A post shared by The Cut (@thecut) on Dec 2, 2019 at 5:02am PST

I mention this every so often, but Diplo is probably my most shameful celebrity crush. He’s just such a dirtbag! He’s such a bro. He’s so in love with himself. There’s just a grossness to him. And yet, I would hit it. Hard. The heart wants what it wants and if it ever happened, I would never tell a soul. Diplo and his man-nips cover the December issue of The Cut. Diplo is promoting about a million things and that’s why he went shirtless for the photos or something. Lord help me, but I would. Sorry. You can read the full profile here. Some highlights:

He thinks his early Twitter usage is why people thought he was a d-ck: He was “one of the first guys” to use it, and it helped his career a lot — but he was always pissing people off. He doesn’t really think he’s crossed any boundaries, though: “I’m not a malicious guy, you know? So if someone didn’t understand that, I put it on them, you know?” Still, he’s apologized for the Taylor Swift beef, for the MIA feud. And he was only on Raya for a month a long time ago. He mostly used it to connect with people he already knew as friends (including Joe Jonas, his “soul mate”). He felt really bad for women who use it because all the men are like him (“DJ losers”) while “the girls are better than us.”

He’s trying to figure out social media: “I’m still figuring it out,” he says, about giving fans a personal view of who he really is. He studies the internet. He thinks John Mayer is “really good at it.” “I don’t know any of his music anymore, but I’ll buy it because he’s so good at Instagram,” he says. He, like everyone, thinks the kids on TikTok are genius and begins to explain his theory of TikTok chaos: “It’s like beyond races, beyond gender. They have old Chinese guys doing dances, then all these young people doing the same ones, and the kids accept everything on it, so it’s not like one wave.” He sighs. “It’s beautiful.”

His cowboy phase: “What else is a white guy supposed to do when he hits 40? I can’t wear, like, Balenciaga pants. Well, I mean I can …” The way he sees it, he has three options at his age: “a cowboy, or motorcycle-gang member or something, or you’re a corporate lawyer.” At first, women in his life begged him to cut his hair. “You used to be hot,” they said, but eventually they came around to it, according to Diplo. “I mean, girls still like me with my ugly tooth and my ugly haircut. I just kept thinking, I’m never going to get laid again, when I started doing this stuff, but it still happens. I don’t know how. I just persevered, man. Persevere in your ugliness. It will just eventually become beautiful, I think.”

On the suede pants he was given for the photoshoot: “These pants are so tight I can’t even Nae Nae!”

He doesn’t mind that people objectify his buff body: “Nope. Totally like that. Totally love that. But it’s pretty sad that I have to take my shirt off to have more likes than other photos.”

His veganism: “When I was younger, I was vegan for a different reason. I wanted to kill everybody that ate meat and that was anarchist. Now I’m vegan because of selfish reasons. I want to be healthier and live longer. Vegan food is going to let us live forever, right?”

He spends more time with his two kids these days: “They’re not stupid, you know. They’ll be like ‘My dad never gave me that real time.’” For Diplo, this means spending less energy on “women” or “stupid things like getting lost on YouTube looking up samurai swords.” He isn’t really dating, and doesn’t actually know if he believes in monogamy at this point, but his kids are teaching him a lesson about intimacy. “I guess I really understood that true love from them, which is cool, because I was getting kind of jaded at this point. But when they came, I was like, ‘Wow, now I understand what it must be for other people.’ To feel love, to really have that feeling. It’s cool.”

[From The Cut]

The Cut also speaks to Diplo’s ex-girlfriend and mother of his children and she openly discusses their relationship as it was and as it is now, especially given that they split when she was pregnant with their second. She doesn’t seem to hate him, and he gives her a lot of credit for raising their kids while he’s more of a drop-by father. I mean, it sucks, but at least he acknowledges that she’s doing the bulk of the child-rearing. Anyway, I have expected Diplo to say, at the end of the interview, that everything that came before it was a joke, a persona he was trying on. But I think this is the “real” him – sort of uncool, sort of mean, sort of… trying. Trying to be different. Sorry, still a shamef–k.

Read our full cover story, where @Diplo talks about his forties, fatherhood, and look: “Girls like me with my ugly tooth and my ugly haircut. I kept thinking, I’m never going to get laid, when I started doing this stuff, but it happens. I don’t know how” https://t.co/6pc9IGobfi pic.twitter.com/pss2vbYk42

— The Cut (@TheCut) December 2, 2019

Photos courtesy of The Cut.