inthemix | International News | Loco Dice disses P Diddy

Uber-cool German producer Loco Dice recently unveiled his hotly anticipated debut album 7 Dunham Place on the Desolat label. He worked on the album with longtime collaborator Martin Buttrich in New York, with the duo basing themselves in Brooklyn for six months.

As a revered artist on the underground techno, minimal and house scene it may come as a shock that Loco Dice was once also a huge name in German hip hop, having supported artists like Usher, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and even R. Kelly. Speaking with inthemix about his new album for an interview coming soon (stay tuned for the full audio!), Dice was only too happy to tell us how he reinvented his sound.

“I was fed up with all the stuff I was doing in hip hop in Germany. I was quite successful, I had all the offers when the big names came over, ‘hey you get to be the support act’, [both] as a rapper or a tour DJ. But in the clubs hip hop didn’t give me anymore input,” he revealed. “There was a time when Puff Daddy came out with all this 80s revival stuff, it was very boring.”

No doubt the jump from commercial hip hop artist to underground electronica auteure wouldn’t have been an easy one, but you’d hardly know about Loco Dice’s “previous life” when looking at the strength of his discography. To date he’s had releases on labels like M_nus, Cocoon and Ovum – undoubtedly three of the scene’s most respected imprints.

“Everything that I do in my life, I do it with a lot of love. If it’s not fun I’d rather stop and quit because it makes no sense to lie to myself. It doesn’t mean I hate hip hop; I’m more in love with it now than before,” Dice explained. “There’s a lot of really, really great output coming from producers. But at that time, the late 90s, there was no inspiration.”

Considering US rap mogul Puff Daddy – aka P Diddy/Sean Combs – stood out to Dice as one of the determining factors when moving away from hip hop, it’s not surprising he has some rather interesting views on the man’s recent forays into dance music via collaborations with Erick Morillo, Deep Dish and Felix Da Housecat.

“It’s the most cheesiest way to bring Puff Daddy up into the game. I would rather talk about [someone like] Armand Van Helden. He’s got the bridge between hip hop and house music and he does great tracks. Puffy [only] discovered that electronic music is big because he was on his yacht in Ibiza and he’s like, ‘so what’s going on with this island? No hip hop, only techno, ok let’s go to this party. I’m a superstar, I go to the VIP and talk to these guys, I wanna do it too.’ Well, that’s his way, it’s not my way.”

The full interview with Loco Dice will run in a few weeks time. Stay tuned to ITM to find out what else he had to say, including details on his plans to tour Australia later in 2008!