Gordo on Why his Drake-assisted genre-bending album is unlike anything else out there

Gordo is one of those artist-producers that has been around for years – his name casually pops up on a steady stream of hits from all your favorites. He has done it all at this point. He has been DJing for over 20 years, first rising to prominence in the mid-2010s as DJ Carnage and then pioneering house, club and techno sounds around the world. He has experimented with reggaeton and Latin styles as well, playing huge festivals and embarking on tours throughout Latin America. In hip-hop, he missed huge chart-toppers, from “I Like Tuh,” featuring iLoveMakonnen, to “Bricks,” featuring Migos. And people still come up to him to talk about his work on Drake's album Honestly, Nevermind.

“If you go back, then you realize what I did with Migos, with Lil Uzi, with Mac Miller, with Rich the Kid,” he says. Rolling rock on a recent call. “I had all these great cultural moments.”

There's a way his career has always tied multiple universes together, but now, with his upcoming album diamond, Gordo puts everything on a tight, cohesive record. The project, which was released this Friday, was more than four years in the making and features collaborations with artists such as T-Pain, Maluma, Young Dolph, Rampa and more. Drake, who served as an advisor of sorts throughout the creative process, also appears on “Sideways,” a track that drops with the album.

“There's a purpose to this album — and the purpose is to connect the dots between all these different worlds, and I'm doing it in the most tasteful way,” shares Gordo. He's given a lot of thought to the range of fans he's amassed and how the album was created for versatile listeners who can bounce between all genres. “If you're open-minded and listen to music all the time, then you'll love this album,” he says.

He set the record as he was flown to different corners of the world. Diamante it was the result of a long, deeply personal process that took place between Hawaii, where Gordo lives, Thailand and Vegas, to name just a few important points on his creative map. Along the way, a bunch of different people reached out and eventually became part of the album: Maluma had told him he was a big fan Honestly, Nevermind and ended up in the track “Parcera”. T-Pain had made a post on Instagram during the pandemic about people he wanted to work with. Gordo's name was at the top and the two teamed up for “Target”.

While working on the album, Gordo was sending a bunch of the tracks as they came together to Drake, whose support he's had since the record started, despite Drake being embroiled in a heated feud with Kendrick Lamar. the last months. Gordo is unfazed by any of this. “Screw all that crap to the side with everything that's going on right now. Drake is Drake, right? And if Drake is like, 'This is it, and this is what you should hear, this is what I'm listening to, and this is an incredible project,' and he's riding for me so heavily and letting people know that, then that says a lot.”

Gordo's friendship with Drake began when they were working Honestly, Nevermind. “I lived at his house for a few months and that's when he and I got really close,” she says. Gordo worked on tracks like 'Sticky', 'Massive' and 'Tie That Binds' – the latter being a song he was working on himself. “That was a song that was going to be on my album, but obviously, I was like, 'You can do whatever the hell you want with the song.' That experience ended up informing what she does now: “I learned a lot that way, but now it's time to tell my story.”

That's one reason Gordo named it Diamante (his full name is Diamante Blackmon). The music is much more personal than his previous works and merges different parts of his career so far. He went out of his way to make sure the music stood out. “It's not niche, it's not in a little corner — it's good,” he says. “It is not formulated. It's also not boring. it's not like this eclectic, artful artist does anything. It's just really good music at the highest level.”