On the Rise: Devin Dabney
Devin Dabney, a 23-year-old Indiana native, has made his way onto our radar with his newest album “Red Fury: A Love Story.” The project instantly caught our attention with his witty and honest lyrics over smooth production by collaborator Clint Breeze. Devin is currently attending Full Sail University for Music Production to further his artistic ability. I recently chatted with Devin about his album, as well as the state of the music industry and best video game bosses. Check out what he had to say.
Have you lived in Indianapolis all your life?
Yes, but I’ve moved around a LOT in the area — Indianapolis is pretty sprawled out. Between the time I was born until about eight years old, I lived in five different places. We then lived in the same spot for another eight years, and finally we moved to the house that my parents live in now and haven’t moved since.
All of those places were in Indy somewhere.
How has living in Indiana influenced the music that you create?
Hmm… it’s funny, because my first thought was “by being boring as hell.” Hahaha, but that’s kinda true. I don’t know, Indiana’s kind of a weird state, and I think Indianapolis is WAY different from the rest of Indiana. Indianapolis is very urbanized, while the rest of Indiana is super rural and almost like a southern state… which I didn’t know/realize until I moved out. I mean, aside from Michael Jackson, no one was really big in music from Indiana when I started, so I tried to draw influence from everywhere. Ironically, I think by living in the middle of nowhere, it made me branch out and take something from everyone. It’s a Midwest state, so most of the guys who were big around the Midwest — Nelly, Tech N9ne, Eminem, KanYe — were a big part of my origin, but I definitely didn’t just draw from them. I essentially looked everywhere but my hometown, haha.
It’s worked out pretty well for you, too. Let’s talk about your latest project, “Red Fury: A Love Story.” How did it come to be? Where were you in life when you decided to start this project?
I appreciate the compliment! “Red Fury” started out as an idea between me and my good friend/collaborator Carrington Clinton; he and I had started making music together in the spring of last year, and we had done songs here and there for each other, but we wanted to do a fully-collaborative project. I always wanted to do some sort of Valentine’s Day-themed project, and when we were at a bar one night, we got the idea to do a project that told a story about a romantic relationship of some kind. We knew we wanted it to be a complex story, that there would be some issues in the relationship, and that the project would use this example to embrace people in all sorts of situations — single, dating, breaking up, happily together, whatever have you. From there, Carrington and I produced the tracks together. I was in charge of writing the songs with some help from my best friend/collaborator Ethan Williams; it became more clear what the progression was as I drew from a myriad of my own experiences and made up the two ‘characters’ that the story was about. From there, it was just making it sound catchier, recording the vocals with feeling, and mixing it just right. The story behind the title is actually kinda cool. I did a massive study-abroad trip two years ago where I saw 26 countries and 59 cities in a semester, and on Valentine’s Day, the bus that we were riding in was painted with a bright red stallion… the words “Red Fury” were written in cursive across it. I thought that was a pretty epic name for a bus, hahaha, so it kinda stuck with me. At this point in my life, I was in a weird spot with music… I had just graduated the year before, and had been working a job in my first degree (landscape architecture) that I hated, and was eventually fired from. I wasn’t making a lot of music, and I was pretty down most of the time. Around December, I decided to go back to school for music production to pursue my real passion, which really invigorated me to get back into it. So “Red Fury” was kind of like my rebirth into being a musician again. I gave myself a very strict deadline with it, wanting to release it on Valentine’s Day because of the theme, so that gave me about a month and a half to do it… more time would have been nice, but I think having less time made me reawaken and kick it into gear again.
Is this your first complete project?
No, not at all… I’ve completed 13 other projects prior to this: 12 mixtapes, and one project I did as part of a band called Literati; Literati is this really cool blues-rock hip-hop group that I was a part of, until we went on hiatus because of how spread out across the world we all are. Those 12 mixtapes are the ones that I finished — I have SO many unfinished projects. I’m really bad about starting projects and not having the time/motivation to finish them. I don’t really push the first projects I did because I always outdo my old work, so I figure it best to put my best foot forward for people to see/hear.
