Diplo Is In The Studio with Madonna
Madonna has turned to her Instagram account to post an image of Diplo on a laptop with the caption “Working with @Diplo got me like…………….WHAAaaat?” and then another image stating “Diplo is a slave driver! Got me working all hours of the night in the studio. Had to sneak into the bathroom!”
https://instagram.com/p/nuC9B3GEdM/
Throughout Madonna’s career, she has experimented with dance music in general. In 2012 she brought Nero and Alesso along with her on the MDNA tour and just last March announced she was working on “great tracks” with Avicii.
That’s a pretty telling pattern. Madonna doesn’t just dabble in dance music every few album cycles for a single lead single, she tends to go looking for whoever is shaping the sound of the moment, and right now that list runs straight through Diplo, Avicii and the Mad Decent/Jack Ü crew. Bringing Nero and Alesso out on an arena tour was one thing, but pulling Diplo into a late-night studio session for what sounds like an extended stretch of work suggests these sessions are turning into something more substantial than a one-off feature.
For the record, this isn’t the first time Diplo has taken a dip into the pop world for a collaboration as earlier he worked with Justin Bieber on a R&B track.
Diplo has made a habit out of jumping between worlds that don’t usually mix, hopping from Major Lazer’s dancehall-leaning productions to trap-adjacent hip-hop work to now, apparently, all-night sessions with one of pop’s most enduring icons. It’s a strange pairing on paper, dance music’s most restless producer working alongside an artist who’s been reinventing her sound since before he was born, but Madonna has never exactly stuck to a script when it comes to picking collaborators.
What’s clear from her captions is that Diplo isn’t taking it easy on her either. “Slave driver” and “all hours of the night” don’t sound like a casual, one-song feature session, they sound like the kind of grinding studio marathon that goes into shaping a full body of work. Whether any of this studio time actually makes it onto Madonna’s next album remains to be seen, but between her own Instagram teasing and Diplo’s track record of turning up on unexpected projects, it’s hard not to be curious about what they’re cooking up. If nothing else, it’s another sign that the wall between pop and dance music keeps getting thinner, and producers like Diplo are the ones knocking it down.
