Brillz
Brillz, born Angelino Sami Diament in Israel and later raised in New Jersey before relocating to Los Angeles in his early twenties, built his trap DJ career under the self-coined banner TWONK. Before moving into electronic music he played drums in hardcore bands, opening shows for Linkin Park, Staind, Machine Head, Limp Bizkit and Deftones, and co-founded the Liquid Pop Collective dance crew, credited with releasing the first liquid drum and bass dance tutorial online. He decided to pursue music full-time in 2004 and started the Brillz project in early 2012, spending roughly eight years building toward sustainable income from music by the start of 2013. His DJ sets, described as energetic and dramatic, earned a cosign from Diplo and Friends, and by 2015 he had completed multiple legs of his TWONK di Nation tour, playing dates that spanned trap's shift across different tempo ranges from 140 beats per minute down to 100. Brillz has cited Diplo as a major influence for bridging underground and mainstream dance music, a description that also applies to his own trajectory from hardcore drumming and dance-crew promotion into a touring trap DJ career built on high-energy production and live sets rather than a fixed club residency.