In only three whirlwind years – from summer 2020 through summer 2023 – DICI has evolved from a quarantined 17-year-old freestyling rhymes and mastering the Pro Tools rig in his bedroom to an internationally renowned, genre-transcendent hip-hop and pop star with nearly 120K TikTok followers, an aggregate 7.5 million streams and views on Spotify and YouTube and a prolific stylistically diverse discography that includes his 2021 debut EP and 18 popular singles released from 2021-23. To date, he has charted two songs on Billboard: “Beautiful Collision” (which reached #44) and “Eye to Eye” (#98), both dropped in late 2022.
The now 21-year-old multi-talented Italian born. Milan and Miami raised musical hyphenate (singer, songwriter, rapper, producer, label entrepreneur) will drop his second EP Highs and Lows – a six track set featuring “two rap songs, two pop songs and two sad songs” – in fall 2023. After producing dozens of tracks as a DIY artist, this marks DICI’s first project helmed by an outside producer. Highs and Lows is produced by Chris C Rod Rodriquez, aka C-Rod, a multi-Grammy nominee whose superstar remix resume includes Rihanna, Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez and #1 dance hits with Lady Gaga, Pet Shop Boys and Enrique Iglesias.
Testament to DICI’s growing global impact and influence, the artist has received impressive airplay on pop stations in the UK, where he toured for the first time in May and July 2023. His first jaunt was a six-city tour that included performances at 1500-2500 seat theatres in Leicester, Hull, Cambridge, Warrington, Reading and London. Two months later, he returned to England for a wild run of 46 shows over 30 days at smaller venues and festivals, including LeeStock Music Festival in Sudbury (headlined by Natalie Imbruglia) and Wilkestock Festival in Hertford.
Remarkably, instead of performing some of his earlier popular streaming hits, the artist’s seven song set included his most recently penned songs, including some yet to be released. “I feel like the songs I’ve been writing are at a higher level and more diverse,” DICI says. “I’ve been moving away from the straight hip hop that I started with and am now writing and singing more pop songs – and other music I feel is between those two styles. Performing the newest material shows both my longtime fans and those hearing me for the first time where I’m at creatively now. Playing in front of large crowds truly validates how I’ve been evolving as an artist and has given me more confidence. That confidence level has really inspired me to further develop my craft as a songwriter. It’s opened up my artistry and my ability to tell my story the way I want to tell it.”
Early on, while working on developing his sonic aesthetic, fascinating and insightful narrative flow and composing and production skills, DICI often posted short video snippets on Instagram to keep fans in the loop about what he was working on. He called these posts “DICI Doses,” which is also a play on the Spanish word for two. Once in a single week when he was caught up with his schoolwork - he went on a tear and wrote and produced four songs that became his 2021 signature singles “Flip,” “Art of War,” “Five Rings” and “I’ve Been Dreaming.” His most recent singles include “Champagne Showers,” “Daydream,” “Dopamine” and “200 Miles.” The artist’s decision to start releasing EPS again with the drop of Highs and Lows is driven by his ever-prolific songwriting output and his desire to drop a lot more than six singles per year.
As for his writing and production process, DICI explains that for his more melodic songs, he creates the beat first and then develops the song around that groove. He finds it easier to write when he has an idea of what he’s going to be talking about in the song upfront. He has done quite a bit of traveling for someone his age – including numerous trips to Japan countless times and even going to school for a time in Tokyo – and these experiences have inspired songs like his “Shibuya,” which scored 273K views on YouTube. DICI recently relocated from his longtime home of Miami to Tokyo.
Though he cites many rappers and pop musicians as influences, DICI says it was a YouTube video by renowned producer Kenny Beats that fired him up and sparked the intense dedication that fueled his breakthrough EP. The previous November, he had gone to a friend’s house and learned how to make beats and about the production side of making records. Everything screeched to a halt when COVID hit, and though he had loads of free time, he just chilled out for months.
“By the end of July, I was starting to feel restless,” DICI says. “Going through YouTube one day, I found the Kenny video. He was talking about how before he was famous, he had locked himself in a room and worked all day long. Everything was about work ethic. After I watched that clip, I literally dedicated 12 hours plus every day to music – waking up, doing music, going to sleep, on repeat. I made a lot of progress on the tech front, too. The first project was me saying ‘Hello, I’m here,’ and since then I’ve enjoyed building momentum by regularly dropping new singles and now this second EP with this fresh melodic sound.”
The first project was me saying ‘Hello, I’m here,’ and since then I’ve enjoyed building momentum by regularly dropping new singles with this fresh melodic sound.”
DICI FOREVER