Artist Profile: O Dawg
O Dawg, the dynamic rapper from New York, has steadily been improving in his craft since the release of his first song, “Grand Slam”, in 2016, and now, delivering snappy bars over instrumentals ranging from tastefully jazz-inspired to stunningly trap-infused, he continues to push his sound forward.
Growing up on the East Coast, O Dawg was handed down the music taste of his older sibling; Jay-Z, Aaliyah, and other staples of the ‘90s permeated his childhood.
In fact, the first rap song he can remember hearing is “Where I’m From” off Jay-Z’s In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, with stark memories of Hov, in a throwback football jersey, spitting bars in front of a corner store.
Moreover, his mom’s taste in reggae, house, and dance hall music, combined with his aunt’s love for East Coast mixtapes, formulated his upbringing in a musical household.
Yet, O Dawg never quite considered himself as a musician in any form until a friend signed him up, against his will, to rap over his beats at a talent show. While O Dawg was irritated at first, he ultimately went through with the performance, and, apart from narrowly avoiding an expletive slipping out in front of his teachers, did very well.
So, as he entered college and more of his friends began to produce beats, he felt compelled to keep rapping, and he recorded his first song, “Grand Slam”, in his mother’s bathroom on the laptop he used for his schoolwork. When he eventually transferred to a school where he was forced to live off-campus, his impulse to create took on a new importance.
“So when you’re on campus, you could be broke. You could be as broke as you want to be; you're good, ‘cause you know, you got the school, you Gucci, right? But when you’re in a city and you got to commute, you got to get on a train, you got to actually spend money on your own lunch and you’re part-time… I remember being in classes, staring out the window and sh*t like that, and just wanting to leave, just not even really wanting to be there. So by the time when I did stop going to school, I got more hours at my job and I [decided] that I was about to put the pedal to the metal with this music sh*t: take myself a bit more serious.”
This newly-found creative drive led him down new avenues. His first project, Off the $trength, quickly relayed into a relationship with New Jersey-based producer Grimm Doza, which in turn resulted in their well-received tapes STUDENT OF THE GAME and ILLEGAL TENDER.
Through the various collaborators and producers that O Dawg has brought into his work, he has shown an uncanny ability to match his flow and energy to whatever the moment or particular sound demands and, through the course of the nine projects he has released over the last six years, has harnessed his work ethic to improve time and time again.
“I look at it like basketball in the sense that every year I've gotten better, and every year my game is elevated… I've had wins, I've had losses, and the loss is going to determine whether or not you want to keep going.... I’ve seen a lot of people just stop doing it. There won't be a real reason, but there'll just be like one day you see a lot of people here when you start.”
Now, with the artist’s most recent project, Menaces 2 Society, he has taken yet another step forward, flowing effortlessly over Dvnthony’s tape-saturated loops and tasteful instrumentals. As discography and list of collaborators grow, his name will certainly be one to watch in the NY hip-hop scene.
