Patiently Waiting
T
hroughout the years, countless rap artists have created mega hits. Unfortunately, many fail to follow through with a solid album and maintain a successful career. 20-year-old D-Lo is well aware of the usual pattern and hopes to become one of the hitmakers that moves above and beyond the realm of the one-hit wonders. To date, the biggest song of D-Lo’s career is the fiery “No Ho” from his mixtape The Tonight Show with D-Lo. And from there, the East Oakland native just kind of fell into his current position. “It just came from nowhere,” says the rapper born D-Angelo Porter. “I was never the type, like [to have] been rapping since I was young. [We were] just fucking around in the studio, playing around. I wasn’t thinking about being a rapper. The way the song took off, that’s what made me take rap seriously.” When Porter was seventeen, he started experimenting with rap as he knew it. “I listened to a
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lot of mainstream artists, but I grew up on Bay area music,” like his favorite artist, Mac Dre. One evening in the studio he was inspired to create “No Ho” over a track that had the signature hyphy sound. The record was enough to gain the approval of everyone in his trusted circle and the response motivated him to start marketing the track on his own. “I just ended up getting hella CDs and burning that one song off on them, passing them out wherever I went—bus stations, schools—wherever I was. I always had them on me.” D-Lo also followed the route of many self-promoters and created a Myspace page for himself, generating even more buzz for “No Ho.” It was a busy year for him, both on the music front and on a personal level, “I ended up having to go to jail for like a year,” he says somberly. While he was trying rap on for size, he still meddled in street business and caught a charge for armed robbery, among other things, which
he declined to discuss. “I had been giving [my CDs] to the DJs after everyone started picking up on it,” D-Lo remembers. “Then I ended up having to turn myself in. By the time I got out in a year, it was smacking. Everyone knew the song.” The day he got out, he had a show. Two weeks after that, his daughter, (“my inspiration,” he says) was born. Since then he’s been on the move, consistently getting show money. His next steps? Touring from Alaska to Nevada, promoting his newest single “She Played Me” and prepping his upcoming album with DJ Fresh, Undeniable Talent, slated for an early 2010 release. “I wanna be known, and seriously, as far as my rapping, I want the world to see and hear a real nigga,” he says with force, in his Bay Area twang. “It’s finally taking off like it’s supposed to.” Words by Nadine Graham Photo by D-Ray