Doze was the winner of round 5 of our Music Monday series and I had a chance to interview him via email. Although the series is based around Northwest artists I had made an exception when I saw how many features the South Dakota resident collected from established Northwest artist. His album ‘Hell Is Hot As Hell, Boss’ was a pretty stellar album and definitely worth a check if you’re a hip-hop head.
1. Where are you from/currently reside?
I was born and raised in Montrose, South Dakota, a small farm town with a population of 400 people. After I graduated, I moved to Sioux Falls, SD and have been here for the last 14 years.
2. Why did you choose to link with the Northwest artists you featured on ‘Hell is Hot as Hell, Boss’?
I’ve been a big fan of Onry and IAME for many years. They’ve always been great at whatever they’re doing, whether it’s their solo stuff, or with their various groups they’ve been involved with through the years. Never thought all those years ago that I would be doing a song with them.
I met Lucas Dix when he came through Sioux Falls in 2009 while touring as part of his group Hives Inquiry Squad. There were seriously like 10 people at that show, but Lucas and Gavin were performing like there were 500. They got my respect forever at that point. Lucas and I have become good friends since then. He has since become a teacher, and formed a group called Jellyfish Brigade, which is some of the most unique music you’ll hear, in my opinion. I feel like working with him was inevitable.
And Graves 33 is just a really good rapper/producer that I think more people should hear. He killed his song on my album, which was why I made it the first track.
3. Have you visited the Northwest?
Yes, in 2013. I was on tour with Phantom Balance and Dino Basic, and we went through Spokane, Seattle, Portland, and Boise. While they were all great, Seattle was probably my favorite, based on the short time we got to spend in each city. Nothing in particular, just the feeling I had while walking the streets.
3.1 What are your favorite things about the area?
The scenery. I’m surrounded by corn fields for hundreds of miles in every direction, so driving through the Northwest was an amazing experience. I also like the general open-mindedness of the people up there. I love Sioux Falls to death, but if I were to leave here for any other place, it would probably come down to Seattle, Portland, or Minneapolis.
4. I’m hella into food so I have to ask, favorite spot to eat in your hometown?
Queen City Bakery. While you can’t get a full meal there, you can get all the amazing dessert you want. So yeah, Queen City Bakery, because i’m hella into eating tasty desserts in historic buildings that have been restored and made into bakeries.
5. Being from a small town what made you want to get into hip-hop?
My cousin came and visited from Buffalo, NY in ’91 or ’92, and brought some cassette tapes with him. As soon as I heard Black Sheep’s “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”, I wondered what i had been doing with the first 10 years of my life. He would bring new tapes with him on every visit. The next visit, I got to hear Ice Cube’s “The Predator”, which gave me a a completely different, but equally amazing sound. Since this site is based out of the Northwest, I should also mention that I listened to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Mack Daddy” a lot. I’m sure I can still recite the lyrics to “One Time’s Got No Case” and “Swap Meet Louie”.
In 2009, I started doing a hip-hop radio show, and got to know a lot of people from it. That was around the same time i decided to start making music. When I stopped doing the radio show in 2011, I started taking music more seriously. Since I didn’t start until I was 28, I’ve been working insanely hard to make up for the years I could have been making music, but was instead playing a whole lot of video games.
6. Where do you hope to see yourself next year, and how has the release of this project been received?
Hopefully doing exactly what I’m doing now, just better. I feel like I’m just getting started and have a lot of big things ahead of me, so I’m trying to do different things so I don’t sound stale and redundant.
The album has been greatly received, even better than I could have imagined. A ton of online attention, and I’ve gotten so many emails, tweets, facebook posts and messages from people telling me how much they love it. I sent physical copies out to a bunch of different cities all over the country, because there were people awesome enough to take anywhere from 5 to 50 copies and give them to their friends. A good portion of them went to the Northwest (Seattle, Portland, Vancouver BC). Every song on the 19 track album has been someone’s favorite, which I think is a good sign.
You can find Doze on Twitter at @dozeflows or Facebook at www.facebook.com/Dozeflows and also on Soundcloud at soundcloud.com/dozeflows. If you would like to participate in Music Monday, be sure to contact us directly at our contact us page.