How’s your relationship with the Literati members? Do you foresee another project with the band in the future?
It’s great! There’s five of us total… three of them are childhood friends that I reconnected with in my 20s, and one of them is a friend I made in college. Right now we’re all over the country (and one of us is out of the country), and we’re not in constant touch, but we do have plans to one day reunite… the music we made was too unique/awesome to let it die.
How has being in school for Music Production changed the way you make music, if at all?
So far, it’s definitely changed my beginning process of creating. I haven’t been in many classes yet, so I can’t say much has changed, but I will say that it has expanded upon my music theory knowledge more than I expected. I come from a classical background, having played the violin for 10+ years, so I have some music theory knowledge, but the rules that help one set up chord progressions are things that I didn’t really learn until I started studying music production. So, it’s made my beginning composition stage much more efficient and logic-based, as opposed to playing around on chords until I hear a progression that sounds right to me.
What do you hope to achieve with your music?
That’s a good question. I think I’m looking for the answer to that now. Honestly, when I started making music [about ten years ago], my goal was to bring back good hip-hop. I hated how cheap music had become — how it wasn’t an art form anymore. For example, I remember when “The College Dropout” first came out and how much I loved that album. I used to say KanYe was my favorite rapper, and people would make fun of me for it! Mind you, their favorite rappers were people like Lil’ Flip, Lloyd Banks, Juvenile, and so on. In light of things like this, I was really driven by this compulsory need to ‘save’ hip-hop, if that makes sense. That was my goal for a LONG time, but recently, hip-hop hasn’t needed saving — you have people like Kendrick, J. Cole, Chance, Childish, and a ton of other people who are bringing good music back to the hip-hop scene. Honestly, when “To Pimp a Butterfly” dropped, I had this huge meltdown where I completely gave up doing music. It sounds silly now, but at that point, I was like, “damn… I call myself Hip-Hop’s Last Hope, but for what? Hip-hop doesn’t need saving anymore.” And really, I think that’s true — Hip-Hop is past that point where it’s in need of a leader to bring back the art form. Now that I can’t be hip-hop’s savior, I’m not sure what my purpose is anymore. I know I want to make good music, as well as tell my story, promote individualism & self-awareness, and help people through dark times by reminding them that they’re not alone. Music used to be my way of venting negative emotion, but now it’s becoming an outlet for ALL my energy — positive, negative, neutral, whatever. Ultimately, my goal is always to bring people of ALL walks of life together; since I’m such a weird/unique person, I’ve always been friends with all kinds of people, so I’ve always been a good conduit for bringing different people together. I guess I would just like to see my music emulate that, too — that, and be dope as shit. Hahaha.
How do you think music influences the society we live in?
I think that music is far more influential than people give it credit for… it’s such a powerful communication tool. We’ve seen it used to unite, disband, and brainwash society — all for different reasons. One of the biggest reasons I’m drawn to making music is because I know how powerful it is; I’ve seen what can happen when it’s used positively — to heal, educate/share with others, and convey stories or emotions – and I’ve seen what happens when it’s used negatively — to stereotype, simplify, glamorize and hypnotize. I’ve always thought that the music individual people gravitate to either reflects who they are or who they want to be — not always explicitly, but perhaps in mood or character… and with that being said, the idealist in me believes that any message, mood or style of music can reach just about anyone — it just takes the intense marketing that all of the popular stuff gets now. Music needs to be handled responsibly — it needs to be controlled by the artists, not the businesses.
We’ve transitioned from a period where record labels were earning a lot of money through music sales to almost any album being available through a simple YouTube search. How do you feel about how accessible music has become? Have the available resources helped or hindered what you are trying to achieve with your music?
