Dawn Richard’s Musical Landmarks

“I wanted to make a gradual transition into genreless music,” says Dawn Richard. “I wanted to do what the hell I wanted to do.” The 32-year-old former member of the pop group Danity Kane, the former singer of Puff Daddy’s side-project Diddy-Dirty Money, the former NBA dancer and reality TV star, is moving on. Her career as a solo artist (see also Dawn or D∆WN) has taken her through the fields of experimental pop and expressionist black art with the sharp eye of someone whose been inside the music industry machine and knows how to survive outside of it.

She is currently in the final act of an ambitious three-album trilogy, which started with 2013’s GoldenHeart, continued with 2015’s BlackHeart, and will conclude with her upcoming album RedemptionHeart.

Along the way, Richard has been building a singular style of music, unique to her history and identity. She talked to Sophie Weiner for RBMA Radio about some of the most important songs and albums in her recent past that helped define the new Dawn.

Champion (2011)

“Champion” was a really great record for me. Listening now to what “Champion” was, listening to “Ode To You” on my next record, like later on, they’re sisters. They’re stepsisters. I didn’t know I was going to make that record but I think “Champion” built the sound that would come later. To me, it was the introduction of a new sound and a new approach to the delivery and vocals and sonically going somewhere else.

Armor On EP (2012)

Armor On was liberating. I didn’t give a shit. Like, I’m going to go head first and see how far I can go playing with tribal sounds, playing with pop, playing with dance, playing with depth, and lyrically saying things in a way that I’ve always written – way more caged, way more metaphorical. People would say, “Oh no, that’s too deep.” I was choosing to choose the words and paint the pictures that I wanted to paint in the way I wanted to and it was amazing.

Bombs (2013)

“Bombs” is interesting because I said when we did the record, I saw the chocolatiest girls with this kind of native feel, where we went right back to owning the land ourselves and kind of having them look like warriors. I wanted really muscular girls, like really forcing that androgyny. Forcing the girls to look hard but really beautiful and finding the essence in that. Choreography wise we wanted it to feel that way as well. The desert just seemed right, this post-apocalyptic feel where these girls were kind of the only ones roaming the Earth and choreography was like the only connection to them like that was the language. It wasn’t even about the lyrics. It was about that choreography and that story being told.

Goldenheart (Outro) (2013)

I took a Debussy, “Clair de lune,” and I sung over it, which is so risky. People could brutally tear you apart for doing that because it’s a classical record, but it spoke to me, man, and where I was in my life. It’s one of the most beautifully written songs already. To have the privilege and the honor to be able to write any kind of melody over it and people to accept it is pretty fucking awesome.

Blow (2015)

I felt like I had something strong to say. I felt like we were during a time where … I was being rejected by a lot of people as a black women and I felt like I had shit to say. I felt like our time was coming, a time where we could stand strong. Not just black women, but women in general. I was very aggressive about the way I said it. I came with less of a nice approach and more of an aggressive approach. Even then, the choice of the video, everything was lions and fangs, headdresses from New Orleans, but soft headdresses, the king chief headdresses. Really going aggressive on playing, again, with a male role being taken by a woman and really showing that, saying that the male lion is represented as the woman, and really making some subliminal choices in those ideas in “Blow.”