“Black Habits” is dense with experience and wisdom that comes with being a 35-year-old artist in what is too often considered a young man’s game. Pops went to jail for drug-related charges, and Moms was doing the single mother thing while pursuing music on her own.’” And the beauty of my story is that it’s so many people’s story. Smoke describes the album as “a family history, a story of triumph through mad hardships. Released in February, the project features appearances by brothers Sir and Davion, mom Jackie, Snoop Dogg and Jill Scott, among others. He’d already finished about half of “Black Habits,” and his win fueled further confidence as he pushed toward conclusion. Ten episodes later, D Smoke had beaten the competition, banked a quarter-million and landed representation with WME. “The last thing I needed was a bad moment in a reality show.” After being assured that their project had more positive intentions, he signed on. “I was in it for the long haul,” he says. One verbal flub or confused facial expression could be exploited by drama-addicted editors and suddenly, his brand is tainted. More important, he understood that most reality shows are built on manufactured drama. By this point, the artist had a solid following. You might want to consider this,’” Smoke recalls.Ĭonsider was the operative word. Enter the producers of “Rhythm + Flow.” “They said, ‘Hey, we see what you’re doing. Via one-minute Instagram videos and social media tagging, he and his team were successfully building momentum. ![]() Understanding the market potential, the artist harnessed his bilingualism to write and rap verses in both English and Spanish. ![]() After college, he got a job teaching Spanish at Inglewood High - while simultaneously writing songs and building a social media presence as an artist. “I did also feel I had a unrepayable debt to my wife for holding on, for not replacing me, you know, not letting my sons call another man daddy - and so even being good to them is being good to her.”Ī multi-instrumentalist, D Smoke attended UCLA and majored in Spanish. ![]() “When I came home, the most important thing to me was to be a father to my sons,” he says. The track ends with his father, Ronald Farris, speaking into the microphone. His return home made all the difference - “Prison push-ups for your pecs and next it was burpee,” Smoke explains via rhymed couplets on the song “ Like My Daddy.” They were raised by a mom, Jackie Gouché, who earned a living as a professional singer - she toured with both Michael Jackson and Anita Baker - and a dad who rejoined the family after being imprisoned on drug charges for the first nine years of Smoke’s life. Growing up in Inglewood, he and brothers Davion and Sir - the latter of whom is signed to Top Dawg Records, home to Kendrick Lamar - gained insight into the business as adolescents in the early ‘00s, when they signed with DreamWorks Records as a sibling R&B vocal group called N3D. That experience was apparent as he decimated the competition: He successfully strategized each on-air challenge with the forethought of a chess grandmaster. ![]() In fact, by the time he tried out for the Netflix show, he’d been building a professional foundation for more than two decades. Given my experience on ‘Rhythm + Flow,’ I was thrown into a high level of visibility in a way that most artists kind of climb their way into,” he said.īorn Daniel Farris, Smoke, 35, could barely be called a “new” artist at all. But attaining it through a reality show was not part of the plan, D Smoke says during a recent Zoom call from his loft in downtown Los Angeles. His G-clef neck tattoo is proof of a life devoted to musical achievement. Nor could she have predicted that a year later, he’d earn two Grammy nominations in the best new artist and rap album categories for “Black Habits,” an independently released concept album based on his family’s life growing up in Inglewood. Little did she know that D Smoke nearly stepped away from “Rhythm + Flow” a day before production began or that he would soon metaphorically mop floors with the competition by winning the reality show’s no-strings-attached $250,000 prize money.
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