Dee-1 is on a mission to clean up hip-hop. But is his message connecting?

Recent headlines may not make it seem this way, but hip-hop has been good to Dee-1. Since leaving his job as a middle school teacher to take on rapping full time, the New Orleans-bred MC has harnessed his brand of positive, faith-based lyricism into a successful career that earned him a major record deal with RCA Inspiration in 2013, collaborations and tours with some of the genre’s greats (Lupe Fiasco, The Game, Yasiin Bey), and a solid discography. He’s also been able to harness hip-hop into academia.

Born David Augustine, Dee-1 was named the Nasir Jones Hip-hop Fellow at Harvard University in 2022, where he recorded his latest album, From the Hood to Harvard. He also teaches a course at Tufts University and conducts financial literacy programs in the community after famously using part of his record deal advance to pay off his loans from LSU. By many measures, he’s a hip-hop success story. But over the past several months, he’s been criticized by the culture he loves.

When I sat down with Dee-1, I had two questions: What makes him call out his fellow artists — as he did during an appearance on Sway’s Universe in October 2023, labeling Rick Ross, Meek Mill, and Jim Jones as “disappointing grown-ups.” And how is it actually working?

Dee-1 spoke to Andscape on a late January afternoon while driving to New Orleans, where he was meeting with 100 rappers to discuss how they can address social issues. Since our conversation, Dee-1 has conducted interviews with everyone from The Breakfast Club to conservative firebrand sports journalist Jason Whitlock to spread his message.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Your interview with Sway wasn’t your first time demanding more of rappers. In 2010 on “Jay, 50 and Weezy,” you rapped, “truthfully, you don’t gotta rhyme like Common Sense, just be down for the cause and don’t ride the fence.” When you make songs like that, who are you trying to reach?

The industry is made up of three segments: consumers, creators, and commissioners. The commissioners, that’s like the industry people, the labels. I even put the media in the commissioner category because although the media can’t pay artists financially, you pay artists with attention. Consumers and creators are fans and artists. When I make those songs, it’s to reach the consumers and the creators. At that time, I’m like, ‘Jay, 50 and Weezy, if I had access to y’all, I would tell you all this personally.’ That’s why the music video is a setting of a roundtable meeting. If they hear this, they may be like, ‘Wow, this is making some sense. He’s naming us because he’s a man and he’s direct, but he’s not dissing us.’ Maybe it’ll make them think about their craft differently because this has more impact than maybe y’all know.

Fans have so much power because what y’all choose to support is what artists, nine out of 10 times, will shift their creation process to appeal to. Fans are hearing this stuff, and I’m hoping it’s impacting what y’all want to support. If you’re fans of this song, then y’all should be fans of all of the music that is being made by myself and by others that is less toxic.

How effective do you think you were in conveying that message?

That song had about a 99% approval rating from the people. Of course, when I’m outnumbered in the industry in terms of what I rap about versus what’s being pushed upon many of us, it takes more than that to see sustainable change. But to this day, people talk to me about how much of an impact that [my song ‘Lines Drawn’] had on them and the type of dialogue it sparked within their households and communities.

I just want better for us. I don’t want the fans to be preyed upon by the industry to where it’s like, ‘We got this formula where we’re going to incentivize artists to create toxic music and then we’re going to mass produce and mass market that music to these communities.’ This will become the soundtrack to their lifestyle and ultimately have either a direct or indirect impact on them. And for the artists, I want us to truly be free. I don’t want us to be rich slaves, and I don’t want us to be pawns in a bigger chess game that the industry plays to where they want to use a few of us to push out a message of murder, drug dealing, drug use, and disrespecting women via hip-hop. I want better for us, too.

Those songs have a clear message, but an interview feels more confrontational. Do you see a difference between those two approaches?

I don’t think that confrontation is the best word to describe the approach. It’s always been direct. I’ve never not called out different artists’ names at various times, but I have no interest in beefing with any of my brothers in hip-hop. My only opp is the devil. 

I have been fearless from the beginning. This ain’t about me, this is about doing God’s work in this industry. Who in this game wants to represent righteousness and use their platform or craft to help push out a message of social activism, positivity, and making it up from hard times? That doesn’t mean you can’t tell your story. But who’s in it to do that and who’s in it to simply say, ‘I just want to make money by any means necessary, regardless of what I gotta glorify’ or ‘I want to intentionally glorify a bunch of negativity, and a bunch of wickedness and a bunch of stuff that the devil would be proud of?’ If that’s what you want to do, do you, but I’m just drawing the line.

When I used the word confrontational, I wasn’t saying that as a negative connotation. I wanted to compare some of your older work to the Sway interview and newer songs.

Oh, no, you’re all good in my book, trust me. I was saying that because I’ve found that there are three ways that people try to denounce or discredit what I’m doing. Some people will say, ‘Oh, he’s just clout chasing so he can come up and make a name for himself.’ And then there are the people who say, ‘Oh, he’s literally hating on other individuals. So he’s being confrontational with them.’ If y’all want to minimize all the work I’ve been doing over the past 15 years [over] one interview and try to say that I got an issue with three individuals, I will gladly send y’all other interviews where I named other people. Maybe I wasn’t as big at the time, or maybe it wasn’t Sway’s platform. You’re gonna see that this ain’t nothing new.

What has been your reaction to the responses that you’ve received since this interview? Joe Budden called you a clout chaser. Meek Mill was basically like [he] can do both the negative and the positive. I don’t recall what Rick Ross said —

Ross basically just made fun of me. He called me basket head because of my head wraps, made fun of my New Orleans accent, called me a fake Rasta, and called me ‘lil man.’ He didn’t address what I actually brought up — that stood out to me more than anything. Shout-out to Meek because Meek addressed what I brought up and didn’t resort to name-calling or threats. I appreciated that because it’s just meant to spark dialogue amongst us.

