Until February this year, d4vd had never been to a concert before. But unlike most of us who lost our gig-virginity as a tween watching a band we’re increasingly embarrassed by – naturally, with a covert WKD in hand – d4vd lost his at the helm of a mic at his very own show.

So, when he played at the White Oak Music Hall in his hometown of Houston, Texas, he was in an unusual position. “I was an audience member [for the first time] at the same time that I was performing, so I felt like I was watching myself in third person. It was SO fire!” he says. Surprising, considering the 18-year-old artist – born David Burke – is already signed to Darkroom/ Interscope Records (home to Billie Eilish, Holly Humberstone, John Summit and more) and his debut EP “Petals to Thorns” has amassed hundreds of millions of streams. But come to think of it, there’s nothing else ‘usual’ about d4vd’s story anyway.

I’ve woken him up early, but he’s not pissed about it. “It’s all good,” he assures me. “But I usually wake up mad late.” Something, I’m sure, he’s not had the luxury to do over the past couple of months. He’s on his sold-out US and European tour, and today, he lounges in his tour bus, ahead of his show tomorrow in San Francisco. We’re on the phone, so I can’t see him, but there’s no doubt he’s in a signature d4vd get-up – which means baggy everything. He wears a gauging open-heart on his sleeve, and a serene calmness whips around him that leaves you feeling equally zen. I didn’t expect the latter. What, with his explosively energetic performances, and the fact that he’s stood, steadfast, right in the eye of storm d4vd; the blushing tornado of coming up so fast that you’re still figuring out who, and what, making music as d4vd really means.

But let’s take it back to the beginning. d4vd’s “very Hip-Hop and Rap approach to Indie music” takes bedroom Pop one step further – conjuring it up in the depths of his six-year-old sister’s closet: “That’s my entire studio.” It’s where he wrote, recorded, and produced his debut EP, “Petals to Thorns”, comprising nine tracks, with only his iPhone, wired headphones, and the app: BandLab, a tool for creating and sharing music. It’s within this very closet that he creates his own alt-Narnia, overflowing with characters inspired by Japanese manga and anime – “I hate writing about myself. So I create these characters and build little stories around them, giving them entire lives, and then writing about those lives” – namely the blindfolded Itami (Japanese for pain) who you’ll see at the centre of all his music videos. But it’s his approach to how he makes music within this Potter-esque lair that seems, weirdly, even more fantastical. “[I used] no YouTube tutorials. No guides, nothing,” he explains. “My process is I either make an instrumental or hear an instrumental, and then [I write] everything just off the top of my head and lay it down right there [in her closet]. I made my first song using [BandLab’s] stock presets and then I hated my voice so much that I pitched it down. So that’s why my voice sounds so deep on that song, but it was complicated.”

Less complicated, but equally unusual, is why he started making music in the first place. A game fanatic, he vied to release videos of himself on YouTube playing Fortnite (his other dream was “becoming an Esports creator”) which required an accompanying soundtrack. But his videos kept getting removed due to copyright infringement and “YouTube being stingy”. So as a big middle finger up to the platform, he created his own accompanying music. And so, an accidental Pop star was born – with a little push from his mum. “[My mum] saw the musical potential in me and pushed me to do it for [my] Fortnite [videos],” he shares. “She forced me to play piano when I was seven. She put me in a church choir when I was 13. And then I gave both up. I never had any intention of touching music at all.”

Music might not have always been on the agenda for d4vd. But putting pen to paper definitely was, particularly in the form of poetry. At present, his favourite poet is Nikita Gill, “As my mum said about me, she has a way with words. She can write the most basic sentence ever – it’ll crush you. Go buy some Nikita Gill poetry books. They are so fire.” As well as scribbling down creative stories prompted by the summer reading from his discouraging teacher, “I feel like she hated what I was doing. I was like, how are you a language teacher and failing me for writing a story? It doesn’t make any sense!” Both, he believes, nurtured his affinity with words, and subsequently, the lyrical wonderland that d4vd consistently concocts with his instinctual lyrics. This was honed, especially, after he left public school and began to be homeschooled away from his peers, void of distractions. I interject to see if all his friends from school are excited about his early successes, expecting him to recall a hoard of jealous texts, disguised as encouraging – c’mon, we all know teenagers – from his old classmates.

But d4vd has never really set his sights on being the popular kid at school. He’s what they call an extroverted-introvert; funny and charismatic with an effortlessness to converse, but he gains more energy and enjoyment from the solitary things in life; game consoles, summer reading and making music – alone – in his sister’s closet. His family are his only support system on tour. “I only have two friends, they’ve been with me since I started. They both play Fortnite and we had a challenge of who could get 100,000 subscribers on YouTube first. They are stuck at 3,000 and I made it to 55,000, so I won that!” He laughs. “ I hope that was a money bet?” I ask. “No it definitely wasn’t, we were all so broke. But yeah, bringing my boy from North Carolina to Japan with me next week. So, it’s going to be fire!”

