The first gig d4vd ever watched (or attended) was his own. It was February 17th 2023 at White Oak Music Hall in Houston, where the New York-born musician grew up. Backstage, he Googled The Weeknd gigs to see what to do, and then went on stage in front of an audience singing his songs back to him. It all started in his sister’s closest-slash- recording studio, where d4vd would create soundtracks for his Fortnite streaming compilations as a way to bypass YouTube’s copyright laws. Dropping these on TikTok, viewing numbers began rolling, and things went viral: Romantic Homicide and Here With Me are some of the app’s most trending tracks to-date. In just a few short years, the US musician now has close to 25 million monthly listeners on Spotify and a string of Billboard hits. He’s since gone on to tour with SZA and collaborate with artists such as The Kid LAROI, featured on the Call of Duty soundtrack (a full circle moment) alongside 21 Savage, and recorded with renowned record producer Benny Blanco. Back in Blanco’s LA studio, sat on a sofa full of cuddly toys, the duo hang out before d4vd takes his first trip to Disneyland.

Benny Blanco: I don’t even know how to say your name and I’m always too scared to ask you. What does it even mean?
d4vd: Technically, it was a gamer tag because I played video games my entire life and I went through a bunch of different names. When music got into the mix I didn’t know what to do, so I Googled ‘David’ in different spellings and nothing came up that wasn’t already used so I looked up d4vd and I got the little dinosaur jumping. So I was like, “OK nobody has this yet,” but then I thought, “Can I put a story to it so people don’t ask me too many questions and I can sound super smart?” So I decided to make characters of the universe that I make music in, one is the artist and one is the antagonist who is my IT4MI [d4vd’s Anime-inspired alter-ego] character with a blindfold and a bloody shirt. There are two more characters who are yet to be fully revealed but hopefully, by 2025, whatever happens with the album, I’ll be able to bring them to life.

BB: So, you just completely lied.
d4vd: But, then I backed up the lie with the truth.

BB: I like that. So, do you say David or d4vd?
d4vd: I say d4vd to new people but everybody knows me as David.

BB: No, but if they’re like, “Now, tonight on SNL…”
d4vd: They say, David.

BB: What do you want them to say?
d4vd: Shall we have them say d4vd now?

BB: Do you have Hello Kitty earrings in?
d4vd: I do. You’re the second person to ever notice them.

BB: I’m the second person, who was the first?
d4vd: A girl in Europe.

BB: I noticed you had a belt that was Hello Kitty too.
d4vd: Everything, I love Hello Kitty.

BB: You know Hello Kitty is not a girl or a guy or a cat. It has no gender reference or anything. Hello Kitty is what the interview is now about. [both laugh] Alright, we’re taking it way back, for someone who has never heard about you, how did it all begin? Give me the beginning, not the foetus but you know what I mean.
d4vd: Basically, I played Fortnite from 2017 to 2021. The game came out in 2017, I was one of the first people to ever play.

BB: Wait, how?!
d4vd: I had this small group of friends who would literally spend eight hours a day looking for the newest games that were released on PlayStation. So, I played that game, I became a YouTuber. I was playing Call of Duty and all these types of games, trying to become ‘the next thing’ streamer.

BB: Did anyone care?
d4vd: No. I got 200 views on my first video.

BB: What?! That’s a lot.
d4vd: No, no. I got a steady 60 after. But then, there was this trend on Twitter where if you put some songs in your videos, and made them a compilation instead of single clips, they get more views. So, everybody on Twitter started using songs from mainstream artists, then underground artists started paying them to use their songs. But nobody paid me because nobody watched my videos. So, I started putting the mainstream songs in, and then there was a point where there were no copyright strikes, so I was making so much money – I was getting 200,000 or 300,000 views.

“[Fortnite] came out in 2017, I was one of the first people to ever play.”

BB: How did you start getting a lot of views?
d4vd: The mainstream songs. The songs have an ‘algorithm’ to them, so let’s say two people use Halo and then three or four people use it, if you hear that song in enough videos your video will be the one that goes up. I don’t know how it works, but on YouTube, that’s how it used to work.

BB: So, nothing changed in what you were doing, all you did was put one song in a video.
d4vd: I put a song in a video and everything changed.