Joe Budden, it wasn’t a response, because I never mentioned him. But Meek and Ross, they all responded, and I responded to each one of them. I responded to Meek, expressing love and gratitude for his honesty and transparency. Every time Joe said something about me, I’m like, bro, you’re calling me a clout chaser, but you’re mentioning me. So I’m gonna respond every time. Me and Jim have communicated behind the scenes, and it’s been a warm, positive interaction.

That is something that I look forward to the masses being able to see publicly. But I don’t think people deserve to be left with this cliffhanger to be like, ‘Last we saw, Jim jumped out there saying this and that at Dee and it seemed real heated.’ Nah, that’s part of the teachable moment for hip-hop, to see two Black men talking through this and having mutual respect for one another. I’m open to interacting with any of them in person or via the internet, because none of it was personal.

What has been the bigger challenge: finding like-minded people in hip-hop who agree with your message, or converting people who are on one side of the argument and have difficulty turning a new leaf?

It’s definitely more difficult to convert people who are on one side of the line because there’s often an allegiance to that side of the line, to that music, or to that career. It’s either something that’s made you a lot of money, or it’s music you’ve grown up on for the past 20 years, or 10 years, or maybe 30 years. So, it’s way harder to break those attachments that people have.

How often do you find other artists who share your perspective?

I’ve been blessed to know and be around artists who feel how I feel since before I even started rapping. Before I started rapping, I knew of Chuck D. I knew of KRS-One. I look up to these people. I look up to Speech from Arrested Development. I look up to Nas. So I’ve known that there are people like that. 

Once I got in the game, I started to see there’s a bunch of people who feel like this. Are we outnumbered? Absolutely. But I’m used to being the underdog. My first name is David. I’m ‘posed to have Goliath in my life.

A big part of who you are is rooted in your Christian faith. Where did those values come from? I know that you were raised Catholic, but even people who were raised that way often don’t embrace it until later.

The four things that made me take my faith seriously were all things that occurred during my freshman year of college at LSU. My girlfriend in college, we had been together for like three years, and she cheated on me with an LSU football player. I experienced heartbreak for the first time in a real way because I only went to that school to be with her. I had full scholarships to Howard University, University of Florida, and UCLA. Then, one of my best friends got murdered back home. My first roommate started selling drugs, we ended up falling out, and I had to move to a different room. And then I got cut from [LSU’s] basketball team. I felt like I lacked an identity because everything I had built my identity on got taken away from me in a matter of nine or 10 months.

That was definitely like a fork in the road. It could have led to me seeking an identity in drinking, smoking, violence, and thugging. But that is when I found Christ. It no longer became like a traditional thing of ‘my family is Catholic so I just go to church on Sundays, I take communion and I’m done.’ At that point, I have a real relationship with God because I have to figure out why am I even here. Why am I not just a person that needs to end their own life right now? Why does my life even matter, and what am I put here to do? I found that relationship through Jesus Christ and began reconstructing myself.

A lot of people have issues with ways the church has been used as a tool to oppress people. You made a song called “Racist Christians” that talks about some of this. What do you think is the line between being personally proud of your faith and using it as a basis for your mission? 

The basis of the message is something that [should resonate] on a human level, regardless of your religious beliefs. I don’t say that glorifying murder, glorifying drug dealing and drug usage, and glorifying disrespecting our women and sexual irresponsibility is right at all. You look at the ‘Jay, 50, and Weezy’ song, my Sway interview, or the clips that went viral — none of that is me Bible-thumping.

People try to weaponize my Christianity against me. I don’t use my Christianity as the basis. I just won artist of the year from a Christian hip-hop outlet, Rapzilla, and won artist of the year from Rolling Out magazine, which is a mainstream outlet. That shows that I’m not a person that is strictly defined by that. But I’m also not a person that sugarcoats or hides. I will never not tell people that I am a man of God, that I’m a Christian, and that I believe in Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. And if people knowing that I’m Christian [is] the dividing line between everything I put out and someone saying, ‘He’s a Christian, I ain’t messing with him,’ then I’m at peace with the fact that I wasn’t meant to reach that person.

There haven’t been many hip-hop artists who have been able to use Christianity as a vehicle in hip-hop and come across as cool. Chance [the Rapper] did it with Coloring Book, No Malice did it to a certain extent. How did you feel about Kanye’s [West] venture into ‘Christian hip-hop’ on Donda?

I was publicly very supportive when he started moving in that direction. When I saw that this brother was in a space where he wanted to be bold and vocal about his renewed faith in Christ, I was very happy for him. I applauded NBA YoungBoy publicly when he did that monumental Billboard interview. I applauded him and Fredo Bang, my former student who’s now signed to Def Jam and a platinum artist. I applauded him and NBA YoungBoy when they came together to squash their public issues with each other. I applauded Kanye publicly. And when we hang up from this interview, I’m about to applaud Meek Mill. I saw a tweet sent to me last night, where Meek was like, ‘Yo, being smart is gonna make you successful in life. Being in the streets, being gangsta, that’s gonna end up bad for you.’

How exhausting it would be if I woke up every day and my only job was, ‘Who can I criticize today?’”’ When people say, ‘Why don’t you call this person out?’ It’s not my full-time job to call people out left and right because that would be done 365 days a year if that were my job. If I’m giving examples of a certain type of behavior and if I’m using real-life people to illustrate that, that’s just what that is.