Avril Lavigne remixes aren’t for everyone, but Ynfynyt Scroll (aka Rodrigo Díaz) is happy to take his poptimism straight to the masses. As you can tell from the Peruvian-born, Dallas-raised producer’s summer ’16 mixtape, he considers Calvin Harris and Rihanna’s EDM confection “This is What You Came For” just as worthy of clubgoers’ ears as hard-hitting industrial tracks.
As with most of Díaz’s productions, if you’re not feeling a certain source genre, you just have to wait a minute and the sound will have switched up completely. The bulk of this mixtape, for example, is going to fit the flow of dembow enthusiasts more than Ariana Grande teen queens (though “No Pasa Nada” invites Grande’s “Alright” to step into the club with an impressive ponytail flourish). Madeintyo’s “I Want” is re-envisioned alongside baile funk’s wonderfully weird and body positive MC Bin Laden in “Tranquilo Skr.” Díaz invited fellow Brooklyn producer Orlando Volcano and Nar into the studio to work on some of the mixtape’s original tracks, like “Big Breakfast” and “Devil’s Breath,” with slightly darker results.
In an interview with a Dallas magazine from a million years ago, Díaz talks about the importance of “framing” for audiences when it comes to presenting new music. Since his move to New York, he’s been playing for crowds more accustomed to experimentations with the dembow riddim, but that earlier assertion does leave us wondering – what should we make of reggaeton and dembow’s wild rise in popularity on the global club scene?
This we know: forget what the industry has to say. You do you, Ynfynyt.