Artist Profile: Dp0mmy

Dp0mmy, the Atlanta-based and St. Louis-raised hip-hop producer, came relatively late to the art of beatmaking, but, with his jazz-interweaved and deeply nostalgic boom-bap instrumentals, has already made a name for himself in the industry, advancing his craft with each successive project he has released.

As a child, Dp0mmy was surrounded by the eclectic music tastes of his father, who introduced him to various jazz legends including John Coltrane, Elvin Jones, and Nina Simone as well as various beatmakers, including J Dilla and DJ Shadow, who he had loved when he was in college.

While he had experienced the sonic possibilities of hip-hop instrumentation as a child, Dp0mmy did not dream of becoming involved with the genre in any shape or form. Instead, his first intimate experiences with music came through his middle school band.

As a child he had played clarinet at the encouragement of his parents, but, through the guidance of the band teacher at his eventual high school, switched to playing the saxophone in order to maximize his chances of being able to join the jazz band.

Through his new instrument, Dp0mmy found an outlet for the creative energy that had been built up in him throughout his childhood, and his experiences in the jazz band exposed him to the intricacies of music in substantiated form.

Yet, through all these experiences, he still had never quite dreamt of a career as a musician. As a senior, however, his school offered a music production elective, one which turned out to provide an hour a day where students would get together and experiment with their DAWs, making beats and writing rhymes. 

Quickly after graduating, and getting a non-school-issued laptop, Dp0mmy had found a new channel through which to direct his musical energy: hip-hop production. Yet, although he had a basis of knowledge in music theory, he still found the transition to be an intense experience of growth.

“I think [my experience in jazz] helped in that I felt confident in my abilities, but I would put myself in that stubborn category too, especially when I started. I thought that all the great producers didn't know music theory. If I learned too much, it would diminish the soul almost or something like that.”

However, through studying other producers, he quickly realized what it would take to hone in on his craft, and his earliest beat tapes provide evidence of his rapid strides through the early growing pains typical to the art form.

Now, having released a number of beat tapes, collaborative projects, and producer-curated albums, Dp0mmy has found a sound that is just as experimental and abstract as it is rooted in traditional boom-bap, carving out a wider niche with each successive project he releases. Through his experiences in jazz, he has learned to seek out a “beautiful dissonance” that marks his instrumentals with exceedingly unique qualities.

“The way I learned how to solo [on saxophone]  is kind of the approach that I have to making music. If you feel like you just messed up or you just did something that's a little weird, lean into it and do it again. A lot of the teachings of jazz, I feel like can be seen in the way I make stuff. I like weird stuff, dissonance; I like things being a little off-kilter, but I do also like things coming back home to a certain note or a sound a lot of the time.”

Now, with his new producer-curated project, “splinters”, coming this Fall, Dp0mmy will add another notch in his belt, executing a conceptual project that will serve as the next step in his unlikely journey.