Watch: Chris Rock and Diplo talk DJing while escaping Burning Man
The pair “walked five miles in the mud” before a fan picked them up after the Nevada festival suffered torrential rains and left many stranded
Chris Rock and Diplo in a fan’s pick up truck
Footage has emerged of comedian, actor and filmmaker Chris Rock talking about quitting DJing while escaping Burning Man festival with producer/DJ Diplo.
The clip shows Rock and others, including a face paint-clad Diplo, in the back of a fan’s pickup truck. They’re escaping the Nevada festival, which this year was overcome with torrential rain, turning the desert-based site into a quagmire.
“[If there was a] time when DJs would have actually made money, I would have never told a joke,” says the comedian, who DJed in Brooklyn during the founding days of hip hop. “I was like, This is fucking dead end,” he jokes. “Turntables, backspinning, whatever…”
On being fans of the founders of hip-hop, Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa, Rock says: “Me and my friends used to follow [Grandmaster] Flash around wherever the fuck he played – all of that shit, crates and records. I know them all. If you read the books, I used to hang around and shit.”
Diplo is quick to add his own story of meeting Grandmaster Flash. “Flash, when I play with him, he gives you a list of 400 songs you can’t play. Like, Smells Like Teen Spirit’s on the list. He’s like ‘These are all the songs I play. Don’t play any of these.’”
The 35th edition of Burning Man took place in Pershing County, Nevada’s Black Rock Desert and ran from 27 August to 4 September 2023. The iconic, self-sufficient event drew approximately 73,000 attendees.
While Burning Man regulars are no strangers to adverse weather such as dust storms, on 1 September, a rare nine hours of rain hit the site. This carried on in the days after, causing many to become stranded. It also meant that the festival’s famous ceremony, which involves the burning of a huge figure of a man, was scrapped.
According to an X post by Diplo, he and Chris Rock walked for five miles “in the mud” until a fan saw the pair and picked them up.
just walked 5 miles in the mud out of burning man with chris rock and a fan picked us up pic.twitter.com/0uxSXLHgY6
— diplo (@diplo) September 2, 2023
Follow Diplo on X.
