An interview by Aaron Navarro (@aaronlarnavarro)
Milwaukee reppin’ IshDARR, real name Ishmael Ali, has been on a hot streak the past couple of weeks. After dropping the Apple Music featured track “Sugar,” he followed up with a video for the trunk-rattling “Too Bad,” and recently dropped “Somebodies” the night before his 19th birthday. We caught up with the young buck to catch his feelings about going overseas, his come-up and how big his next project is going to be. Peep the discussion below.
FSD: IshDarr, what’ve you been up to lately? I know you dropped that “Too Bad” video and recently announced a European tour.
IshDarr: Basically, we been following “Too Bad” up with “Old Soul” videos. That “Too Bad” video went good, I think it could’ve went better and shit, there were some technical difficulties. We dropped that shit, and then we dropped something we’ve been working on for a few weeks now, [Somebodies].
FSD: Are you excited to rep Milwaukee overseas?
IshDarr: Man, that’s gonna be the dopest shit. That’s probably why I am so excited, because I get to rep home overseas. I’m looking forward to that a lot, I’m a have my Bucks gear repping over there, my Brewers stuff, so it’s gonna be fun repping the city. [I’m] maybe, no I’m gonna say probably the first to rep [Milwaukee] overseas, that’s about to be fun. Word to that.
FSD: Are you opening for some names?
IshDarr: I wanna say four of them I’m headlining. One of them is a VICE house party. One of them is another showcase with some dope artists, Post Malone, me, a few more people. In total six of us. I am actually one of the main headliners for most of them, it’s kinda different. I am more used to that opening type shit, but over there [in Europe] its not really “opening” it’s more just dope ass shows with all of these artists. They’re pretty geeked over there, all the venues I had are so geeked to have us. I was like, “Damn, I didn’t know they was messing with me in Europe that hard.” But like yeah, they been planning a lot of stuff up there. People know.
FSD: I know your song “Sugar” was actually featured on an Apple Music playlist, and that’s like world-wide recognition. How does that make you feel?
IshDarr: Man that shit, I’m still trying to believe that shit everyday. Waking up, seeing that, seeing people tweet me like “Yoooo you’re on apple music!” Like with “Sugar” and the “Too Bad” video this is definitely my best week, and it made me feel like “Okay, I’m actually working. This shit is starting to pay off, [people] know me some more.” I most definitely appreciate Apple for that, because they love it over there, they truly believe in this shit. They like pushing it as hard as they can, and they like “Yo yo, this needs to be heard.” It’s dope, it’s dope.
FSD: Building off that, can you talk about how you got there? What work you put in, how you even found music, the stuff you had to do?
IshDarr: Shit, music, I just grew up around it. Just starting down there early on, young in life, my Pops was a DJ. So he was heavy into music, and Moms was into music before she met him, but once she met him, he really put her on a lot more music. They just automatically became hip-hop heads and they was all playing that underground stuff, so was raised around it a lot. Just coming to Pop’s crib and it’d be the Wu-Tang Clan or Madvillian playing, just whatever he’d have in the basement. It’s just some stuff we never heard, but that’s the stuff that he was trying to tell us back then like “Oh this is it! Right here.” So the music, that most definitely came naturally growing up.
I finally got to 7th grade, I was just like “fuck it” [I will] just start freestyling and shit. Just saying some dumb stuff, I didn’t take it serious or nothing at all, just rapping with my friends and something at lunch or some shit. Nothing too serious until high school. Freshman year, my guys were like “there’s a little talent show going on, it could be me, you, and like three other of us.” We just started some group shit my freshman year, they were all juniors and seniors. I was the youngest in the group. It all started in high school, and we performed and everybody loved us, so we were on some group shit. It was called NoNam3, so that shit was dope.
So when the school loved us, that’s when I really started falling into music, writing everyday, started listening to beats finding my producers. Just seeing what flows I like, what kind of music I started liking more. From then on it was working shit, went through high school where I just worked with the group on shit, I had no thoughts on going solo or anything like that. I thought we was gonna do this group shit till we blow, since it was poppin. Then they got older, went to college. I was in high school they were in college, so things went their separate ways.
So it was like, “You either quit this music, or you keep going with this shit.” And I was like I’m “finna quit,” well no it wasn’t like I’m finna quit I was like, I think I’m just gonna wait until they ready, until I’m done with school type-of-shit. That just didn’t fall through, I was like “Uhhhh… I don’t… I don’t know what we’re gonna do.” Talking to my music teacher at school, my mentor, Mr. Flattery. He told me, “No man, you can’t stop whatever you do. I believe in you; I think they love you.” So I wrote like a little 16 for that [next talent show], did that to open up the show. Everybody loved it. And then I ended up hitting up Mag and was like, imma try my own songs bruh. Since December 2013, we recorded the first song “First.” And that was it, I just fucking kept going after that. It was crazy to be someone this young, coming from Milwaukee, and to actually get attention like that from school from streets around town. I was like, “Lets just keep trying.”
Before I finally dropped “Better Life” I was like, fuck it. Here’s an EP. And that was it, that’s when the calls started coming in, the emails. Shit just went real crazy, real quick. But I was still in high school, so I couldn’t really do too much. My summer going into my senior year, that summer, I was going to freakin’ Cali, meeting people and shit. It just got crazy after dropping the EP. The response we got from that was so positive, the city was loving it, because of the new sound. Giving ourselves a name type of shit. So we started plotting, how to take it after that. Still following that same strategy right now, being real smart and strategic.
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