One of Mad Decent’s freshest young talents, Dillon Francis has risen to success off the back of his wildcard antics and foundation-shaking bass wobbles. We caught up to talk about confusing moms, his debut album and owning what may become the most famous cat in dance music...
words: ELIZABETH DE MOYA A
fter a Skype conversation with Dillon Francis, the 25-year-old, Los Angeles DJ and producer whose bass wobbles and irreverent humor have won the hearts and minds of fans across the
land, DJ Mag USA realizes we have one excessively affectionate cat curled up against our leg, purring contentedly. We suspect that this may have something to do with Dillon Francis being her favorite DJ, following a year in which he did wonders for cat kind with his viral cat memes. When we talk to Francis, he’s laid out in the back of his tour bus in Dallas, taking a reprieve from his national Wet & Reckless tour before heading out to Australia for Stereosonic. He explains to us that the cat meme thing got started on a lark, when he got it into his head one week to start posting pictures of cats in hats. “So I just put up some. I didn’t really know what to post. I searched for cats in hats and I found a bunch of pictures of cats in ridiculous hats,” he said. “There were so many cat pictures that I thought, ‘This will be perfect.’”
He does not make the memes any more, although a loyal fan has started a Tumblr called dillonfrancisiscat where she superimposes his face onto various images, though mainly cats going about their business; DJing, smoking weed or cuddling up to Kim Kardashian. As for his Tell Your Mom campaign, Dillon posted a status update on Facebook requesting that his fans share his latest song ‘Bootleg Fireworks’ — a colorful, explosive shot of moombahcore gunpowder — with their mothers. Soon enough, people from across the world were sending him snapshots of their mothers’ confused replies via text message. “I thought it would be a good way for people to refer me, you know, like as a joke,” he says, a pattern emerging of his good natured tom-foolery doing the marketing for him.
Part of a generation for whom online presence is first nature, Francis loves social media as a tool for sharing music and jokes. “I think it’s really good for making music, [for] sharing new
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