Dani Kiyoko has already forgotten your favorite trend

Dani Kiyoko is one of the internet’s most tapped-in individuals. The Louisiana digital native is constantly trawling SoundCloud for new music to share with a following just shy of 10,000, reposting roughly 50 tracks a day. As a recording artist, they’re only slightly less prolific: In 2024 alone, they’ve dropped two albums, three EPs, and dozens of loosies, leaping between styles without looking down. They’ve started and outgrown a 2000s trap remix trend, created their own potent strain of plugg, and, more recently, launched a new style boldly coined “party music,” all before reaching drinking age.

Kiyoko has been making music since they were nine. Growing up, Kiyoko and their mother would ride from their home in Kennedy Heights, on the West Bank of the Mississippi, into New Orleans — the Hollywood of the Gulf South — for her jobs as an extra and stunt double. “Small stunts, like driving,” Kiyoko clarifies on a video call from their dark bedroom.

Kiyoko was born at the tail end of the city’s Cash Money/No Limit golden era, heralded by the dissolution of the Hot Boys and the death of Soulja Slim. By the time they wrote their first song, it was 2012; Lil Wayne was between Tha Carter IV and I Am Not a Human Being II, B.G. had been sentenced to 14 years in prison, and Slim had been gone for a decade.

At home, it was gospel on the record player. Kiyoko’s uncle was a bounce rapper, but they felt no compulsion to follow in his footsteps. “It was one of those things where you hear it so much, you wanna try something different,” they tell me.

Ultimately, it was the old-souled Brooklyn crew Pro Era that first drew Kiyoko into the rap game. “I was listening to boom bap,” they say, “and then a friend put me onto A$AP Rocky and Kendrick.” Wayne had always been in rotation by default, but Young Thug, who ran with Cash Money in those days, soon took front and center.

In 2015, upon the creation of their first SoundCloud account, Kiyoko’s rap education began in earnest. “I would scroll through people’s follows for hours — picking this person out, picking that person out, like, ‘Okay, I wanna send them beats,’” they say. “That’s how I did it for like three years straight, and I didn’t get a single listen. It was a lot of time put into searching.”

Eventually, they placed a beat with the rapper now known as Tanna Leone — Kendrick’s only pgLang signee not named Baby Keem — and never looked back.

It’s hard to predict what a new Dani Kiyoko track will sound like before you press play. Despite largely abandoning the Gucci Mane-indebted (and often Gucci Mane-sampling) late-aughts trap flips that populate Kiyoko’s Streetrunnaz tapes, they added to the series in February before dropping a syrupy tape of the vamp plugg variety two weeks later.

“I really don’t like doing the things other people are doing, so I decided to turn something totally different around,’” they say.

Their three most recent projects — March’s Welcome To The Party and its two follow-up EPs, May’s #SutetchiX and last week’s Shifuku — all belong to the blown-out, hyper-saturated party music sound Kiyoko co-created with their favorite collaborator, chemsblood.

“Me and chem both love that era of 2010s music where people were doing literally anything different, anything outrageous, outlandish,” Kiyoko says. “That era of music was the most fun for me, so I try to take elements from that time period and throw them into a more updated version in my own style.”

These artists include Ke$ha, Soulja Boy, Chief Keef, and Rae Sremmurd, but there are also other, darker sounds bouncing around in Kiyoko’s head at any given moment. Late in our interview, they out themselves as a diehard Korn fan, offhandedly introducing me to their own nu-metal outfit, Vermisst. (Vermisst have, of course, released 62 tracks on SoundCloud in the past year and change.)

Kiyoko credits their work ethic and creativity to their mother. She was diagnosed with lupus and lost her job in 2020 but “turned her sickness into a business and a way to advocate for other people with chronic illnesses.”

Kiyoko’s father left when they were young, and they have no siblings, but family is essential to their artistic philosophy. They call chemsblood “the freaking brother [they] never had,” and chem tells me over Instagram DM that he’s in awe of both Kiyoko’s “adaptability to any sound” and the genuine care they have for the people around them. This circle is mainly a product of the internet, forged in the online gaming sessions that introduced Kiyoko for the first time to a passionate community with interests they shared, transcending city limits and state lines.

Even as Kiyoko continues to drop music at a breakneck clip, they’ve begun to focus their attention on their new label and fashion brand, Sutetchi. They originally devised it as a New Orleans collective but found the scene unreceptive to their vision. “That’s all I can really say about this city as a whole — it’s very close minded,” they tell me.

Kiyoko did bring one local rapper, drezzo, into the fold, but the rest of the roster hails from elsewhere. “It’s a bunch of internet friends who I knew could really mesh with the style and sound I wanted to go for,” Kiyoko explains. These include artists and designers as well as rappers and producers; Kiyoko’s ultimate goal is to foster a community where creatives have “the freedom to create without having to go the extra mile.”

Dani Kiyoko has often chosen to walk that extra mile alone. There are moments in our conversation when they become suddenly, intensely serious, discussing their motivations and dreams for the future. Mostly, though, they’ve got the lighthearted, nimble attitude that becomes an early-20s artist. As they find their footing on a career path that’s less certain than ever before, their ability to change direction with no clear terrain ahead will be essential.

There’s almost no light in Kiyoko’s room while we talk — they had the TV on earlier but turned it off for our interview, they tell me — even as the hour approaches noon in Louisiana. Through their webcam, they’re grainy, barely visible at times. When I ask them why they’ve chosen this particular setting, they shrug. “I don’t know,” they say. “I feel better in the dark half the time.”