It wouldn’t be quite right to say that Dijon has finally made his grand return, four years after the release of his debut album Absolutely. You’ve heard him since then – you just might not have realised it – whether on Mk.gee’s 2024 debut Two Star & the Dream Star Police, Bon Iver’s Sable, Fable or Justin Bieber’s SWAG.
Today (August 15), Dijon returns under his own name with his sophomore album, Baby. Named after his son, born in 2023, the 12-track project was written mostly at home in LA, as he and his wife settled into married life and parenthood. Its heartwarming artwork was taken at the couple’s wedding in 2022.
Dropping at the height of Dijon’s momentous year – he’s also starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, due for release next month – this album couldn’t be better timed, nor better primed for wider mainstream appreciation. Unsurprisingly, Mk.gee is credited as a contributor, as are producers Andrew Sarlo and Henry Kwapis.
Baby contains all the rich ingredients of a Dijon record – namely, a surprise at every turn. Sonically, it’s crunchy, sporadic and broken in a way that somehow results in perfect harmony. Overall, it’s an incredibly sweet exploration of fatherhood that marks a beautiful chapter in Dijon’s life, when both his family and career are blossoming.
On social media, the artist thanked those whose “deep fingerprints allowed the thing to be carved”, including Bon Iver (who he and Mk.gee both toured with in 2022), Pino Palladino, Flock of Dimes and Jim-E Stack. But beyond that, Dijon’s musical lore runs deep. Before him, Mk.gee and Bon Iver erupted as the holy trinity of erratic lo-fi lullabies, Dijon worked with Charli xcx, Brockhampton and even Nao. Below, we take a look back at seven times you may not have realised it was Dijon you were hearing.
Before Dijon was just Dijon, he was one half of Abhi//Dijon, a duo he started with his high school friend Abhi Raju around 2012. While slowly building a cult following, Dijon was also juggling his studies at the University of Maryland, and the pair never released a full-length album before parting ways. They did, however, find the time to feature on Nao’s debut album (the east London-based singer known for unique, ‘wonky funk’ sound). In 2016, Abhi//Dijon was credited with a feature on Nao’s “Adore You”.
In 2016, after leaving university, Dijon waved goodbye to Maryland and moved to Los Angeles. It was here that he began working with Brockhampton, eventually providing vocals on “Summer” from the hip-hop group’s second album, Saturation II. He appeared again as a feature on the band’s 2018 track “1998 Truman”.
Following Brockhampton’s split in 2022, Dijon has continued to work with band member Matt Champion on several projects, including his 2024 debut album, Mika’s Laundry. He was credited as producer on the third single from the album, “Slow Motion”, featuring Blackpink’s JENNIE, and he provides vocals on “Aphid” too. Dijon is also credited as a co-writer on Champion’s MINK, an unfinished project from 2017, which was released as a bootleg version earlier this summer.
That’s right, Charli xcx worked with Dijon on her 2020 album How I’m Feeling Now. The opening track, “Pink Diamond”, was co-produced by frequent Charli collaborator AG Cook alongside Dijon (though it sounds nothing like the Dijon we’ve come to know). The album was created within six weeks during the pandemic, recorded entirely from home.
“Dijon and Mk.gee are a deadly combo,” reads one YouTube comment under the live version of “Big Mike’s”, the first track from Dijon’s debut album, Absolutely. On TikTok, one user has dubbed them the “Modern-day Simon and Garfunkel”. Together, Mk.gee and Dijon are one of the most exciting double-acts in music right now – though both are just as strong individually. The pair first began working together when Mk.gee contributed to Absolutely and went on tour as Dijon’s guitarist. The favour was returned when it came to Mk.gee’s full-length debut, Two Star & the Dream Police, on which Dijon is credited as a writer and producer. Released last year, the album topped Dazed’s own best albums of 2024 list, and generally, couldn’t have had a better critical reception.
In spring 2022, Bon Iver went on tour with Dijon as the opener and Mk.gee as Dijon’s guitarist. “That was the first time where I was actually, like, really, really, really humbled,” said Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon in an interview from earlier this year. “Like, I always enjoyed the people we went on tour with, but I was like, ‘Oh, this is fresh.’ What they were doing, it reignited something. It really had me second-guessing – not second-guessing. I love what we did. But it was like, ‘Oh. We’re just about dinosaur. We’re just about over our own hill.’”
It’s no wonder, then, that when it came to Bon Iver’s fifth album, Sable, Fable, released in April this year, both Dijon and Mk.gee were involved in its making. Dijon features on the track “Day One”, while Mk.gee co-wrote “From”.
Justin Bieber simultaneously shocked and delighted the world when he surprised us with his seventh album, SWAG, last month. Not only were we surprised by its arrival, but by Bieber’s new sound too. “‘Go Baby’ occasionally resembles contemporary Bon Iver records with its watery keys and dreamy vocal stacks, which isn’t a huge surprise given their shared collaborator in Dijon,” wrote Pitchfork following the album’s release. In total, Dijon is credited on four of the tracks, while Mk.gee was a writer on “Daisies”. Though overall the reception to SWAG has been largely positive, the echoes of both Dijon and Mk.gee are loud to say the least.
