​Dakotah Faye’s upward incline

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

Dakotah Faye is a hip-hop artist from Minot, North Dakota, and he’s had a busy year. He’s released two albums. This summer he opened for Tech N9ne in Sturgis and will be opening for Bone Thugs-n-Harmony at the UP District Festival Field in Fargo on September 25. At press time, he’s also preparing for his “Dog Days” tour.

He grew up listening to hip hop, for which he thanks his mom. She not only introduced him to Dr. Dre and Wu-Tang Clan, but to a genre that sparked a lifelong passion.

His writing journey started out with poetry, and eventually his words found their way to a beat and evolved to music. Poetry and hip hop have a tendency to go hand in hand.

“Me being a poet is kind of a stretch of a term,” Dakotah said. “I liked to write poetry when I was very young, so it's very basic. Shel Silverstein was one of my absolute favorites. I loved reading ‘The Giving Tree’ and all of his books. So I kind of took after that style. I didn't really understand music yet, or how to write music, so poetry was kind of my way to express myself. I was a very quiet and reserved kid, so that changed. I turned poetry into music when I started doing music.”

Dakotah grew up in Minot. He went to Catholic school there and that's where he says the music started. He passed out CDs, occasionally posted stuff on MySpace and YouTube, and would even write music at school.

“To the detriment of my education, but it just became an obsession,” he said. “It was everything I wanted to be. You know, rappers were all confident and braggadocious and could be unapologetically themselves, and that was just something I really, really needed at that point in my development as a teenager. So I really clung on to it. Once I started seeing people say,

Oh, you're getting good’ or would ask for CDs, it just continued and snowballed into an absolute obsession. I kind of got more and more brave. I still wasn't quite going out and performing for people, but if I was at a party with my friends, yeah, I might rap a little bit. But it was mostly just in my bedroom, making music.”

Shortly after high school, he met his friend and fellow musician, Red Hoffman. He had been doing shows, and Red showed him that he could take this a little bit further. So Dakotah and his friends started to travel, packed in his little Subaru that he had, and started to travel across the state. His friend and fellow performer Eddie Mack also helped push him to grow as an artist.

“You know, we’d go to Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks, anywhere we could do shows and just really grind it, grind it for a long time, for years and years,” Dakotah said. “And it was kind of just the formula, you know. Do music. Do shows. Get better. Get better. And that was about 2013, so it's been about 12 years that I've been taking it seriously as a career.”

“You know, you're an independent artist in this kind of untraversed road as a hip-hop artist from North Dakota, you learn by trial by fire, and you figure it out, and you get a little bit better day by day,” Dakotah went on to say. “But, you don't quit. And I never did. So I think I’m starting to finally see the fruits of my labor. Overnight success takes 13 years or something like that.”

To what does Dakotah attribute his success?

“It's just kind of keeping this certain philosophy and pillars of the things that you go and live by, and how you move and conduct business. Those things really reflect,” he said. “I think that it just multiplies, you get more opportunities, you get bigger shows, you take it seriously. You do well and it's just kind of this upward incline.”

To Dakotah, music started out of necessity for self expression. But as an Ojibwe artist, music has also allowed him the opportunity to connect more with his culture.

“My mother and father are both Native American, my father wasn't really around. So I never really grew up with that sense of like, being around my people and my heritage and my culture,” he explained. “I didn't grow up on the rez, so I always kind of felt this disconnect from — you know, I was too Native for my white friends, and I was too white for my Native friends. So I always had this sense of disconnect. Music has really helped me connect with that.”

He says he’s had the opportunity to perform All My Relatives festival in Sioux Falls and Gathering of Nations. And through events such as these he’s had the opportunity to meet fellow Native American artists, designers and promoters.

“They've welcomed me with open arms,” Dakotah said. “So I'm really, really happy about that. We have tons of incredible, talented Native American artists here and it's really cool to finally feel like I'm a part of that.”

Dakotah released two albums this year, “Uninvited Guest” and “Dog Days.” “Uninvited Guest” proved to be a bit of a milestone.

“It's the first album that I've written completely sober — the one that I did before that was kind of halfway on each side of the fence,” Dakotah explained. “So this was kind of the first project where I actually got to be on that other side and finally soak it in. So much time in my actual life was spent mending relationships and stuff that I had broken with all of my selfish, self-destructive behavior. I finally was able to sit back and appreciate where I was at. So it was very therapeutic, in that sense that it felt like I was kicking the door down. You know? It's finally, like, I got up, I brushed myself off and I was ready to kick the door down and reintroduce myself.”

IF YOU GO:

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony with Xzibit, Dakotah Faye and Willie Wonka

September 25, 6:30 p.m., gates open at 5 p.m.

UP District Festival Field, 1329 5th Ave. N., Fargo