Don Diablo

If you’ve ever heard a drop that sounds like it beamed in from a decade ahead of everyone else, there’s a good chance Don Diablo had something to do with it. Born Don Pepijn Schipper in the Netherlands, he’s spent the better part of two decades turning “future” from a vibe into an entire genre.

Before he was headlining festivals, Don was grinding as a remixer, flooding blogs with edits until Hype Machine crowned him the most-blogged artist on the platform — ahead of Lady Gaga and Kanye West, no less. That kind of internet buzz got him signed to Axwell’s Axtone and Nicky Romero’s Protocol Recordings back around 2013, and from there he never really looked back.

The Future House Blueprint

Don basically wrote the rulebook for future house with his “Time” trilogy, blending glossy, sci-fi-leaning production with real emotional weight. The sound exploded once Swedish House Mafia dropped one of his tracks during their final show — suddenly every festival main stage wanted a piece of that Don Diablo sparkle.

In 2015 he launched his own label, HEXAGON, and it hit the ground running: the label’s very first release, a remix of Alex Adair’s track, camped out at No. 1 on Beatport for almost seven weeks and earned HEXAGON “Best New Label of the Year” honors. Since then it’s grown into a full-blown independent operation with its own management, distribution, a clothing line, a Star Wars crossover, and its own stages at Tomorrowland.

On the music side, Don’s catalog runs deep — his 2018 album Future, the FORΞVΞR project in 2021 with features from Ty Dolla $ign, Jessie J and Galantis, and two Reconstructions remix compilations that saw him flip records from Ed Sheeran, Rihanna and Madonna. He’s also linked up with Tiësto on “Chemicals,” Example on “Hooligans,” and pulled off “Survive” alongside Gucci Mane and Emeli Sandé. The consistency paid off: he climbed steadily up DJ Mag’s Top 100, cracking the top 10 by 2019 and landing at No. 6 in 2020.

He’s not slowing down either. In 2024 he introduced a chill new alias, Lunar Lo-Fi, and followed it up in early 2025 with a full-on drum & bass project called CONTROL ALT DΞLΞTΞ, plus a collab with Nelly Furtado, “Doing Nothin’,” that dropped that May. Two decades in, Don Diablo is still the one messing with the formula — and somehow still setting the pace.