BB: Overnight?
d4vd: Literally overnight.

BB: How many views?
d4vd: My YouTube channel is still up to this day. 300,000 or 400,000, some got millions. It happened just like that.

BB: Then what happened?
d4vd: Fast forward a month or two, I’m making a lot of money and my mum as like, “Oh OK, maybe the games aren’t rotting your brain.” I start getting copyright strikes left and right from UMG [Universal Music Group] and I’m like, “What the hell is UMG?!” [laughs] I’m not making any money, I’ve got the red money sign on all my videos and I’m crying to my mum about it, I didn’t know what to do. She just went, “Go and make your own music,” and I was like, “Wait a minute… I could do that.”

BB: And you had never done it before in your life?
d4vd: Never. I played instruments, I was in a church choir when I was thirteen.

BB: Did you sing?
d4vd: I sang, I couldn’t sing but I sang.

BB: So, you literally only made music so you could make a few more dollars.
d4vd: Exactly, that was it.

BB: How did you make your first song?
d4vd: So this was December 21st 2021, and I looked up ‘how to make music on an iPhone’. An app came up, I clicked on it, I put my Apple earbuds in and I used my sister’s closet as a studio. It’s dark, and there are robes, blankets and everything in there, I looked up beats on YouTube and I typed in ‘emo piano beats’ for the first song I ever dropped. I freestyled the whole thing, paced it down, and slowed it down because in 2021 all the chopped and screwed stuff was still trending. So I dropped it on SoundCloud. I hadn’t put it in a video yet but then it started going up on SoundCloud.

BB: How is it going up on SoundCloud?
d4vd: I had no clue. I put some hashtags.

BB: What were the hashtags?
d4vd: #emo, #chill, #lo-fi, #slowedandreverb, #blowthisup and #foryoupage.

BB: It was #blowthisup, that was the thing that really did it. [laughs] So, then you posted this on YouTube?
d4vd: Just SoundCloud.

BB: How many plays are we talking?
d4vd: 5,000 in a week.

BB: How?
d4vd: I don’t know.

BB: Were you just like, “Woah,” or did you not even care at thatpoint? You were just like, “Oh, now I have a song that I can put in my videos.”
d4vd: Exactly, but then I made another one because all the fast- paced stuff was trending and you look at Twitter to find the trends for YouTube, so I’d go back and forth. I made a song called You and I, which now has 84 million streams. It’s the second song I ever made, but in the montage I tagged on Twitter ‘first Fortnite player to use his own song in a video’ that was the title and bro, everyone was using the song after that. The Fortnite streamers I was watching and looked up to were using my song, everybody was using my song – it was crazy. It was because it was royalty-free so nobody was getting copyright struck.

BB: So you were just telling people, “You’re good, you can use this.”
d4vd: Literally bro. I was sliding their checks under the door.

BB: Then what happens? Now you have two songs out, what type of plays are we talking?
d4vd: The first song was called Run Away and that capped at 21,000 and then You and I got 100,000 streams in three days.

BB: That’s insane.
d4vd: So, then I was like, “OK I got to keep making songs, keep putting them in videos, keep promoting myself as a Fortnite artist,” so every time I’d make a montage I’d make a song for the video. I was basically writing to sync, I was scoring my own videos, and it was crazy. Five songs later I moved to TikTok, and became a meme.

BB: What made you move to TikTok?
d4vd: I was avoiding it since it came out because I thought it was super corny. I was like, “I’ll never go on TikTok!” after Musical.ly got deleted, but then after I became this meme, I was making covers of people’s songs and pitching them up so high I’d sound like a chipmunk. That was how I gained my first fanbase, I got 500,000 followers off that.

BB: Wait, just by doing what?
d4vd: I would cover any song I was putting in the montage, then I’d pitch it up so I’d sound like Alvin, then I’d promote it. Let me show you. [gets out phone, plays music] No one would believe this actually happened but it is real life.

BB: That is insane.
d4vd: My sounds were being used, people knew who I was but didn’t even know I made music or played Fortnite, it was like I had three separate communities. On TikTok I was the meme guy, on Twitter I was Fortnite…

BB: What was the meme?
d4vd: The meme was, I was Alvin. I had my profile picture as Alvin. This is my most-played one, it has 2.5 million views. [plays song on phone]

BB: That’s crazy. Then what happened?
d4vd: After that, I had all these followers.

