The news shook the music industry: last August, Dominic Fike, a young 22-year-old nobody signed a $4 million contract with Colombia Records. All the songs he’d previously recorded disappeared. The record label kept the mystery going until October 16th when the EP Don't Forget About Me was released (and credited to Colombia Record). Then things started to move quickly. Dominic Fike was suddenly being endorsed by numerous American celebrities including DJ Khaleb, Khalid and Kourtney Kardashian. Celebrities mostly defined by their number of followers...
Strongly inspired by the “skate spirit”, his universe brings to mind the soundtracks of the 2000s hit TV dramas Newport Beach or Les Frères Scott.
Rarely has a musical rise been this quick. Nothing suggested that Dominic Fike was destined to follow this career. Born in Naples, a small town in Southern Florida, he was raised by his single mother, a drug addict with multiple convictions. The young Dominic was left unattended, on his own, often without resources. But he still grew up like a normal enough teenager, listening to rap music and hanging out with friends at the local skate park. He describes his home town as a quiet place filled with ill-intentioned police officers. Despite his best efforts, Dominic Pike didn’t manage to avoid house arrest or prison. It was during these darker times while addicted to drugs that he started composing and seriously making music.
Dominic Fike – “3 Nights”
Undeniably like a novel, his past does not show up in his opus. Instead, he addresses more conventional themes: disappointment in love on 3 Nights and She Wants My Money or typical Gen-Z preoccupations - notably narcissism - with the track King of Everything. His musical inspirations? Surfer Jack Johnson and the bands Blink 182 and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. The results are folk sonorities with a sparingly distilled rap. Strongly inspired by the “skate spirit,” his universe brings to mind the soundtracks of the 2000s hit TV dramas “Newport Beach” or “One Tree Hill”.
We can’t help but ponder on the relevance of this musical genre, which is nothing new. Is his success essentially down to this generation gap? Today's youth certainly seems to discover things that have long existed with wide eyes... A “high school” style pop/rock music beneath the Californian sun.
