(August 26, 2022) Miami-born, South London-raised artist DWY has been making industry noise. After being inspired by Kanye West’s influential LP 808s & Heartbreak, the former rapper transitioned into electro-R&B, creating music that eventually caught the eye of Complex magazine and landing on their 10 British R&B/Soul Artists to Watch in 2020.
(August 26, 2022) Miami-born, South London-raised artist DWY has been making industry noise. After being inspired by Kanye West’s influential LP 808s & Heartbreak, the former rapper transitioned into electro-R&B, creating music that eventually caught the eye of Complex magazine and landing on their 10 British R&B/Soul Artists to Watch in 2020.
And we’re still watching…and listening to DWY. On his latest single “Badu Feels,” the rising singer, now based in L.A, goes into an escapist’s dreamworld laden with hypnotic melodies and tranquil synths. Blessed with a glazed John Legend-meets-Frank Ocean soul, this new track is refreshingly summery and trippy in sound, rubbing elbows with the tense lyrical backdrop about time lapse and the extremes of grown-up life. “I been at home with Badu feels/When did adulting get so real,” DWY pleads before collapsing into a bed of fears (“Anxiety is riding like an ocean in my mind, I should be in my prime”).
"I wrote this record during a real depressive time,” DWY writes. “I’ve always associated summer with freedom and release. I think it's a hangover emotion from school. I was feeling super numb to everything, smoking didn’t hit the same and I was more anxious than I’ve ever been. I felt disconnected from myself and I was trying to drag myself to what felt like freedom when I was sixteen again." And that place of freedom for DWY resonates in the glory of summer.
Check out this First Listen of DWY’s latest track and let us know if you’re feeling these “Badu feels.”
By J Matthew Cobb
DWY - "Badu Feels"