Diplo Responds To Accusations He Is “Grooming” A 19-Year-Old TikTok Star
"I can see you can get a twisted idea but there is nothing but a friendship between us."
Diplo, 41, has clarified his relationship with 19-year-old TikTok star and musician Quenlin Blackwell after she featured him in multiple videos and said they lived together.
Over the past week, Blackwell has posted a series of videos called ‘Living With Diplo’, where she seems very present in his life. She drives around with him, is in the background while he works and jokes around with him. In one video, the pair dance together, with the caption saying she ‘didn’t have to pay rent’.
After the videos were posted, people on social media began accusing Diplo — aka Thomas Wesley Pentz — of exerting influence on and ‘grooming’ the younger star, as well as questioning what their relationship actually is.
Via Twitter, he clarified that the two don’t live together, and that Blackwell is merely his friend and tenant in a building that also houses his studio, which is why he can be seen in several videos.
“OK so I rent one of my properties to @quenblackwell”, he wrote on Twitter on Monday. “And yes I use the studio that is in that building. Her social media is sarcastic and chaotic and I can see you can get a twisted idea but there is nothing but a friendship between us.”
“As a landlord I don’t really consider age or race as a qualification,” he later added. “U just gotta pay security deposit. And don’t poke holes in the walls or ruin my carpet”
Twitter users were quick to respond to Diplo by pointing out a decades-old Tweet he made about how he had to ‘stop sleeping with ’90s girls’ — at the time, he would have been in his early ’30s. He apologised for ‘using Twitter in a dumb way back then’.
Yeh I used Twitter in a very dumb way back then and would not consider anything I wrote credible. Kinda cringe to read it without context https://t.co/rvCXN6R0eE
— Thomas Wesley (@diplo) October 26, 2020
Because it has zeo context now and my girlfriend at the time was 20 and we broke up. https://t.co/LExiTGSipV
— Thomas Wesley (@diplo) October 26, 2020
Others wondered what ‘friendship’ a 41-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman might have, and Diplo said the two make music together.
We made music together https://t.co/jvlHPiSbpe
— Thomas Wesley (@diplo) October 26, 2020
Blackwell has since issued her own statement (and pointedly posted pictures with her boyfriend), in which she calls Diplo her “LA dad” and that she’d “rather break both of my legs and be forced to walk than persue Diplo romantically and he’d rather choke”.
“I’m an adult. I’m not being groomed,” she wrote. “Platonic relationships exist… My parents trust him. I trust him. Y’all are making me feel icky.”
Read the full statement below.
On Mother’s Day this year, the DJ revealed he had a third son, Pace (his first with model Jevon King), but that they hadn’t met yet due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Last week, he released Music Is The Weapon, the fourth and reportedly last album by his group Major Lazer.
— queen quen (@quenblackwell) October 26, 2020