Instead of flesh and blood mates, fantastical books and heart-wrenching movies became his closest companions. For such a prolific literary head, who places a lot of his artistry on his power with words, I question him on the best lyric he’s written so far. He laughs in response, tempted to unveil a line from an unreleased song. He pulls back. “Out of the released songs, I don’t want to say the most generic one but I think it’s, ‘In the back of my mind/ you died.’ There’s so many layers to that. It’s like first of all, you were in my mind but then I pushed you to the back of my mind. And then eventually you left, like I had literally killed you. Yeah, that’s been my motto.”

Other ‘mottos’ or advice spring from pages and screens rather than real life experiences, which have taught him the intricacies and nuances of simply, well, being human. And, the love, loss, heartbreak and healing that nefariously, and wonderfully, encircle it. Subsequently, bleeding into every single lyric he writes, making the 18-year-old seem as versed on life’s loop-the-loop rollercoaster as everyone’s 50-something uncle feels after too many overflowing glasses of Blossom Hill wine. Although, now he’s finished homeschooling, he tells me that moving forward, he wants to be able to draw on experiences that exceed being paused with a remote or snapped closed on your bedside table.
“I think I’m super empathetic because I watch so many movies. I don’t think people really take away the themes from movies they watch. It’s literally your real life on a screen. You can live without living,” he explains, animated. “I was on Twitter and Instagram, but I wasn’t really posting unless it was a video game. So, it allowed me to be a phantom on the internet. It allowed me to live a million lives at the same time. That’s why I guess my music touches so many different types of people, because I am all of them at the same time.”

Perhaps, this is why his sulkily sultry debut EP, “Petals to Thorns”, feels so abundantly relatable to his fans. In the comments section of YouTube beneath his music videos, there are a string of contrasting comments on how “Romantic Homicide” helped some of his “family” as he calls them – “I made music for myself in 2022, I feel like it’s way bigger than that now. It’s like an us thing” – recover from heartbreak, and for others it soundtracked the first dance at their wedding. I can hear him smile, “I love the contrast and I love that fans can take whatever they need from the music, with multiple interpretations of many songs and I hate to push a specific message with a certain song like, ‘This is about a heartbreak.’ So, if people use “Romantic Homicide” for every single situation, I feel like it’s this beautiful thing where people can take whatever they need.”

But D4vd’s universality, as an artist, is bigger than just the music he creates. It’s the ‘ease’ with which he creates it, at home in a cupboard, that makes his fans believe their own dreams are just one DIY leap of faith away – and that’s his undeniable USP. D4vd isn’t this hard and shiny out-of-reach, carefully buffed jewel; he’s handcrafted, tangible, vulnerable and self-taught. But despite the evidence of his growing streaming numbers, the fantastical world he’s built around him, his revered DIY approach to recording and writing, and high profile collaborations – most recently with Holly Humberstone on “Superbloodmoon”’ and a Kid Laroi release on the horizon – D4vd doesn’t, yet, consider himself an artist. Something, for an 18-year-old who hasn’t relied on writing teams, recording studios and autotune to launch his career, I find hard to understand.

“I’m becoming one. There’s more beauty in the journey than actually thinking, ‘I’m an artist,’” he says.“But yeah, I feel like, the best thing I can do is have fun, and become an artist. I’ve only released, I mean, actually, this is pretty profound how much music I’ve released in a short amount of time. I’ve heard crazy stuff about artists that have released music in their early days and then deleted it off the face of the earth. But the first song I ever wrote is still up [on the internet]. So, I think I’m just enjoying the journey. And when I become an artist, I think it will be pretty insane.”

If, like d4vd, the world of fantasy – books, games, and movies – becomes your own whirring reality then it makes sense how someone who has never actually been in love can write so intuitively about the lore of it. “I haven’t been in a relationship yet. So, I’m basically a cap rapper,” he laughs, delicately. “I feel like [my EP] “Petals to Thorns” is very much a self-reflective piece. And, I feel like you can’t love anybody else before you love yourself. The whole thing is just me looking in the mirror. I think I am the rose in the EP’s cover art, I think I’m also the thorn. I think that’s the beauty of the rose – it can be both. The rose is so beautiful. But then, you know, it has those parts that you would never want to touch. I feel like the EP [represents] the love that you see in those parts that you would never want to touch. I don’t think anybody wants to be sad. Nobody’s willingly being sad. So it’s like, when you get there, what are the steps you’re taking to relieve that sadness?”

For d4vd, this means making music, and channelling pain into his character: Itami. For his fans, sometimes, this means listening. “I feel so dumb for not knowing where it was but at one of my concerts, [I saw] these three friends and one girl was crying. They were helping her get to me [through the crowd] so I could sign something. I was like, ‘Why are you crying?’ And they were like, ‘You stopped her from committing suicide.’ That was the most touching thing for me.” If you continue reading his fan’s messages of support on YouTube, you know this isn’t the only story of its kind.

