DeJ Loaf talks new album, personal life, influence on today’s music

Ten years ago, in 2014, DeJ Loaf seemed to be on the brink of superstardom. The Detroit rapper broke out that year with “Try Me,” a syrupy hit in which her angelic harmonies captivated us even as she made threats to kill our entire “fomily.” She then featured on Eminem’s ‘Detroit vs. Everybody” and went on to release platinum singles with Big Sean, Lil Durk, Kid Ink and Future. She had the image and distinctive voice to become a rap heavyweight, but after that her releases became scarcer. Until recently, she had only released a few singles over the past four years.

End of summerthe album she released on October 11 shows she’s still got it. The self-proclaimed studio rat tells me that even though she’s no longer in the public eye, she’s been recording all this time, and has plenty more music on the way.

“Honestly, I’m behind, so I’m just saying, ‘Yo, I owe you all this.’ For me it’s non-stop now,” she says. “I don’t want to just flood (the market), but we are going to shower them with good music. They could certainly look forward to securing two or three more projects in the coming year. I have no intention of stopping, especially with the team I have now. People who care and show me that we can make some things happen.”

She’s not one to reveal details about her personal life, but when I ask her the biggest lessons from her career, she says some of her past partnerships could have been more fruitful: “Be careful who you associate with. (Be aware) of how everyone (says) they want to help or they want to be your friend. You just have to be aware of your power.” She admits, “I lost myself a little bit letting other people drive and navigate my life. I have learned to trust myself and not be naive. I had to learn that again.”

That reflection came as she was quarantined in her Los Angeles home during the heat of the Covid quarantine, a period she said was “terrible.” The woman, born Deja Trimble, says she has always been a loner, but putting her life on hold added to the personal issues she was dealing with. Her debut LP, Sell ​​Sole II, released in October 2020, received a solid reception from fans but failed to chart. “I feel like people didn’t receive the album well,” she reflects. The project ended a year after her split from Columbia Records, a departure she felt was necessary after she said they no longer supported her for reasons she has still not identified. (A representative for the label did not respond to a request for comment.)

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Liberatedthe album she had been promising since 2016 was, she said, “pretty much done” while she was still signed to Columbia, but she didn’t understand what was keeping it from being released. “I watched all my peers rise up and get opportunities, and I feel like I’m getting stuck in the mud,” she says — including “a lot of people I came up with” who are essentially “leaving me for dead.”

She says her problems led to breakdowns and “look in the mirror” moments where she asked herself, “What are you doing?” We have to solve this.” But she refrains from getting specific about what those things were in our interview, noting that she’ll “talk about them someday.” DeJ says the period taught her to stop looking for external acceptance: “When you look for yourself, you find more inside.” She also stopped comparing herself to other artists’ career trajectories, “because who said you should have appeared before (another artist), or who said they would appear forever?”

Armed with that mindset, she stayed focused on making music and eventually moved back to her hometown of Detroit in 2023. She reflects that Atlanta and LA felt a bit like home, but couldn’t compare to her hometown of Motor City. “I feel like I experienced everything I needed to for the time I did,” she says. “You have to take it home sometimes.”

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She is still loved in her home state. In July, she walked Flint-raised boxer Claressa Shields to the ring to loud applause, performing “Try Me” before the undefeated boxer knocked out opponent Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse in the second round. “I love being here,” she says. “I like to go out and it’s no problem. And the city has changed so much, so that’s nice.”

DeJ Loaf has recorded several hard drives’ worth of music over the past five years, making for a painstaking process in refining the songs for her next album. She says sequencing End of summer was so meticulous that Apple Music did not receive the final version of the album until after midnight on release day. The project was initially called Red summerThan Beginning of summer, but ultimately she decided to align the title with the October release date and call it End of summer. “I feel like this is my season,” she declares. ‘Everyone ends the summer grinding and hugging. It’s all those emotions.”

Those emotions resonate everywhere End of summer. She’s a lover girl on the sultry ‘BNB/DTB’, gets ‘Faded’ with 2Chainz and tells listeners ‘they can’t fuck with you, you don’t know you at all’ on the flashy ‘MIAMI FLOW’. The late album’s two-song sequence of “Light It Up” and “Ride On Me” exemplifies the DeJ Loaf experience. The first song has her singing about an updated version of breezy ’90s R&B, while in the next song she warns that “the whole neighborhood will want you, just like my last CD” if you meet her.

