Don Diablo

Don Diablo spent ten years making records under other names before his own became a brand. Born Don Pepijn Schipper in 1980, he had club hits with Example and Dragonette at the end of the 2000s, then became one of the faces of future house. Today he runs his own label, HEXAGON, and has spent more than a decade in the DJ Mag Top 100.

Aliases and Divided

Schipper started releasing music in 1995. For the first decade he produced for other acts and worked behind a series of aliases, among them Dave Mitchell, The Raven, Batteries Not Included and Skip Donner. In 2004 he launched the project Divided, which scored with “The Music, the People” and, in 2005, “Easy Lover”, a dance remake of the Philip Bailey and Phil Collins duet.

In 2006 he signed and A&R’d Mason’s “Exceeder”, a UK top three hit. His album Life Is a Festival followed in 2008.

From “Hooligans” to Batman

“Hooligans”, with Example, came out in 2009, and “Animale”, with Dragonette, reached the Dutch singles chart in 2010. In 2013 he wrote the theme for the video game Batman: Arkham Origins. The same year his track “Starlight (Could You Be Mine)” was played at the last concert of Swedish House Mafia before it reached the Beatport top five.

HEXAGON and future house

In 2015 he launched HEXAGON as a label and a radio show, which aired in more than 35 countries that year. The first release, his remix of Alex Adair’s “Make Me Feel Better”, held Beatport’s No. 1 spot for almost seven weeks. The same year he released “Chemicals” with Tiësto, featuring Thomas Troelsen.

The style he pushed was future house. Beatport named him its Future House Artist of the Year for 2016, and DJ Mag gave him its Highest Future House award in 2017. The album Future came out on HEXAGON on 9 February 2018, with singles featuring Ansel Elgort (“Believe”), Calum Scott (“Give Me Love”) and James Newman (“Head Up”). That year 1001Tracklists named him Producer of the Year. His remixes for Ed Sheeran, Rihanna, Madonna, Dua Lipa and Coldplay, among others, were collected on Reconstructions (2018) and Reconstructions 2 (2021).

The DJ Mag years and beyond

Don Diablo entered the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs at No. 82 in 2014 and jumped 52 places to No. 30 the following year, taking the poll’s highest climber award. He reached No. 15 in 2016, No. 11 in 2017, No. 7 in 2018 and No. 6 in 2019 and 2020, then placed 7th, 9th, 13th, 15th and 13th from 2021 to 2025.

He was also an early mover in digital art. In 2021 his NFT project “Destination Hexagonia” broke SuperRare’s primary sales record, and Sotheby’s auctioned “HEXHIBIT III” that December. His album Forever came out the same year. Since then he has added the aliases Lunar Lo-Fi (2024) and CONTROL ALT DELETE (2025), and in May 2025 released “Doing Nothin’” with Nelly Furtado, which interpolates her 2012 single “Parking Lot”. For another Dutch DJ who grew up in the Top 100, read about Martin Garrix.