For Thomas Wesley Pentz — the 37-year-old DJ, producer and impresario better known as Diplo — his entire life is set up so he never stops moving. As he sees it, this is his moment, and if he slows down for even a minute, he’ll begin to kiss it goodbye. In 2015, two of his songs dominated radio and streaming-service playlists while sounding like nothing that had ever come before. Both were super-futuristic, vaguely tropical and built around top 40 hooks that would make Max Martin blush. Their common denominator? Diplo’s musical superpowers: a DJ-honed sense of what makes people move and a vast mental catalog of beats and rhythms from all over the world — from the Brazilian baile funk and Bollywood exoticism he mined for his early hits with M.I.A. to the Jamaican dancehall he absorbed as a teenager in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to the apocalyptic Atlanta trap that powers many of Mad Decent’s recent tracks.
This article originally appeared in the June 18 issue of Billboard.