DAP The Contract is all about the details. Where many artists who use SoundCloud as ground zero for their music career often include little to no information about themselves on their profile page, sometimes as a means to evoke faux mysticism, the bio of the New York-based, Nigerian artist DAP is padded, a Wikipedia length feature that could easily double as a profile piece. Including facts like being a classically trained pianist, working with Grammy-winning producer Mark Ronson, opening shows for recognized artists like Bez and Skepta, and links to previously released projects are important parts and markers in DAP’s career as blossoming musical savant. After reading through his bio thoroughly, it is very possible to feel like you already know DAP, and inherently what to expect from his music even before pressing play.
Tracing DAP’s influences through his music is quite easy. Thematically, he’s cut from the same self-aware, transparent cloth as American rappers Kanye West, Drake and the late Mac Miller, and sonically, he crosses lines between soul sampling hip-hop, Soulquarians era jazzy Neo-Soul and indie pop. At the same time, though, DAP’s music is definitely of his own volition, characterized by an eclectic but distinct purposefulness in his choice of production, and a writing style that’s serially personalized. It’s the reason why, regardless of if you’ve been following him or not, his official debut album Everybody Falls In The Summer is an excellent (re-)entry point into DAP The Contract is as a young person and as a supremely talented artist.
Everybody Falls starts with the swirling keys and glitched-out, repetitive vocals of “Patience (Intro),” but it really gets going with “Quarter Life,” a lively song with sunny, jazzy keys and full drums that finds an animated DAP merging lines about his triumphs and ambitions to heart-warming effect.
It is where a celebratory line like “I done seen M’s in my hand/I done made my way now” and a self-motivating line “keep grinding till you make it” coexist, a dual function of where he’s gotten to and where he’s headed, and a buoyant (re-)introduction that ushers Everybody Falls along in the most pragmatic and organic way possible.
In the same vein as his detailed bio, DAP’s music is very expressive, often pulling from every crevice of his being and putting it on wax in the loosest, most vivid and affecting way possible. On Everybody Falls, there’s a fluidity with which DAP sets up his murky thoughts and how they arrive at a resolution that’s real enough for him and also very resonant. This process points to the fact that using music as a tool to work through his shit is a form of therapy for DAP, or an outright replacement as he clearly admits on the two-thirds harrowing, one-third uplifting “Whispers.” Employing a limber flow, DAP works his way from asserting his Lagosian-ness and the disconnect between intolerant, retrograde gay rights and overt godliness of his home country’s citizens, to expressing dissatisfaction with himself when sullenly raps “how I feel so low when I feel so blessed.” As “Whispers” coasts on, though, DAP’s delivery becomes more snappy, as he’s determined to embrace the twists and turns as best possible.
Beyond personal resolve, DAP also relies on friends and family as emotional springboard and support system. Following “Whispers,” “Back Around” funnels in a similar energy, but with far more pomp. Leaning into the worries of his friends, and using it as a grounding element, DAP’s mix of shit talking and resilience in his lyrics is far more convincing, springing from “sometimes I feel like I ain’t got fight” to “went through my phases like 28 days/but I landed on both feet” within a handful of seconds. On the penultimate song “Cheat Code (Outro),” DAP revels in the importance of his family, via a much-improved relationship with an older brother who believes in his talent. But the clear North Star for DAP, as proven by a couple of vital mentions on Everybody Falls, is undoubtedly his mother. “Mama, I got It, I did it again,” DAP yelps on “Love (Interlude),” before going on to assert “I got my mama right by my side, I’m sanctified” later on album closer “Sanctified.” There’s a joyous warmth encased in every line about his mother, mostly born out of a need to reassure her that her son is on the right track.
In the broad sense of it all, Everybody Falls hinges on finding and making tangible connections to help in assuaging the dizziness of going through life and its woes alone, since fighting alone can be lonely as fuck. It’s why, for DAP, finding sources of genuine love comes across as a priority, and amidst the salvo of hysteric, manifesto raps on “Love (Interlude),” the soaring chants of “I just want more love/more love for me and you” sticks out in the most touching way possible. Even when DAP highlights the downside of social media on “Vibrate (Interlude),” where he laments getting “no memes, no likes” and the depressing search for meaningful relations in a hyper-connected-but-isolation-fostering era, there’s a humaneness descriptive, platitude empty writing, further emphasized by his The Love Below-era Andre 3000 influenced falsetto-heavy vocals. We all just want love, how about finding it around us instead of through our phone screens.
Primarily, rapping is DAP’s go-to tool of expression, and he’s able to showcase a wide range of emotions while doing so due to his mastery of tonal changes even while speedballing. But some of the brightest spots on Everybody Falls makes use of his vastly improved singing chops to excellent results. Consider the pseudo-title track, a duet featuring gorgeous guest vocals from Kamaria Woods, and propelled by a neo-soul atmosphere with blushes of indie pop glitz, where DAP’s languid singing stunningly and aptly conveys the pain of admitting being in love with someone after they’ve moved on from you. The same marshmallow vibes, this time with a slightly more excited performance from DAP, crosses into the next track “Nobody Like You,” a pop-jazz love song—dusty jazz drums, horn inflections and heartfelt lyrics—with a superb contribution from Mia Maxima who starts off with smoky singing before she trails off into a beautiful rap verse.
Although he might need to up the ante, for virtuosity purposes, as time goes by, it’s hard to fault DAP’s brilliance as a writer on Everybody Falls; he’s as poignant and earnest as they come—the way he tackles celebrity worship on “Heroes & Heroines” using his wrongful idolization of Kanye West as a point of contact makes for one of the most cutting songs I’ve heard all year. To match, DAP’s music selection, which he crafts as well, with the help of credited, frequent collaborators, is just as affecting, mixing peaceful instrumental swells and boisterous strides in the right amount to give the album its immersive feel, which helps in effecting a rather blink-of-an-eye runtime. All things considered, Everybody Falls is clearly a new peak for DAP, an all-welcoming album that pairs his refined abilities as a music maker establishes his peculiar identity and also pegs the 25-year old artist as one everyone should have their eyes and ears on.