18 SEPTEMBER 12-18, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | LETTERS | CONTENTS | fl ects his musings at a point in time, or pulls from a wealth of inspirations. His unique fl ow can oscillate between different styles of rap; he has a clear R&B infl uence, and he can sing. And in whatever he creates, the result- ing project inevitably generates a mood, an aesthetic — as with Picasso. It’s as though his lyrics are brushstrokes culminating in a textured painting, something you can see but also feel. “I’m a Black man, so being born in Amer- ica, I was already a part of hip-hop culture before I started making music,” he says. “I feel like I was part of hip-hop culture before I picked up a pen. Hip-hop is just a way for me to express myself...and I was born in New York, the mecca of hip-hop.” DNA and his twin brother were born in Harlem Hospital, and were taken into foster care at birth. He moved around foster fami- lies in the New York area, and — likely from his own brain protecting him, he thinks — he doesn’t remember much from that time, except for some traumatic fl ashes: a girl forcibly grabbing his wrists and pressing his hands on a stovetop until they burned, constantly hearing gunshots, being beaten, rarely seeing the sun. He has a good memory, though. “There’s this rooftop that we used to go to; sometimes they had fl owers on it, and we used to play up there. And there was this smell,” he recalls, as if reading from a passage from Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. “I don’t know if it was the smell of those fl owers or just the air in New York at the time, but I just gravitated toward that spot. I wanted to be outside. We weren’t outside often, playing on jungle gyms; we barely knew how to run or how to move our bodies.” Everything changed when he and his brother, then nearly six years old, appeared on an episode of Maury for a special on adoption. They were the only twins up for adoption in the U.S. at the time. In an old recording made by his adoptive father, the two tentatively walk across the stage, sport- ing glasses and matching gray suits. DNA’s brother says they want to live somewhere with parents and a grandma. “It’s hard to watch,” DNA says. “But it’s crazy that we have it. My parents saw that and came and adopted us. I can remind my- self where I was, and this thing right here,” he gestures to the video, “is the reason why my life is the way it is.” His soon-to-be parents had been praying for twins, and they visited New York with their three sons and two daughters to see the boys. That’s when DNA acquired his second good memory: It was snowing in New York, and “my parents came to hang out with us, and they brought our adoptive siblings, and we were playing and building snowmen.” The twins moved with their new family to Ontario, California, in 2000. There weren’t many complex emotions involved in the transition, DNA says: “We were just happy to be loved.” In 2009 the family moved to Colorado, where DNA excelled in track and football at Chero- kee Trail High School in Aurora, winning state championships and eventually a schol- arship to Hastings College in Nebraska for track and fi eld. But when he failed a class, he became ineligible to compete in an up- coming race. Frustrated, he decided to leave school, return to Denver and pursue a career in rap- ping, for which he had recently discovered a talent. One of his friends, Nate Maloley, was also into the art form under the moniker SK8, and was “projected into stardom,” DNA recalls. “He signed with Wiz Khalifa. But I thought my journey was going to go like his, so I ended up leaving school and came home. Everybody thought I was crazy.” Although he didn’t have the immediate gratifi cation of going viral like his old friend, DNA is now grateful it didn’t happen that way. “There’s a level of entitlement to that,” he notes. Looking back, he says he wasn’t ready. In his mind, an artist needs to grow, and growing pains are necessary for great art. “I had to have a little bit of an ego death, being slowed down by the universe or God — whatever it is,” he muses. “From 2013 to 2015, I was working in a lot of collectives and collaborating a lot. ... I was starting as an out- sider in the Denver music industry, so I started fi guring out who’s dope and supporting who’s dope, trying to be an asset to people.” He and his friends formed a clothing col- lective, Last Ones Left, and started throwing parties. “We realized we could promote and market different things,” he says. “We started producing fashion shows, Project X-style house parties.” Once the group’s members turned 21 in 2018, they began going to clubs and presenting their impressive track his- tory. Soon they were contracted to produce parties at Onyx Ultra Lounge. “We were bringing a lot of celebrities into the night- club: We brought Dolla $ign, Gucci Mane, Joyner Lucas, Shy Glizzy, Ginuwine, Chris Brown,” DNA recalls. “And Chris Brown didn’t even charge us.” He discovered his innate business acu- men and created yet another company with a videographer friend, Nathaniel Barnes (better known as Nuck Fate), doing marketing and advertising for various outfi ts. Through that, DNA began working with a limo company, ultimately becoming its vice president of sales. And he was still doing his party promotion, booking artists and making music. Then the pandemic hit. While there were no clubs to work at, there was music to be made. Before that, DNA had mainly released singles and then albums in 2018 and 2019. “In 2020, I ended up dropping an album called #ForTheRecord2,” he says. “And since then, I’ve dropped four albums and four EPs.” One of the recent themes in his music has been “love,” he says. “Not only talking about being in love, but also feeling like I’m good enough to be loved.” Looking back, he observes how much his confi dence has grown. He’s no longer the shy little boy in a gray suit. “I don’t know if I felt like this back in the day, but I feel like this now: We were defi nitely being looked over by someone or something,” he says. “And as much as I talk about not having parents, I still had a lot of people who weren’t obligated to love me or care about me make certain moves to make sure we were okay.” DNA credits his partner, Dominique Christina, for helping him develop his philosophical perspectives. They met each other through Twitter during the pandemic. They began writing each other letters — “epistles,” as Christina calls them, which inspired their upcoming album. “It’s how my grandparents met, and it’s just a beautiful, sacred tradition that I didn’t know I was going to get to practice,” she says. “And then here I was, practicing it. So for me, Lawless: A Love Story is just a real extension of those conversations that we had with each other and still have.” As they learned more about each other, so many coincidences began piling up that they no longer seemed like coincidences; it was more like everything — from what their ancestors did up to their own lived experiences — was conspiring to pull them together. “When it DNA Picasso was born in “the mecca of hip-hop.” He’s been uplifting the hip-hop scene with multiple projects. Music continued from page 17 ROSHII continued on page 20 CHRISTIAN HUNDLEY
