Diplo: 'Rihanna and Nicki Minaj rejected Lean On.'
Quote:
...
These days, the man born Thomas Wesley Pentz is a little harder to miss thanks to two tracks that have been all over the radio this summer. First, sitting at No. 4 on the Hot 100, is Major Lazer’s “Lean On.” The collaboration with DJ Snake (“Turn Down for What”) and Danish singer MØ (whose prior claim to fame was a semi-viral Spice Girls cover last year) has already topped the charts in more than a dozen countries. Yet it almost wasn’t a hit at all: Diplo, who first wrote the song with MØ as a slow reggae track, unsuccessfully shopped the beat to the camps of Nicki Minaj and Rihanna. He calls their rejection “a blessing in disguise.” “[MØ] sounds better than anybody was going to sound on that record,” Diplo says. “All we want to do is make the records feel like classics, even though they’re feeling progressive and strange to a normal ear.”