So I'm making some of the best music I ever made. We encourage each other and uplift each other.
Does that affect the way that you make music? That's a different look for you, being in a very public relationship. Learned some shit, hung out with my girl, and then I came back and got right back to work. I went to Egypt the first two weeks of January and then I went to Thailand the second two weeks. The whole January I took my first vacation I've ever taken in my whole lifetime. You gon’ always hear my shit, so it’s cool. I don't need to, like, jump right to the top and be one of them dudes that next year you don’t hear em. And I've had a slow-going, long-lasting-ass career that started back in muthafuckin ‘09 wit “Toot It and Boot It.” And now it's 2018, so we good. For me it’s been baby step after baby step. If you didn't hear that, I know for sure you hear “Pyscho” right now cause that’s top 10. Or if you didn't hear it then, bitch, you better ask somebody cause you know we going and I got more to come. And I feel like the people that were supposed to hear it, heard it. But I feel like it didn’t really get the love it should have.
In a manner of speaking, you have “new shit” out right now: The Beach House 3 album. If the shit bangs, man, and I catch a vibe then I'm going to just knock the shit out. That's impressive to me that you can just knock out by four different features over the course of one night. Like now, it's more about time and I've been touring. At first I was just being the homie and every time somebody would ask me, I was like, “Yeah.” Then started complaining and other people at Atlantic like, “Yo, we need to save some of this shit for your shit.” I'm like, “Fuck y’all man, just let me do music.” I'm still doing features. Did you have to temper the amount of collaboration eventually? I feel like there was a point not too long ago when everybody felt like they needed your voice to get on the radio or to ensure themselves a hit.
Who knows, we might do Free TC 2 or something with more songs with me and him. I'll just take it right off the internet and make a song out of it. When we did “Miracle” or any of the songs that we've dropped, that was from somebody recording him and it got leaked on the internet. When you speak to him are you exchanging music ideas or is it just like catching up on life?Ĭatching up on life, music ideas, same shit. And who knows what God might bless us with. And then once he got out of that and moved into a whole ‘nother prison. Solitary confinement for like two, three months and shit. I think we did a interview with y'all, if I'm not mistaken, and after that, it got back to the warden, he got super famous and they put him on, what do they call it? The lockdown shit. They moved him to another jail cause he got too famous at the last one. His chest-length dreadlocks are dyed bright green, his fingernails are painted black, and white diamonds twinkle loudly from a bevy of necklaces that rest atop a form-fitting nautical shirt. Confoundingly, his ability to bounce between moods and genres - for example, 2 Chainz’s traphouse love (“Lil Baby”), the pop balladeering of Nick Jonas’ “Bacon,” Wizkid’s groovy afrobeats (“One For Me”), LeCrae’s trunk-rattling gospel (“Blessings”), or the minimal slap of Fifth Harmony’s “Work From Home” - is far less acclaimed than that of, say, a Charli XCX (who Dolla has, of course, also collaborated with).ĭolla doesn’t order any food despite having squeezed a workout in this morning, a daily necessary evil for maintaining the shredded abdomen he flexes regularly on Instagram. His Beach House 3, one of 2017’s most complete albums (and somehow made even more complete with a new deluxe version) didn’t manage to lift his profile much higher than it already sat. We’ve been discussing his versatility as a feature artist and songwriter and Dolla is nonplussed at any perceived lack of acclaim.