BB: Were you taking music seriously at all or not?
d4vd: Dude, no. I couldn’t care less.

BB: You were just like, “This is a cool meme thing, if I keep making these Alvin things people are going to download them and stream me, then maybe they’ll want to watch my video game shit.”
d4vd: Exactly. So every time they watched a video, they’d go to YouTube and see I was a Fortnite player and then that went up.

BB: Did you start streaming more?
d4vd: I was uploading at least two videos a day.

BB: Were you becoming known or not really?
d4vd: Very much known but, going back to the name thing there was a problem with my name on YouTube. My YouTube name was Chronic Ant, my Fortnite name and everywhere else was my music name, so I decided to keep the two separate and promote my real song Here With Me on TikTok. But I promoted it as a chipmunk, I was like, “Alvin made the next hit,” and it went crazy but people still didn’t connect the dots.

BB: Show me that song.
d4vd: It’s right here. [plays song]

BB: So, you put it out like that and what did people say?
d4vd: The caption literally says, “If this does well, I’ll release the normal version soon lol” and the comments say, “Drop it but lower the pitch, why is it so good? Please drop. Wait why is this actually good? Kylie Jenner used your sound. Alvin never misses.” It’s crazy.

BB: And then you dropped the real one?
d4vd: I dropped the real one the next day.

BB: Let me see it.
d4vd: Then that TikTok went up and then I got shadow banned, so all the views went from millions to 100,000. But then I just promoted it again and they put me back on the For You page, this is the TikTok that sparked it. [plays video on phone]

BB: That’s crazy.
d4vd: Literally two TikToks later was the Romantic Homicide one, which has like sixteen million views.

BB: Wait, so you made this one as Alvin still?! Let me hear it. So, the reason why you developed your style was just because you were pretending to be Alvin the Chipmunk.
d4vd: Dude, yeah.

BB: That’s insane. So, you’re doing these and are you still streaming and putting the songs in there?
d4vd: Yeah, and at the same time I’m trying to finish school.

BB: What made you be like, “Oh maybe I’m not going to stream or be Alvin anymore, I’m going to be a musician”? [both laugh] How long after did they start getting tons of plays?
d4vd: I think literally the next month, I released these two songs in July and by August…

BB: It was like every label was calling.
d4vd: Every single one.

“​I looked up ‘how to make music on an iPhone’. An app came up, I clicked on it, I put my Apple earbuds in and I used my sister’s closet as a studio.”

BB: How old are you at this point?
d4vd: I was seventeen.

BB: So, you’re seventeen, you’re living in the middle of nowhere, you’re Alvin the Chipmunk, you’re a streamer and a video game player – are you realising yet that you could take the music shit far?
d4vd: That was when the music started doing more numbers than the videos, it flipped. Originally the videos were doing more numbers than the music, Fortnite was going up and the music was down but then they switched and I was making money too. So, I was like, OK.

BB: Are you still doing both at the same time?
d4vd: Yeah, I didn’t stop streaming and posting videos completely. It was maybe a month or two later, in October.

BB: Then you fly out and sign a record deal. Your songs get huge, some of the biggest in the world. I don’t know if anybody out here knows this, but this guy’s not making his songs in a conventional way. Most people go into a studio, they have a professional microphone, they have a mixing board, and there’s a person who makes the beat, he does everything in his cell phone. Take us through how you made those songs, take us through how you made Romantic Homicide.
d4vd: If you went on my TikTok you’d literally see the tutorials I posted after I made the songs. Basically, I use nothing more than a phone and earbuds. You download this app called BandLab you can make your own vocal changes and that’s what makes or breaks an artist on BandLab, what made my sound popular is because it sounded good, the quality.

BB: Usually that makes it popular if it’s good. [laughs] You’ve definitely made the biggest songs that have ever come out of BandLab, they should just give you BandLab. Tell us how you make it.
d4vd: Open up BandLab, then I go on YouTube for maybe an hour in the closet looking for type beats. The Romantic Homicide type beat, I think I found that by typing ‘sad, indie, slow’.

