At first glance, Dot Drop Da Beat appears to be a regular young man from around the way, who you’d bump into at your local gas station or Wal-Mart that’s rocking a cool pair of sneaks, off-brand jeans and a white tee. His appearance is misleading and definitely a slanting effect to his superstar status, but for good reason.
Dot Drop Da Beat released mix tape 78723 Vol.1 in 2016. He unleashed a blistering buzzer from the same project entitled Wishing. The track is so dope that he received reverence just from social media posts alone. It went viral. Instagram and FaceBook followers shared his single forty thousand times. He raked in thousands of views on YouTube. Listen to the track and you’ll understand the reason it took off the way it did. Dot Drop Da Beat switched the original score that had Rolls Royce singing the chorus. He laced the track with consecutive bars, making it a marketable hit. Bet you’re wondering how he did that? Dot Drop Da Beat’s rapping style is similar to Wiz Khalifa, but it’s more up-tempo. He’s having fun, but telling a story at the same time through shock factor missives and commentary.
He emancipated another mix tape earlier this year. “I gave people Mandatory, and named it that because it was mandatory that you heard what I had to say,” he stated confidently. “In “78723 Vol 1, I gave people the mix-tape “Black Lives Matter,” and that’s the compilation. 78723 is a zip code where I’m from. I wanted to give [people from my hometown] me, and let them know that my black life matters.”
Dot Drop Da Beat referenced Malcom X throughout the cautionary mix tape as a prolific reminder that he is a powerful leader. “When I dropped that 78783 Vol 1, it was to let people know who I am, where I’m from, and what I’m capable of doing. I gave them bars, I gave them beats, and I gave them pain. On Mandatory, I gave them strictly bars and my life.”
Drippin, it’s another enjoyable single, and a guaranteed thumper from his newest release that has the dominance to move crowds for years to come, kinda like the song Swag Surfin.
“I wrote Drippin July 2018. I needed a song that signified me. It doesn’t mean that I was the flyest person growing up, or I had the flyest stuff, but my personality is drippin,” he explains.
Drippin
The native of Austin, Texas loved watching MTV and BET when he was younger. Rappers like Jay Z, Run DMC, The Beastie Boys and Biggie, they all had an evocative influence that captivated him... “As I got older, I told my mom that I wanted a Talk Boy [recorder]. "I watched [the movie] Home Alone, and I seen that you could record yourself [with it]. I don’t know about cassette tapes or anything like that, but I knew that we could record ourselves on that particular toy. I fell in love with it. I did my first recording over an All-4-One tape. I don’t even know how we did it.”
His mom went to Circuit City, and bought him a microphone. She acknowledged that he was passionate about being a rapper. She affirmed him just by purchasing the mic.
“I wasn’t sports inclined. I couldn’t play basketball. I suck,” he spoke animatedly. “I sucked terribly. I’m tall but I suck. I couldn’t play football. I’m skinny, and I did not want to get tackled. I would’ve been done,” he joked. I wasn’t playing baseball and I damn sure wasn’t playing soccer. It was music for me.”
At the age of 7, Dot Drop Da Beat found himself enthralled by Hard Knock Life Volume 2 [Jay Z]. It was something about that Orphan Annie, singing on the hook that snagged his attention. As he got older, he listened more to Jay Z’s music, which helped to develop his New York sound. “As I heard that kind of music, I blossomed into a whole other artist,” he says. “Listening to Jay-Z made me not only want to write music, it made me want to freestyle. I started freestyling in middle school and high school.”
The rapper earned the moniker, “Dot Drop Da Beat & Make The Whole World Feel It,” because he produces music as well, in addition to writing his own lyrics. Now, he goes by the pseudonym Dot Drop Da Beat.
The rhymester doesn’t boast about jewelry in his songs, the latest Maybachs, or conventional narratives that tend to sway mainstream audiences. “I rap about my struggles, my babies, my kids. I have six babies and one on the way. One is in the oven right as we speak. When people see my children, they see daddy is grinding.“
The rapper is determined to leave a powerful legacy for his kids, and that’s the other reason he doesn’t assert drugs or violence in his music. “I’m not a thug. I’m not in these streets. I don’t shoot guns. I don’t sell dope. I don’t hang around people that’s out here killing people. I’m always at home. When I’m not at home, I’m with the team [promoting music].”
He accredits much of his success to Pure Records, the label that took a chance on him, and invested in him when nobody else would. In 2018, a representative invited the rapper to the BET Awards, where he performed, and opened for Tee Grizzley… The label covered the expenses for the entire trip. “That was the most amazing thing in my life. I’ve never experienced that, but I had to come back home and see reality.”
The lyricist lost his job right before the BET awards. “I found another job October of last year. There was a three-month gap of me not having a job. I went back to work and lost my job again this year. There was a six-month gap of me not having a job, and I went back to the BET awards because of my label. I traveled to Arkansas, Miami, and we went to Radio Nation DJ’s. It’s just so much stuff that happened out of nowhere, and you don’t expect it, but you know God is watching you. When your blessings are for you, nobody can take that away. I’ve never been that type of person to look down on somebody and say, “Yeah, I made it.”No, I didn’t make it. When people look at me, they are going to say that I don’t act like a rapper. I don’t know how a rapper is supposed to act, but I act like me. At the same time, I am an artist and producer, but I’m also a human. I’m a father first. I got mouths to feed and I still gotta go home at the end of the day,” he says adamantly.
Dot Drop Da Beat suggests that indie artist or up-and-coming artist, they need to have a strong team, helping to push them to the top.
“If you got a team, make sure it’s the right team. You don’t want to go in with people you don’t know. You need to be aware that someone might take your money and your manager might not be the right person. When you are a family and it’s a team, it’s not just your team, it’s your family,” he nodded to the group of people with him, which consisted his barber, manager, and label executive. “This is my family. When I had nothing, this is the team I came to, besides certain friends that would help me if they could, but they never told me no. I love music, and I know that if I love music and I got a team that supports me, they love music as much as I do, we are gonna make it, because family is everything.”
Speaking of making it in the industry, the rapper is working on new material. “I have features from Project Pat and Crunchy Black. We’re trying to work something out with Gangsta Boo, and Tony Sunshine. I got people from home like my cousin E, The Lab Rats, one of my homeboys, and a guy named Millie who goes hard. I have a female that I working with on my next project called Chiquita V. She’s from Austin, and she’s very dope. I’m working with a guy named J Rich—He’s getting his buzz too. Dude got it. He’s really hot. That’s the list of people that I’m currently working with, and that’s who I’m trying to the build with. As for future projects, I’d love to work with Da Baby. He’s dope, and even without the fame, to me, he’s dope.”
Dot Drop Da Beat is moving at warp speed, trying to accumulate more wins. He’s on mission to confirm that Dot Drop Da Beat & Make The Whole Feel it, is more than catchphrase, it’s a movement.
Bad Decisions
Hometown Kid
In My Bag
Follow the artist here.