I LOVE how accessible music is now. In my opinion, that’s how it should be. I’ve never shed a tear for all the sales that record labels have been losing in the digital age, and that’s because I think that commodifying music is part of why we’ve lost a lot of the art in music. It’s a thin line for me to walk, because I definitely think that artists deserve to be paid much more than people are willing to pay them; the general populace doesn’t seem to appreciate art anymore — not just music, but any form of art — as something they should have to pay for. Maybe that’s just the new school of thought when it comes to music, which I understand, considering that things like YouTube, Spotify, and file-sharing all exist now. Then again, I think people don’t want to pay for music because they share no connection with the artist… and again, I think that’s from businesses trying to package music into a box and using starving artists as pack mules for it. Artists make all THEIR money from shows, merchandise, sponsors — pretty much anything but their albums — so the fact that most people don’t want to pay for albums is, ironically enough, fine with me. I definitely can’t afford my taste in music, so I can’t rightfully expect the same out of anyone else.
The resources of the 21st century are a bit of a double-edged sword for me. On one hand, I can immediately share my music with everyone I know AND the entire internet, and I can collaborate with people across the world [and I have]. It’s a great conduit for spreading my material, and there’s so many sites to do it from, it’s almost impossible to have done it all. The downside to that is all of these resources are accessible to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. What you get is a never-ending slew of artists, most of which are not very talented, and a good portion of which are doing it for the wrong reasons [in my opinion]. Because of that, it makes it really hard for talented artists to get discovered; sure, they’re out there, but who’s going to search hard enough to find them? I’m not saying I’m SUPER talented and should be discovered yesterday, but I mean, I think I’m pretty good, and unfortunately, the only way I see people taking me seriously is with a famous cosign. It seems like everybody does music now — so much to the point that when you tell your friends & family you’re an artist, it doesn’t spark anything. I know from personal experience that it’s damn near impossible to get my own friends to listen to my music unless they really care about me, but when they finally do, they LOVE it, and share it with others who are as apathetic about is as they once were. In short, it’s a great advantage, but the resulting world has made it much harder to be an artist… it’s like the part in a video game where you get this super-powerful weapon, but then you have to fight the toughest boss ever. Yikes.
Speaking of… who was the toughest boss ever for you? Ganondorf? Toad on Rainbow Road?
Dude… Rainbow Road was a nightmare come to life. (Laughs) Also, the first thing I thought of when you asked that was Ninja Gaiden 2… pretty much any of the bosses from Ninja Gaiden 2. Hardest game EVER. The only thing that was harder than that was beating “Through the Fire and Flames” on expert in Guitar Hero 3. Lots of screaming and throwing took place.
Note to self: Don’t play Guitar Hero with Devin. Haha. What are some projects we can look forward to hearing from you in the future?
Hahaha, don’t worry — I think I’m past my prime in that game. I’ve got a lot of stuff on the back burner, but recently, I’ve been messing around a lot with these two projects — they’re tentatively titled “I Ran Out of Time” and “The Ledge.” the former is me pushing myself to keep creating. I really experimented with different samples to make this eclectic-sounding collection of instrumentals. I feel like it’s a bit of a rebirth for me, because like I alluded to before, I’ve gone through a lot of change since I first made music. I’ve ‘quit’ at least five times now, and each time, I changed my direction. I guess that one is the latest rendition of me picking up the craft again. The latter — “The Ledge” — is something I started making when one of my friends tried to kill herself… it made me reflect on my own past experiences with deep depression and suicidal thoughts, and it developed into this project. It’s essentially a narrative of someone trying to talk their friend out of suicide, whilst also dealing with their own depression and learning to take their own advice as a result of helping someone else. I love the concept of man’s duality… which reminds me of a two-disc project in the hole — “The Jedi Way” and “Way of the Sith.” But we’ll save that for another day. Hahaha.
That sounds like it’ll be really good! We’ll be looking forward to you releasing that. Thanks for taking the time to do this. You have a very bright future ahead of you. I wish you great success, keep doing what you’re doing.
Before we close this out… Is there anything you want to add?
I’ll be doing my best to make it great! Thank YOU so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate this; it’s been awesome.
A couple things I want to say to the readers. Stay positive, listen to a ton of music, and do what makes you happy — regardless of what the world says. I may not be able to ‘save’ hip-hop anymore, but mark my words, I’ll be remembered for something… we’ll just have to see what that ‘something’ is.