Corinne Baldwin: One of the things that I really want to talk about is your music, and what you’ve been doing over the summer. So if you could just explain to the people what that’s all about…

Khalif Diouf: Well, when I first got here Harrison came up to me at orientation and, like, demanded that I listen to his music, like, so I went over to his room and we listened to each other’s music and we were really in awe of each other. And that’s a few months after I decided to start rapping and stop DJ-ing. And so, we were working on tracks together and I started performing those tracks at my friends’ parties and stuff in New York and stuff like that. And one of my friends’ parties happened to be, well, she’s this rapper from Sweden, and her manager came with her, and she really wanted to bring me out last summer, to Scandinavia to tour. And so she happened to be doing this tour with my long time friend Dante, who puts on parties in Brooklyn, and he was setting up shows in other cities in Europe, and so it became this one big tour and Rye Rye was doing it so it turned out to be a really great opportunity that I landed.

CB: So where did you go over the summer, and what did you think of the places that you saw?

KD: Umm I was in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, and London, um, and Toronto, which is not really in that group. But they were really, really fun, each place was extremely different. It was really, really awesome to do these kinds of like, rap tracks, in countries where English isn’t their first language. Because, like, I can say anything that I want. I was basically forgetting a lot of lines and making up a lot of stuff on the spot.

CB: And they just had no idea…

KD: Haha, yeah, as long as like the beat sounds good and it still sounds good and it’s slightly rhythmic, everyone is happy.

CB: So are you going to be performing at Wesleyan at all, or traveling to any other places to perform during the school year?

KD: Yeah, um, well right now, no, because Harrison and I are working on putting together a full-length album to put out early next year. We’re doing a couple on campus this semester, but not anything too big yet.

CB: Ok, cool. Well something else I’ve been curious about is your interest in design. You did the fashion last year, are you going to do that again this year?

KD: Yeah, I’m going to do it again, definitely, it was a lot of fun.

CB: What kind of pieces do you like to design? And is design something you are interested in, in any kind of serious capacity, or is this more of a hobby for you?

KD: No, design is something I’m interested in…actually, the plan for the live set is to do video, music, dance and design. Latasha and Benny are working on dances for that, and I’ll be choreographing some dance moves. Kind of like, Santogold style, but like, American dancing, and vogue, you know, like gay-house dance, postmodern interpretations of that kind of stuff. And we’re gonna be designing our own costumes. It will probably be kind of similar but hopefully better, and definitely our own image, and we’ll have video projections for each song.

CB: So where exactly are you drawing your inspiration from? Would you say that Santogold is an influence over you or is this just a pre-existing, similar aesthetic that you both already ascribe to?

KD: Well my background is in postmodern dance more than music, like, I’ve never passed music theory, although I’ve taken it a lot of times. Right now I think I want to be a university major for Dance and Technology, digital media, that kind of stuff.

CB: Ok, that’s really cool. Where did you train? Can you tell me a little bit about your postmodern dance roots?

KD: Uh, I did ballet for a long time and then in high school I did postmodern dance with this guy Richard Colton, who just happened to be in the Kirov Ballet and the Twyla Tharpe Company before he started teaching, so he had a lot of resources and connection, and some crazy ideas. My first experience with postmodern dance was just this really intense, complete production style, you know? It’s very much drawn on that kind of stuff, like Meredith Monk, but house music, instead of experimental music.

CB: Okay there are a million other things that I would want to ask you about but we’re running out of space, so one last simple question. What is your myspace, so that people can check out your stuff?

KD: Oh, it’s www.myspace.com/leif