For DE’WAYNE, every day is an opportunity to learn and to grow. From doing everything he could to make people notice him after moving to Los Angeles to finally living his dream, he has never rested on his laurels, always striving to be better than he was yesterday.
All those ups and downs have led him to where we are right now with a new EP, ‘I WANT YOU MORE THAN ANYBODY WANTS YOU’, released via his new label Fearless Records. Four songs bristling with adoration and obsession, heart flutters and hip caresses, it is rock and roll for lovers, those entirely and utterly besotted with each other. A marker for where DE’WAYNE is in his personal life as well as professional, it feels like an era more vibrant and vivacious than ever we have seen or heard before is about to begin.
To learn more about how we got here, we had a sit-down and a catch-up with DE’WAYNE himself…
ROCK SOUND: You’re entering a new chapter in loads of different ways: a new label, new intentions, and a new sound. More than anything, it feels like love has greatly influenced where you are right now…
DE’WAYNE: “Oh man, I am loved up. Genuinely. And being able to express that is the main goal. It’s crazy when love gets to you and grabs you. I’m in such a beautiful chokehold right now, and we sit back and laugh about it. It’s funny, but it’s who I am and what I feel. Within the first 30 seconds of my songs, I want people to know what I am going through. I want people to feel joy and love within my songs. I want to bring joy into people’s lives because we need it right now. It feels really good to provide that because every word is true.”
RS: A lot of life has been lived between the release of ‘My Favorite Blue Jeans’ and this EP. Was there a moment in particular where you could pinpoint things and where you wanted to go changed?
DE’WAYNE: “With the new signing and view on things, being confident in my work is the most important thing. I feel like ‘My Favorite Blue Jeans’ and ‘STAINS’ were full of naivety. I was naïve about what I was doing and am still in a way. But at those times, I was in the studio going, ‘Is this right? I guess so’. Right now, I’m building my own thing rather than depending on the industry standard. I love myself and feel that within these new songs, first and foremost, which matters.
“I started writing these songs at the end of 2022, which is when things switched. It takes time for people to find stuff, which is what is happening with ‘My Favorite Blue Jeans’ right now. But when we dropped the album, my manager called me and said, ‘You killed it, but you’re still the rookie here, and your team hasn’t made the playoffs. You should go back into the studio’. I understood that and didn’t let myself get too sad, even though I knew I had done a good job. But it gave me perspective on things. I was now going to go and make exactly what I wanted to make, different from what I thought I should make. I want to make moment-based music, and I had almost been hiding behind these rambunctious rock tracks.
“Now, I genuinely ask myself, ‘Who do I want to be?’. This is my profession. This is what I’m actually doing. I love that and it’s a blessing, but I have to take care of myself within that. A lot of it has come from me just growing up. After that call took place, that’s when I felt myself grow up the most. I realised how hard I am going to have to work for this, so get to work, bro.”
RS: Everything you did on those first two albums felt like a reaction to something that had previously happened. A lot of that comes from you telling your story up to now, the ups and downs you went through to be able to have the opportunity. But now, rather than trying to fit in everything at once, you are focusing on what is most important, which makes such a difference…
DE’WAYNE: “As we grow and learn more, my musical influences have changed as much as I have. It went from the punk and rock sound to me discovering The Cars. I’d then dive into The Killers, Bruce Springsteen, and Marvin Gaye. Finding myself with these soul artists who don’t just talk about love, but they surrender to it. I am that person. I’m not trying to hide behind a mask. But yeah, getting into The Cars also allowed me to write ‘Synthesizer’. I have found what I like more, and my inspiration came around a lot more naturally because of that. Pinpointing a particular sound was so important, but injecting love into it was the most important thing.”
RS: When you’re head over heels, you start hearing songs about love in very different ways. You suddenly understand what they are talking about. It’s one thing to listen and be inspired by other people’s versions of love, but it’s another thing to let it take you over and find its way into what you want to produce. It’s a different sort of vulnerability…
DE’WAYNE: “It was scary at first, only because it was such a new situation for me. I’m a Cancer, though, so I have always been a lover. Plus, I grew up with five sisters alongside my mum and my aunties, so I was always surrounded by women who all showed me how to hold it down. Because of that, I had to be honest with my love, which meant I jumped in entirely when the time was right. I talk about it in ‘Lightweight’. If I take two steps in and you do the same, we might be all right. That explains it perfectly. I love to jump into anything I can. I don’t have any fear when it comes to things like being an artist, so doing it with love is just what suits me. Sometimes, jumping in gets me in trouble, but at least I did what I had to do from beginning to end.”
RS: Yet you have the other side of the coin with a song like ‘Homewrecker’, which shows off the questions that you find yourself asking once you are in. You start wondering whether you have gone too far or not. Harnessing that and understanding that every action has a consequence and every feeling has an emotion attached to it just helps this mindset blossom even more…
DE’WAYNE: “By using that song, I’m asking, ‘Are we actually doing this?’ Asking those questions and taking the hits is something you need to do to succeed. Some people can withstand anything that happens in their lives, and my first seven years in LA were preparing me to be at this point, feeling like that and understanding how to take the pain and the doubt. I’ve just been delusional in staying at it, no matter what it is. You don’t stop because that’s how things happen.”
RS: When people start to see the version of you you have always wanted them to see, you are at your most comfortable. You can only get there by loving yourself and not letting anything slow you down, which you have clearly been thriving within…
DE’WAYNE: “That is the most important thing, brother. The more I talk, the more I sound like a flower child from the 60s. I have done some deep personal work on myself, specifically in January. I did a ceremony where you go away for three days, and you do work, you know? You see the beauty of the world. God has always been important in my life, yet not in the way that my Mom thinks about God. I found a friend who can sit right here with me whenever I need him, and that comes from finding that love with yourself. That is the person who is there with you all the time. It’s so amazing and so important to me personally.
“It’s where a song like ‘Mr She’ comes from, too. I walk this beautiful line of being who I am, and that person has given me the confidence to be myself. I arrive into every day as precisely the person that I am, and my work in that ceremony taught me never to dim that light. There are so many times when I felt like I wasn’t in the room and feeling like that, and I have now completely put that away. I think I’m great. I think I look great, I’m a good son. Those are the things that matter. This whole EP may be about love for another person, but it is really about me loving on myself.”
RS: Even though this EP is just coming up, you are always at least two steps ahead of yourself. Should we expect some more new stuff sooner rather than later?
DE’WAYNE: “I’m still playing catch-up, for sure! And with these songs, I’m being shown that things take time. If you really believe in something, you have to keep pushing. That’s something I have really learnt. Knowing that if it is good enough, then people will find it. And the thing about what is going on now is that there is going to be so much DE’WAYNE this year that it is insane. I’m so happy about it because this is the EP I really went to school on and worked on my musicianship with. I really found it, and now, as we look forward, our songs will be so exciting. I’m standing behind all of these songs so strongly. I now feel like I am where I thought I was a few years ago. I’m now giving people a true chance to know who I am.”
‘I WANT YOU MORE THAN ANYBODY WANTS YOU’ is out now via Fearless Records.