Under the pseudonym Major Lazer, Diplo and Switch travelled to Jamaica on a mission to infiltrate the dancehall community. Here’s what happened....

After bringing Brazilian baile funk to the masses and introducing the world to the talents of M.I.A and Santogold, transatlantic beatmaking bredren Switch and Diplo decided it was time to take on a new challenge – to persuade the cream of Jamaican dancehall to drop some local knowledge over their club hybrids. Taking up residence at the Bob Marley’s iconic Tuff Gong studios, the pair put out an APB to artists like Elephant Man, Gyptian, Vybez Cartel and Turbulence to come through and bless them with a dub. What they encountered was an exhilarating eleven-day culture clash filled with knife wielding toasters, camp space cowboys, hurricanes, and a lot of Red Bull and Guinness cocktails.

INTERVIEW TIM NOAKES

Why did you two decide to come together for this project?

Diplo: I went to Jamaica for the first time in January 2007 to record a beat called “Mary Jane”, which I ended up doing four or five versions of with artists like Dr Evil, Assassin, Super Hype, Mega Diamond and Vybez Kartel. I gave Switch some of the demos and he ended up doing a Solid Groove mix of the Dr Evil version. Annie Mac started playing it out on the radio, so we decided to elaborate on the idea.

Switch: We wanted to go to Jamaica and take what we love about their music and put it in our beats; to make it accessible to people who like our sound - but it was mainly for the people in Jamaica. That was the challenge - to make a genuine album for Jamaicans.

So it was just something you both felt compelled to do?

Diplo: We had been working closely on M.I.A’s second album at the time, so we decided to take the same approach and actually go to where the artists were instead of waiting for them to come to us. If I want to work with Vybez Kartel in Queens I’ve got to go to his hotel in Queens and deal with his whole posse. It’s a lot easier going to Jamaica to do a track with him.

Switch: It’s a genuine artist based independent project rather than having an A&R in the middle. We didn’t have to tick any boxes. If we wanted to get Gyptian on the record, we went and got Gyptian on the record.

Is this a concept album?

Switch: It is. The concept of the album is to do our take on what we find interesting about dancehall music and flip it into our usual style, whether that’s house or electro or straight dub.

Diplo: We’ve called the project Major Lazer. It’s a bit like the Gorillaz, you know having a fake producer, fake artist type of thing. It’s going to be illustrated like an old Jamaican superhero comic, in the vein of those old Greensleeves covers. Lazer is going to be this real futuristic sound murderer, killing everybody. He’s an old dread with a giant lazer canon who shoots vampires and stuff.

This has been in the works for quite some time – why has it taken so long to put together?

Diplo: It’s been so hectic – I’ve setting up Mad Decent, touring and doing other projects, and Dave has been producing Santogold and the new Tricky record. We were just really busy. We’ve done about 70% of it right now and we’ve just got to get some more voices on it from Mr Vegas, Ricky Blaze, Tanya Stephens. We’re also waiting for Collie Budz vocal. It’s going to be about 15 proper tracks in total and we want it to come out in July.

How long did the recording sessions last?

Switch: About eleven days. It was really quick. I ended up getting stuck there because a hurricane hit. They stopped all international flights in and out of Jamaica.

Diplo: Yeah! I rushed out because I needed to go on tour - Dave couldn’t change his flight, so he just ended up being marooned in the basement of the Geejam studios in Kingston getting drunk and watching The Wire and a lot of dancehall videos.

Were you nervous going to Kingston?

Switch: What? Being a white, bald, ginger dude in Jamaica? Yeah it’s quite intimidating there…

Diplo: It can be kind of tricky, especially when artists turn up and see two white dudes drinking Stella and playing violent beats! They were like, ‘who are these two dick heads?’ But when they heard the music it worked out. We were fortunate enough to work with some really amazing artists who understood the concept.

Did anyone not get it?

Diplo: We bought Santogold down there to write with us. That turned into a fiasco. She’s not impressed at all by the reggae dudes or even knew who they were to begin with. So Gyptian started talking shit to her and Santi just dissed him so that they couldn’t diss me and Dave for being the whitest guys in the room. She nearly got stabbed by this old famous dude called Jamie Lickshot – we didn’t pay him enough money. We gave him $50 and he was like ‘naaah I want a $1000’, for some dub we didn’t even want in the first place. He then started pulling out knives and threatening Santi. Tuff Gong had to get shut down while we got him out the building. That’s not the kind of situation you want in the studio, you want to have people develop ideas with you. In Jamaica it’s more cash n’ carry – let’s get paid for writing a song in two seconds. We had to be stronger and get it done the right way.

What was the funniest moment?

Diplo: When Elephant Man walked in the room. He looked like an alien. I couldn’t believe how weird his style was. He was wearing cowboy boots that were 12 inches long and a belt buckle that was a foot long, skin-tight cowboy shirts and a cowboy hat, with purple dread locks. I don’t know where he comes up with that shit. All the dancers have this crazy style too – they all have cowboy boots and rock monocles.

Did you both have to raise your game?

Diplo: We spent two days in Chester preparing for this project, that’s it. Sometimes we recorded over a straight house beat with nothing on it because we wanted to get the vocals and we didn’t have time to develop it.

Switch: Both of us are at the beginning of our production careers. It’s one thing mixing in club records and taking someone’s stuff and flipping it. It’s a totally different affair having an artist and making sure you get their temperament right and making sure that you capture their best performance whilst keeping them motivated. It was a huge challenge, especially in Jamaica where it’s so intimidating and they have their set ways of working, to come in and put some weird shit in front of them.

Diplo: Yeah, no one really knows what we do over in Jamaica. A couple of people knew about M.I.A which helped – we weren’t just seen as some corny ass white dudes with money. I think we succeeded. We want this record to make our name in Jamaica, for it to get played in the dancehall clubs and to help introduce some new styles down there. That’s all we want.

© TIM NOAKES 2008