Cover Feature: Major Lazer

"I saw one of my students, who has to be twenty-something now, working as a doorman on Sunset by the Chateau Marmont in LA," he tells us with a grin. "He said, 'Mr Wes, Mr Wes!' and told me he worked at this bar and told me he'd been following what I was doing. I couldn't believe he made it out alive." And a sense of social responsibility isn't something Diplo's left behind with his growing fame: his Heaps Decent charity supports disadvantaged Australian children.

His work with Skrillex as DJ supergroup Jack Ü has also had an impact on Diplo's way of thinking. Seeing how efficiently Skrillex works, he says, and how unmoved he is by distractions, motivated him to keep up with his gruelling yet inspired work ethic.

Prior to Jack Ü, Skrillex was associated more with EDM than pop. Working with Diplo has introduced the producer to a wider audience. Their inclusion of Justin Bieber, and the subsequent success of 'Where Are Ü Now', became a hot topic not only among the duo's loyal fan base, but among Beliebers too. Having worked with Bieber three years ago, when "he was a different person", Diplo says the teen star has a new-found appreciation of music listeners after years of being a pop culture punch-bag. "Kaskade was playing in Vegas and dropped the remix he did of our song with Bieber," he recalls. "He [Bieber] got on the stage and was almost crying, because he never saw adults cheer for him before."