But Grande? Well, Ari’s pop career was unimpugnable – she’d released the acclaimed, Billboard 200-topping Positions a year prior to the announcement and topped the Billboard Hot 100 just months earlier on a remix of The Weeknd’s “Save Your Tears” – but her acting credits were a different matter entirely.
It wasn’t that her résumé was slim. Between Victorious and Sam & Cat, Grande had been a consistent presence on Nickelodeon in the first half of the ‘10s. During the second half of that decade, Grande – who by then had earned her spot on pop music’s A-list – continued to flex her acting chops in small parts, getting killed in 2015’s Scream Queens, co-starring in Hairspray Live!, hosting Saturday Night Live and making a cameo in Zoolander 2 (all 2016).
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So it wasn’t that audiences hadn’t seen her act – it was that we hadn’t seen her act too far afield of the bubbly, ditzy Cat Valentine of her Nickelodeon days. A month after the Wicked casting was revealed, Grande showed a bit more range in the love-it-or-hate-it Netflix comedy Don’t Look Up, but considering that she was playing a pop star, it didn’t exactly assuage Wicked fan fears that Grande wasn’t qualified for one of the most beloved, sought-after roles in modern musical history.
Yes, Galinda/Glinda (the “Ga” is silent by the end of the musical) is both giddy and scatterbrained – two traits Grande excels at portraying – but Kristin Chenoweth’s iconic, Tony-nominated work in Wicked established that to play the role, you needed depth, layers and razor-sharp comedic timing. No one with ears could question Grande’s pipes, but based on her acting credits, we simply didn’t know if she was capable of filling Chenoweth’s small but mighty heels.
Well, having seen Wicked: Part 1 in theaters, I can say without exaggeration that Grande isn’t just a good witch – she’s sinceriously astonishing. From her first scene – when she descends from the sky to tell the overjoyed Munchkins that the Wicked Witch of the West is dead – it’s abundantly clear that Grande has figured out how to make the role her own.
This isn’t Grande the impressionist recreating Chenoweth’s Glinda for the big screen; this is a fresh interpretation delivered with nuance and pathos. As a traditionally beautiful pop star, it’s no surprise that Grande captures Glinda’s more-perfect-than-perfection aura; and as a Nickelodeon veteran, Grande can milk the humor of the Ozian mispronunciations (“confusifying,” etc.) without batting an eyelash. But when a Munchkin confrontationally inquiries about Glinda’s past friendship with the Wicked Witch, forcing the Good Witch to literally burst her own pink bubble, Grande is a revelation.
Caught off guard by the question, Grande’s Glinda falters, struggling to deliver a PR-acceptable reply without betraying a deeply felt kinship with the so-called Wicked Witch. Forcing a smile to cover up the pain and haunted loneliness in her eyes, Grande demonstrates from the go that she knows exactly what makes the Glinda character work: It’s not just about satirizing her superficiality — it’s conveying the sense that the experience of knowing Elphaba has fundamentally changed Glinda’s unthinking faith in institutions, public opinion and people in power. Glinda is a gently tragic figure in many ways, ultimately getting exactly what she wants while simultaneously realizing how hollow it all is.
As with the stage musical, the Wicked film plays out primarily as one lengthy flashback, which takes us back to a pre-epiphany Galinda: narcissistic, ambitious, a bit cruel, self-promoting and unhindered by one iota of self-awareness. Wicked touches on weighty themes, yes, but it’s not a Shakespearean tragedy, so all of that is naturally played for laughs, and Grande eats up every syllable, hair flip and vapid smile. She soars in the vocal showcase “Popular” – nailing some hair-raising high notes toward the end while putting her own stamp on Chenoweth’s best-known song – but more importantly, she delivers the laughs. Like a Golden Era Hollywood pro, Grande is luminous onscreen while balancing choreography and comedy, alternately subtle and silly in her performance of this winking celebration of conformity. When Wicked hits streamers, expect viewers to hit rewind more than once on this scene.
Any successful staging of Wicked needs a push-pull chemistry between the two leads, and Erivo’s Elphaba exudes a potent mixture of warmth, longing and self-loathing in the role. (It goes without saying that Erivo sings the absolute hell out of every song.) From bristling irritation to empathy and affection, her feelings toward Galinda evolve in a way that feels real and relatable — even in a musical with talking goats and Winkie princes.
When it’s time for Elphaba’s signature song, “Defying Gravity,” Erivo is stunning, overcoming disillusionment to find her self-confidence and purpose while giving the film it’s pounding, wounded heart. Grande provides deft, subtle support; these characters are on the same page morally but wired too differently to follow the same path, and that tension is magnificently acted. (Grande obviously knows “Yes, And?” as more than just a song title.)
Skeptics of Grande’s acting abilities might insist that while she soars in this role, it’s more a case of perfect casting than impressive acting. But from the opening scene to the climatic finale, Grande goes so much deeper than just playing a shallow, popular girl for laughs – she takes us on a journey that reveals the hopes, disappointments, compromises and realizations of a surprisingly three-dimensional character. Some pop stars turned actors acquit themselves competently on the big screen, but like Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born, this performance signals the arrival of a formidable cinematic talent with a lot more to show us.
11/22/2024
Dot continues to shake up the game with this surprise album drop.
11/22/2024