In the past calendar year, Diplo's released a book, hosted a weekly BBC show, co-produced one of Usher's most widely appealing singles in years, plotted a train-travelling Canadian tour with Grimes and Skrillex, had his hands in new albums from Scissor Sisters and Bonde do Rolê, worked with Kreayshawn, put out a new single from his and Switch's Major Lazer project, and allowed himself to be filmed while referring to hip-hop also-also-rans Chiddy Bang as "my best friends in the entire world." Fittingly, none of those benchmarks chart as the most left-of-center accomplishment that Wesley Pentz has tackled in 2012.
That distinction is reserved for Express Yourself, an EP that was set to come out near the end of 2011, but is just now seeing the light of day. The surprising thing about Express Yourself isn't the music it showcases, but the fact that it exists at all. Excepting 2009's uneven odds-and-ends compilation Decent Work for Decent Pay, Diplo hasn't put out a substantial solo release showcasing his own productions since 2004's Florida.
Amidst the constant cacophony that surrounds Diplo's every move these days, Florida isn't a record frequently referenced in the context of his ever-growing body of work. That's because, like Black Dice's Beaches and Canyons and Liars' They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, the album's stoned, 1990s-sounding multiculti soup sounds like more of a snapshot of where he was then than an indication of where he was headed. (Setting aside the fact that they both have become TV fixtures, it also represents one of the only imaginable links between Diplo and RJD2.)
Express Yourself is a snapshot, too, and not just because its cover art is literally a photo of the man himself crowd-surfing some locale-less Sea of Broquility. Diplo's always been as much of an ace curator as a savvy producer, and the sonic breadth of this EP represents his many genre fascinations over the past few years, along with a stuffed guest list to back up the reference points. Some of the sounds and sound-makers present: dancehall (Elephant Man), New Orleans bounce (Nicky Da B), moombahton (Billy the Gent and Long Jawns), and Canadian dubstep (Datsik). Naturally, a production duo by the name of Lazerdisk Party Sex shows up, too, and they're notable for having a hand in the EP's most sonically subtle contribution, "Set It Off", as well as for this sort of funny promo picture.
So there's a wide range of party-hardy stuff that's supposed to be represented here, right? It's actually hard to tell a lot of these sounds apart from each other. Not really an issue, though, since Express Yourself's collected works aren't meant to be pondered over, analyzed, or even critically appraised. This shit is intended to be the soundtrack to fun, and listening to the individual tracks is indeed a lot of fun.
Color bursts from the edges of every track, and most carry no interest in subtlety or dynamic range. The production pops like a seismic charge: It goes deep and eventually explodes, so that stuff like the cross-faded vocal samples on "Butters Theme"-- a song that could either be paying tribute to the much-maligned "South Park" character or the under-appreciated UK grime label-- feel almost hallucinatory on the right pair of headphones. It should be noted, though, that thinking of Express Yourself as of the "personal listening" persuasion is kind of ridiculous, unless you're trying to put your fist through your computer monitor or re-enact the "Express Yourself" video on the subway, the latter of which would probably get you arrested. Best save these tunes for the house parties.
But why is this EP coming out now? It's not like Pentz needs a boost of self-promotion (he has Twitter for that, and he continues to use it hilariously), and Express Yourself's perpetually shifting release date throughout the first half of 2012 suggested that when this thing came out wasn't as important as if it would. A decent hypothesis is that the EP's a well-deserved victory lap, since after nearly a decade of increasing omnipresence, Diplo's not only maintained relevance, but has just gotten better, more interesting, and weirder in the projects he chooses to be involved with and the production pies he keeps fingers in. Or: Maybe he just needed some new tunes for his next DJ set. As re-ups go, a lot of producers try a lot harder just to do a lot worse, meaning that despite Diplo's ubiquity, it's still way too easy to take him for granted.