BB: And there are just guys making beats?
d4vd: They’re just uploading them, but they have BeatStars where you can lease it out to a million different people for twenty dollars and nobody owns the song.

BB: Were these beats just online for anyone to have done anything with?
d4vd: Literally anyone could have used it before me and had a hit. I used them all first except for the You and I one, someone ended up using that before me.

BB: OK, so you go on the thing…
d4vd: Go on BandLab, import your track and at this point, I’m like, “I haven’t made a song in a minute, my Fortnite videos are dying.” This was on July 14th 2022. I find the type beat, I put it in there, and then I’m just freestyling. I’ll go to the actual session too, it’s all one track.

BB: You’re aware this is crazy.
d4vd: It’s insane. [shows Benny the phone] It’s literally four stems.

BB: The whole thing?
d4vd: The whole thing is four stems. [plays track] It’s the most simple melody, simple song, two minutes and fifteen seconds long. All on BandLab, so I come out of there and I don’t release the song, then the next day I make Here With Me, which I uploaded on TikTok. I dropped Here With Me the next day on July 15th, and then everybody was asking for another one, so I posted the other TikTok that got sixteen million views. Then they both started working at the same time, so I had two songs going crazy viral at the exact same time and nobody knew who I was.

BB: And you’re seventeen at this point. At what point did they start going up the charts on Spotify?
d4vd: It hit 78 on Billboard a week-and-a-half later.

BB: And are you sitting there like, “What’s my life?”
d4vd: Yeah, bro.

BB: At that point, you’re like, “What the fuck?” Record labels are reaching out to you, everything is happening.
d4vd: At the same time. 

BB: The first time we worked together, you were going to work on the studio mic but I was like, “I want the sound that you made with all these songs.” Do you work on a real mic now or do you still do the majority of the songs on your phone?
d4vd: It’s back and forth. On tour when I don’t have all the equipment around me I’m definitely on my phone, so two months of BandLab and then I come back and work on a real mic but it just depends on the vibe I want.

BB: I would never get away from that, why would you?
d4vd: Because with the way I work, I like to try a bunch of different things at the same time, which is why I guess the Fortnite music worked because it kept my brain busy. I get bored with that and want to do something else, but I always come back to it.

BB: It just proves that, now more than ever, anyone has a shot, anyone has an opportunity, there are no excuses. You literally recorded it on your phone and are having huge billboard hits from a phone – and not even good headphones. [d4vd laughs] I remember the first time you came to work with me, you were like “Oh, I don’t have my mic.” I was like, “What’s your mic?” And you were like, “Oh, it’s just some Apple headphones,” you forgot half your studio! Then your phone died while we were working. Do you have a separate phone now?
d4vd: I have three.

BB: Three?!
d4vd: I have a BandLab dedicated phone now.

BB: What are the other two phones for?
d4vd: This is the work phone and the other phone is an Android that I play games on.

BB: I want to know a few more things, where was your first show?
d4vd: In Houston, Texas, where I grew up, at White Oak Music Hall on February 17th 2023.

BB: How do you remember all these dates? I can’t remember anything.
d4vd: I love dates.

BB: I can’t even remember the date you just said. What was it? February 18th?
d4vd: February 17th. [laughs]

BB: See! So, that was your first show ever?
d4vd: I had never been to a concert as a watcher either, I’d never seen a concert on YouTube, it was crazy.

BB: You go to your first concert and it’s yours. Did people know the songs?
d4vd: Yeah, every single one. Dude, I had no clue what to do. I had done a little bit of study in the green room before, I was watching The Weeknd performances. [laughs]

BB: You were like, “OK cool this is what I’ll do.”
d4vd: Exactly, I get out there and it’s 200 people but I pointed the mic to them so many times. Halfway through the show a guitar string broke and we had speaker issues, all of this stuff was happening but it was cool, I was singing, and they were singing back to me. It didn’t sound good because we had this whole ongoing side-plot of me not figuring out how to use In Ears for the past year.

BB: Are you pitching your voice live when you do stuff?
d4vd: I don’t want to. Anytime I pitch up, no matter what the semi- tone difference is, I always sing at that pitch when I perform, I just try to push my voice.

