Today we’d like to introduce you to Neko DeShawn.
Alright, thank you for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us how you got started?
My musical journey started at 13, but my love for music started far earlier. I grew up in a household that played music religiously. My uncle had an actual record player with vinyl records that he would play at full blast while my middle brother & I played with action figures on the stairs in front of his room. My family always threw get-togethers & music was always playing at these gatherings. My love for music came when my uncle would pull us into his room to listen to prince & have us learn the lyrics to sing along with him. Music has been a focal point in my life since I knew how to write a song. Something in me just loved to perform for my family members when I learned the lyrics to their favorite songs & learning the lyrics were always something I took pride in. I’ve always had a knack for entertaining & putting on a show since I can remember.
Fast forward to the age of 13 when my childhood friend Dante who I always admired when it came to free styling & rapping, came to me and asked me to get on a song with him. Before that, I’d never written a song, let alone recorded one, but I took his offer and went to the studio. I had no clue what a 16-bar verse was or anything when it came to writing, so my friend Dante helped me write half of my first song to help me understand what it took to write a verse. Once written and recorded, our engineer played the song for us, and I instantly fell in love with hearing my voice coming through the speakers for the first time. From then, I started practicing writing regularly. Around 15-16 was when I was taking my craft very seriously. Me & my cousin Frank would link up and write consistently. We would hang up the old computer mics and tape them to the wall so that we could record on a low-budget computer program that was just meant to record voice memos, but we made the best of it. We ended up creating a whole CD of these recordings & I would consider that my first official project. From there, I would go on to rap battle in high school & meet a few friends I’ve known since elementary school & we started rapping together in the 11th grade. We would go on to record a bunch of music together & my dreams were detoured by my mother passing away & me going to prison my senior year for 4 years. During that time, I honed in on my craft of songwriting & would end up filling composition notebooks front to back with music. Upon release, I continued with the momentum I built while incarcerated & came home on fire with passion. I was rapping about all the things I thought were cool to rap about at the time & wasn’t focused on the subject matter that much. My music was about money, drugs, clubbing, women, etc. until my cousin introduced me to Kendrick Lamar & my whole perspective on what I was talking about changed. I changed my whole music style to more conscious raps over hip-hop-heavy instrumentation. People used to tell me I was trying too hard to sound like Kendrick Lamar at the time, but that didn’t detour me from trying to be great like he was with his lyrical abilities.
Fast forward to 2016, I moved to Arizona and met a guy named Kevin Ball, who wanted to fly me out to California to record music with his son and nephew. That turned into me meeting my guy Rico who is cousins with the president of Top Dawg Entertainment, whose name is Punch. 2 years later, I would officially meet Punch & play some records for him at the studio. He liked what he heard, and we began working on my and some of his music. Later that year, I was blessed with working on Grammy award-winning producer Terrace Martin’s album Drones & get a placement on his ep titled village days.
Also, in 2018 I was given the opportunity to go on tour with Kendrick, Schoolboy Q, SZA, Jay Rock, & the whole TDE label during their championship tour. 2019 I would release my debut music video to a song I worked on while in LA called Too Much. 2020 I would capture footage of the MPLS riots and start filming a documentary from my perspective of what was happening amid the chaos. I linked with Georgia Fort to complete this project, and it’s set to release this year. Now I’m working on a new project on top of releasing my 8-episode Instagram series “free thought” & working on features and other ideas musically. I’m still working with Punch and will be moving back to California to continue what I started there.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I wouldn’t say it’s been a smooth road up to this point. I’ve dealt with several detours throughout my musical journey. One of the main ones was losing my mother at 18 years old. My mom was my main motivation when it came to pursuing my dreams & when she died, my dreams at the time died with her. Going through this led me to my next obstacle: robbing someone to feed my brother and me because, at the time, we didn’t have any help from the family besides a place to sleep with my big brother in a small apartment. This led to me being caught for 1st-degree aggravated robbery, and I was sentenced to 58 months in the department of corrections. Already detoured from my dreams because of living circumstances and my mother’s death, prison brought a whole new set of obstacles to hurdle. Diving into a deep depression, I reached the lowest I’ve been in my life & I was only 19 at the time. These are the most significant hurdles I’ve had to climb along the journey that I’ve been on.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a musician/video game streamer & I also do portrait art. I specialize in music. I am known for writing credits with Grammy award-winning producer/jazz musician Terrace Martin. I am most proud of my believing so much in myself that I was able to establish a relationship with TDE president Punch & work on songs with the people I admire most in the music industry. What sets me apart from others is that I am genuinely myself with a message to share that doesn’t sound preachy, but like a conversation, you would have with a friend or even yourself. I have an amazing vision when it comes to directing visuals, and I feel like that also sets me apart.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
I love that my city is untapped and fresh in the creative world. I love that it’s so diverse and a melting pot of talent in both Minneapolis & Saint Paul. I love that we have so many different ethnic backgrounds here & how we come together for causes bigger than us, like the George Floyd civil rights uprising. The downside, in my opinion, is the lack of unity amongst creatives here in Minnesota. It seems like everyone is trying to be the “first” one to put Minnesota on the map instead of pushing Minnesota as a whole. I dislike that the people in a position to pull other creatives up sit back and watch from afar instead of getting involved & shining a little bit of light on the fact that Minnesota is one of the most talented states on a creative scale. I don’t like the Minnesota “nice” attitude that people have here. I don’t like that we have anyone to break artists through here. But overall, I love my city, and I plan on being that voice that spreads awareness about our creatives here in the twin cities.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Instagram.com/NekoDeShawnMusic
- Facebook: Facebook.com/GFTDGAMER
- Twitter: Twitter.com/Neko_DeShawn
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCUklVfzwZZqw0XyWTCZBdXQ
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/y9pfsp3bzzSyEUn97
