Gordo on Why His Genre-Twisting, Drake-Assisted Album Isn’t Like Anything Else Out There

Gordo is one of those artists-producers who has been around for years — his name casually appearing on a constant stream of hits from all of your favorites. He’s done it all at this point. He’s been DJ’ing for more than 20 years, first getting notice in the mid-2010s as DJ Carnage and then going on to pioneer house, club, and techno sounds across the globe. He’s experimented with reggaeton and Latin styles as well, playing massive festivals and launching tours across Latin America. In hip-hop, he’s dropped massive chart-toppers, from “I Like Tuh,” featuring iLoveMakonnen, to “Bricks,” with 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 understand what I did with Migos, with Lil Uzi, with Mac Miller, with Rich the Kid,” he tells Rolling Stone on a recent call. “I had all these big cultural moments.”

There’s a way that his career has always tied multiple universes together, but now, with his upcoming album Diamante, Gordo is putting everything on one tight, cohesive record. The project, which drops this Friday, was more than four years in the making and features collaborations with artists like T-Pain, Maluma, the late Young Dolph, Rampa, and others. Drake, who served as a kind of consultant throughout the creative process, also appears “Sideways,” a track that drops with the album.

“There’s a purpose with this album — and the purpose is that I’m connecting the dots between all these different worlds, and I’m doing it the most tasteful way possible,” Gordo shares. He’s thought a lot about the range of fans he’s picked up and how the album was made for versatile listeners who can bounce between all kinds of genres. “If you’re open-minded and listening to music all the time, then you’re going to like this album,” he says.

He made the record as he flung himself across different corners of the world. Diamante was the result of a long, deeply personal process that happened between Hawaii, where Gordo lives, Thailand, and Vegas, just to name a few important spots 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 huge fan of Honestly, Nevermind and ended up on the track “Parcera.” T-Pain had made an Instagram post back during the pandemic about people he wanted to collaborate with; Gordo’s name was at the top, and the two teamed up for “Target.”

Other unexpected collabs include Fuerza Regida on “Nene” and Feid on “Hombres Y Mujeres.” Gordo has worked in Latin music before, but he stretches farther here, tapping into his roots and past explorations with different genres. (Gordo was born in Guatemala and his family is from Nicaragua.) “It’s so hard when you’re talking to a guy like me because I’m trying to keep up with rap, with dance music, house, with techno, with Mexican corridos,” he says. But he adds, “Everyone here is doing their job.”

While working on the album, Gordo would send a bunch of the tracks as they came together to Drake, whose support he’s had from the moment he started the record, despite the fact that Drake has been caught in a highly public feud with Kendrick Lamar over the past few months. Gordo hasn’t been fazed by any of it. “Fuck all the bullshit to the side with everything that’s happening right now. Drake is Drake, right? And if Drake says, ‘This is it, and this is what you should listen to, this is what I listen to, and this is an incredible piece of work,’ and he rides for me that heavy and he’s letting the world know that, then that says a lot.”

Gordo’s friendship with Drake started when they were working on Honestly, Nevermind. “I was living at his house for damn near a couple of months and that’s when me and him got really, really close,” he says. Gordo worked on tracks like “Sticky,” “Massive,” and “Tie That Binds” — the latter was a song he’d been working on for himself. “That was a song that was gonna be on my album, but obviously, I was like, ‘You can do whatever the fuck you want with the song.’” That experience ended up informing what he’s doing 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 far more personal than his past projects and merges different parts of his career so far. He went out of his way to make sure the music stands out. “It’s not niche, it’s not in one little corner — it’s good,” he says. “It isn’t formulated. It’s also not boring; it’s not like this eclectic, artsy artist doing something. It’s just really good music at the highest level.”