I press him on how he plans to keep this gravitational impact on people’s lives up with his artistry – his first EP was released in May and the five track follow-up EP, “The Lost Petals” has released today – in a dog-eat-dog industry where everyone is grappling to hollow out their own lane. “In music today, it’s so significant [to set yourself apart from the rest] that it’s insignificant because music is kind of boring right now,” he admits. “People are loving the fact that it’s boring. It’s kind of left me in a weird spot where I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I want to evolve as an artist. And, you know, when I dropped “Petals To Thorns”, it was like the first step. But now I’m trying to figure out how big the next step is. Is it a leap? Is it a small one? You never know what people are gonna like, because TikTok has allowed people to lose interest in the span of a single swipe […]”

“Honestly, I loved TikTok in 2022,” he continues. “I got into it was I started a TikTok account and I didn’t want to promote my music too quickly because I’d seen other people do it and they’d put a song out, it would blow up, they’d milk it for two weeks – or maybe even a year – and it would never come out. What I knew was memes, so I made a meme cover of Beyoncé as Blue Ivy and I pitched my voice up so high it sounded like a chipmunk. It’s one of my pinned videos now, and people hated it so much – but I got a million views. So I was like okay, they hate it, but it’s getting views and I know TikTok views matter more than actual positive feedback. So, I did it 10 times more. I turned those haters into supporters and then boom, push comes to shove, I get 500,000 followers off of a meme. I then used that platform to promote my music and that was how it sparked because – I feel like I’m gonna give away some sauce right now – people fear what they don’t understand. So, if you come up with something different and unique, and it’s all cool and stuff, people are still gonna hate you or nobody’s gonna care because why would they rock with you if you’re a nobody? You really have to just follow trends and you know, be a regular fish, and then halfway down the line turn on salmon mode and go the other way. That’s what I did.”

“So, I don’t know,” he seems to conclude. “I mean, I’m working on a bunch of different stuff, working on different cultural music as well. I’ve been to a lot of countries, and I’m trying to work on music that resonates with those people and those native speakers. But we’ll see. I’m experimenting. I kind of just got hooked and I still don’t even know yet what I’m doing at this point with the music. But other people like it, and I’m starting to like it, so I’m gonna keep doing it.” Defining himself as an artist is proving complex, but keeping on ‘doing it’ isn’t going to be so hard for d4vd. He never gets writer’s block, instead he describes himself as having “too many songs.” “It’s just like, here, have another one. You don’t like it? Okay, here’s another one.” He impressively wrote eight out of nine songs on his debut EP in one night, and actually worked on his entire album even before releasing the EP. But the pressing question is, will he be finishing it in his sister’s closet or a studio now he’s a signed artist?

“The thing is, there’s two very different sounds that come from my phone, and then from the studio. I think I’m going to keep doing both, I’m going to harness them and just try to make them as different as possible. So when people hear certain songs, they know where it’s from, because then I want to bridge the gap between the two ways of creating. When I’m in the studio, it’s super high quality. There’s a beauty of imperfection when I make music on my phone. The best example I can use is “Here With Me.” I used no auto-tune on the entire song. It was all in one take so you can literally hear every missed note and everything that was wrong with it in the comping. I think people liked that. It was like, you feel like you can make that song if you try. So that’s what I’m looking for.”

I’m curious as to what he thinks separates a good song from a great song: “ It’s when I don’t want to show anybody the song.” He continues, “ I made “Worthless” and “Sleep Well” on the same night. I made nine songs that night. I remember I thought “Fall Asleep” was the absolute greatest piece of work I’ve ever made in my life. So I sent it to everybody – my digital guys, my A&R. And they were like, ‘Oh yeah, pretty cool!’” he laughs. “Then the song I didn’t want anybody to hear, because I thought it was ‘unfinished’, was “Worthless”. I accidentally sent it to Justin, who is the head of my label, and he loved it. I meant to send him “Sleep Well”. And I was like, ‘Wait, what?” He starts sending it around and everything just goes crazy; that’s the song we ended up putting out. The song went nuts. So I think that’s what makes it great. The songs you are most humble about are the ones that are most vulnerable, and the ones the people are gonna resonate with.” Is this how, now, he’ll approach selecting the tracks to finish his first album? “I don’t know. But I honestly think it’s missing everything. I had to reset it five times already. Don’t hold me to this, but this is an exclusive for y’all. I wanna make it Neo-gospel rock, mixed with Indian guitars. So, think of a big choir. Think Ethel Cain. Think Paramore, think Billie Eilish, think some Juice WRLD kinda trap influence too.”

With an EP already consumed by such a resounding success, and another released today which will, arguably, be met the same way, d4vd must feel an overbearing anticipation to release a full album, which means diving into a critical world of reception beyond his sister’s closet, and the fictional universe he encloses himself in to soften the sting of reality. But as usual, he responds quickly, eloquently and with a sense of wisdom that supersedes his years. “I do care about reviews, but I care about reviews from the people that actually attentively listen to the music. I feel like when you listen to music, with a goal to actually criticise it, you don’t really hear it. I always ask the question, ‘What if movie critics or music critics were actually in as vulnerable of a place as the people that actually are watching or listening to these [films and songs] for entertainment? Or, simply listening to it for themselves? So I take into account my fans and what they think about it…I just want to make the best music possible,” he shares, like a real artist – because unbeknownst to him, that’s what he already is.

Listen to “The Lost Petals”…