GQ: Let's Pretend Diplo Didn't Say This About Taylor Swift

GQ wrote about producer Diplo for its Legacy Project, which highlights important “musicians who matter.” But somehow this nifty quote about Taylor Swift was edited out from the story right after it appeared online.

For the Legacy Project, GQ poses the question: “What artists should a man actually be listening to right now? And who will we still be listening to ten, twenty, and even fifty years from now?” Billboard notes that Diplo—who’s in good company with Stevie Wonder, Sam Smith and Lil Wayne on the list—originally said this about Taylor Swift in the piece:

“Taylor Swift is very strategic with her friends and enemies. And I know lots of secrets. I can’t divulge, but I know a lot of stuff about her. And I’m scared. I’m scared for my life.”

She is rather strategic. And you should be scared, Diplo. Because the Illuminati works fast, however, the quote quickly vanished, replaced with this:

“So many great albums came out that week, and all people talked about, on all the big press, was Me vs. Lorde, and Kim Kardashian’s butt. No one covered any music. And it’s funny, because me and Lorde, we’re actually friends.”

That is markedly less interesting than the Swift stuff, but cool. [UPDATE: Here’s the full Diplo Q&A, which includes the above Swift quote and other things about her.]

In related odd correction news, Pitchfork dot com had to print one yesterday for a dubious line in a review of Cloakroom’s new album, Further Out. This was the original opening passage (the bolded sections have since been removed):

The most frequently quoted fact from Cloakroom’s bio is that they’re a trio of factor workers from Indiana. It is a nice bit of backstory that makes sense in hindsight upon hearing their minimally arranged, moderately morose and maximally loud debut LP Further Out—so long as they’re not framed as the sort of blue collar Hoosier hero that might inspire a John Mellencamp/Bruce Springsteen collaboration.

In 2015, factory work seems more like a vocation for people who just somehow ended up with that job, because that’s what you do, I guess. But it’s also a potentially attractive situation where the repetition and physical labor can be meditative, a good way to shut off one’s mind, especially when it tries to parse how you ended up as a factory worker in 2015.

The correction:

I dunno, the meaning seems pretty clear: you don’t mean shit if you’re a factory worker. Which highlights the fact that personal politics inevitably seep in when you’re writing about a piece of music and sometimes those bullshit views veer deeply classist/sexist/racist. The lesson here is quite simple: boys are weenies.