Why you need to start streaming Dominic Fike, rising young artist that everyone's after

Twenty-five-year-old rapper and singer Dominic Fike has quite literally taken the music world by storm. After being caught in the middle of a bidding war between some of the biggest record labels in the country, he settled on a $4 million record deal with Columbia Records, the same company that produced stars like Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé and Harry Styles, and more recent up-and-comers Lil Tjay, Polo G and Lil Nas X.

Evidently, Fike is a force to be reckoned with. 

After dropping “3 Nights,” the first song off of his debut album of demos, Fike quickly shot to the top of everyone’s watch list. The young singer is everything audiences look for in progressive, forward-moving artists: He's unique, authentic and most importantly — he sings like a baby angel.

Stamped with the Apple logo under his eye where a teardrop would typically be, a shaved head that's dyed a different color every week and donning a cross between skatewear and streetwear, Fike effortlessly embodies coolness and originality in his music and is making a statement in pop culture.

But the thing that we love most about Fike is not his heaven-sent vocals, sense of style or passively bad-ass attitude, but rather his genuine, down-to-earth nature.

Growing up, the Florida native lacked stability in his life. His mother was incarcerated for most of his teenage years, so Fike spent most of his nights jumping from place to place, sleeping wherever he could.

Meanwhile, most of the adult role models in his life were mostly addicted to drugs and this pattern unfortunately didn't stop with him.

On October 16, 2018, the day of the re-release of his extended play, “Don’t Forget About Me, Demos,” Fike spent his first paycheck on a lawyer for his mother, and was driving her to prison pending a criminal sentence for drug-related crimes when he received the call.

“Yeah, the day I released the tape, I f**kin’ had to take my mom to jail for two years. So that's what happened that day”, he recounts in an interview.

Fike wrote the album at 21 years old, while on house arrest for assault and battery of a police officer. It seemed like just as Fike was starting to take off is when he had to put his life on hold to serve his sentence, hence the title of the album. "Don’t Forget About Me, Demos" was Fike’s final words to his fans before he would be released from prison.

Miraculously, the extended play landed in the hands of some executives at Columbia Records, rumored to be courtesy of Fike’s friend, rapper and singer Yeek.

Since the release of his first extended play, Fike released a second album, "What Could Possibly Go Wrong." Upon its reveal, the album and Fike himself received much criticism, with fans and critics alike claiming that the album lost that rawness and honesty that we loved in the first place.

I disagree. It’s not often that 21-year-olds get picked up from major labels, much less from prison. This criticism seems to be a reflection of Fike’s history, rather than his capabilities as an artist.

In both albums, Fike displays a range and tolerance for different genres of music. Whereas “3 Nights” is the perfect pop song, complete with a catchy melody and lyrics that you can’t help but sing along to, “Westcoast Collective” is more rock, with heavy guitar and an energetic delivery of vocals based on a 12-chord structure.

If that wasn’t enough, Fike’s musical ingenuity and desirability has attracted some of the world’s most famous artists, who are all fighting to collaborate with him on new music. Fike has been featured in songs with Kevin Abstract, Justin Bieber, Denzel Curry and even The Beatles legend Paul McCartney.

In an interview with his friend and co-collaborator Kevin Abstract, Fike reveals an anxious side of himself that, for some reason, makes us love him even more. His boyish charm and his uncertain mannerisms reveal that even through all the fame and success he’s received, he's still just as unsure of himself as the rest of us. It's an odd comfort to know that someone can have it all without having it all together.

“I hope that a kid like me will listen to my music. 'Cause there’s so much music coming out nowadays and I don’t listen to any of it. I feel for you if you’re not able to get up out of bed and find, like, a new f****** song or new artist to listen to and you’re stuck with the same, yanno? Like, I want my music to touch those people man.”

You can check out all of Fike’s new music, merch and interviews here.