The album’s many collaborators were largely created over the past year. DeJ was looking for the best song for Kash Doll and decided that the confident ‘Ladies Leave Your Man At Home’ seemed like the right song. She also tells me that album closer “Ball On My Side” is one of the album’s best storytelling moments, with herself, NoCap, Lil Poppa and Hunxho getting introspective. General, End of summer is a versatile collection of songs that showcase the breadth of DeJ’s considerable – and in her eyes, overlooked – talent.

On album intro “Dangerous,” she sings, “a few trends started and I didn’t get any recognition.” Indeed, many share the sentiment of Oakland rapper Kamaiyah, who in 2019 suspected“DeJ Loaf really gave birth to some great kids, her style is the most duplicated in the game.” It’s easy to attribute rap’s focus on melody, and its various approaches to it, to one person. But a few artists made major contributions to the gumbo of modern rap, and to DeJ Loaf’s early productions, especially on tapes like Sell ​​sole And All jokes asideput her in that kitchen. When it comes to being ignored, DeJ theorizes that “people try to keep me as a hidden gem so they can keep stealing the sauce.” But she adds, “But again, I don’t know, I can’t really name it. It makes me angry sometimes. I’m no longer bitter about it because I keep doing what I do.”

Even though some people underestimate her influence, others agree with City Girls rapper JT, who once took to social media to sing “Try Me” and tell viewers, “I grew up on DeJ Loaf, I don’t know what you little young soft asses were raised on, but bitch, this is what I grew up on!” DeJ posted a snippet of the video at the beginning of “GOOD A$$ DAY” from the album featuring HBK.

JT speaks for a generation of fans who were entering early adulthood when DeJ Loaf was first rising in the industry. They were there when DAZED rightly called her “the most exciting new rapper on the planet.” DeJ Loaf’s lithe voice and raw lyrics helped her excel in a rap world that has always been obsessed with making menace seem playfully palatable. She possesses the appeal of 50 Cent’s early mixtape remixes, except she looks as delicate as he looked diesel. It’s impossible to watch the arena-touring, chart-topping success of melodic artists like A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Rod Wave, and NBA Youngboy, and not see a world where DeJ would be standing alongside them if her major label experience were gone. went more ideally.

“I definitely saw (myself) having longevity in the game,” she says. “I think people had expectations, but I think for me it was cut short early” in terms of “trying to meet that.” Ultimately, she concludes, “It’s hard to meet people’s expectations. You have to live up to your own life.”

One of the main themes of our conversation is that DeJ doesn’t succumb to what people want from her, including information about her personal life. In July, photos surfaced of her at a club with her girlfriend, appearing to confirm long-standing rumors about her sexuality. “Everyone says, ‘I knew it, I knew it!’” she says. “And it’s like, ‘Duh.’ That’s the same thing I said. I knew it too.” When asked about her preference in 2015, she told BET, “It is what it is.” She says she is annoyed by the way onlookers speculate about her romantic life. “I just felt like people were trying to say something,” she says. “I let them tell me who I was for too long. And they still don’t know…I’m comfortable with who I am.”

If only others were too. Society is still too heteronormative, and someone like DeJ, whose fashion sense blends femininity with subtle machismo, confuses people who still confuse gender identity with sexuality. DeJ explores romance in her music, giving fans the right to know who she’s talking about. Undeterred, she is rarely looked to to give fans the mythography they crave. Way back in 2015, she told Fader, “Everyone is poking, but I just feel like the things they want to know are the smallest parts of me.”

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DeJ is confident and wants to advocate for everyone to accept themselves, and for society to accept others. “You are yourself,” she says. “I think a lot of people suffer from the feeling that they have to be a certain way because of their masculinity and their femininity.” She adds: “You don’t have to feel crazy about doing your nails if you’re a masculine woman. And the same goes for men too.”

DeJ wants to be that beacon for young girls – and she promises to do this through a more steady stream of music. In addition to her own music, she says she would like to explore writing songs for others. And she also works to develop artists, including two of her cousins ​​who form the aptly titled duo My Cousins. “I think I have a bigger purpose out here. That’s why I stopped worrying,” she says. “I used to be so depressed about my career and think, ‘No, forget this.’ I never want to be sad about music again. That’s not what music is for. That’s not why I started it.”