BB: We’re in such an interesting place in music where songs can be released and not even be the real pitch of the person’s voice. You change your voice on every song, sometimes your songs are down, sometimes they’re up, which is crazy and amazing. It really inspired me, I never even thought of that. It changes the whole song – the song could not be a hit, but then you just do it two up and it’s crazy. Then all of a sudden, you’re on tour with SZA and you’re playing to 20,000 people and they know your songs.
d4vd: They know the songs.

BB: I remember the first time we met, you said you were at the movies and one person knew who you were, has it changed now? Are you getting used to all that?
d4vd: Yeah it’s interesting, I’ll see people be like, “Dude, I didn’t know it was you but I saw the star on your forehead.” Now Starface is my thing [d4vd is wearing a pimple patch on his forehead] a lot more people have started to recognise me, it’s cool though I like taking pictures with people or signing something.

BB: You have so many things that are just crazy – and the most normal things, headphones are how you make songs, and you just put a star on the middle of your head. It shows how much you’re doing with nothing, there is so much creativity behind it and it’s fucking inspiring, it’s cool.
d4vd: Thank you.

BB: You suck, but it’s inspiring. [both laugh] It’s amazing, man. What do you feel now when you’re going on stage? Don’t you do a backflip or something?
d4vd: I do four now.

BB: After every song you’re just like, “Fuck it,” and just do another one. [d4vd laughs] Why did you start backflipping?
d4vd: I did gymnastics for six years and parkour for four.

BB: You know there was that pit made out of foam, I used to love that. Take me to heaven. Have you ever been Sky Zone?
d4vd: No.

BB: What?! You have to go, it’s one big trampoline. You just jump.
d4vd: I kind of want to do a skydive, but lots of people are telling me to do it and lots of people are telling me don’t do it.

BB: What do your parents think?
d4vd: They don’t care. My dad’s a black belt in martial arts.

BB: That doesn’t mean he can fly! [d4vd laughs]
d4vd: He’s also a daredevil.

BB: Would your mum?
d4vd: No.

BB: What do your family think about what’s happening?
d4vd: Their initial thought when I got the first call was that it was a scam.

BB: What do they think now?
d4vd: They’re chilling in Texas with a farm and a couple of horses. I send them everything I make and after I make it they’re like “Oh this one’s good son, we like this one.”

BB: I’ll be like, “Mum I just made this new song,” I play it and the second I start pressing play she’s like, “What do you want for lunch?’ [both laugh] It’s insane. I feel like people who aren’t musicians don’t understand what we do. I remember I was talking to my mum a few months ago and I realised that they don’t think how we think, I said, “Mum, have you ever noticed that there is a different snare drum in every song? It’s not the same one.” She was like, “No I never noticed that.” There are so many things that people who aren’t making music don’t even think about.
d4vd: It’s crazy. My dad has started to pick it up though, he’ll say “Oh, I like the guitars.”

BB: Take me through the rest of your day.
d4vd: I want to cook a Fettuccine Alfredo. I might go to Disneyland later.

BB: I went to Disneyland last week, it’s one of my favourite places in the world. Have you been a bunch?
d4vd: No, I’ve been to Disney World twice.

BB: You’ve never been to Disneyland ever?! You’ve got to go. It’s the best. Have you ever made a song on the way to somewhere?
d4vd: I did a trip in 2022 or 2023 to Yellowstone, it was a road trip with my mum.

BB: I can’t believe you don’t know the exact date, I’m actually disappointed.
d4vd: It was in April 2022. I made three songs on the way there from Houston and one of them was a demo to Dirty Secrets.

BB: Really? What do you mean by the demo?
d4vd: There was so much background noise because you can’t noise- cancel in the car.

BB: This is insane, I can’t even. Right, we’re ending this thing, what are you doing next?
d4vd: New singles, working on an album, finishing an album, hopefully, some songs with you and we’ll see you next year on tour.

Interview originally published in HERO 32. 

grooming REMY MOORE at SEE MANAGEMENT using SHISEIDO, MILK MAKE-UP and BUMBLE & BUMBLE;
set-design COOPER VASQUEZ at FRANK REPS;
photography assistants VINNIE MAGGIO and JOHN RUPE;
fashion assistant GABRIELLE RAM