Deetranada isn’t concerned with proving herself to anyone. Just a few months shy of her 21st birthday, the West Baltimore phenom has reached a level of maturity that’s manifested deeply in her music. The enthusiastic, bold rhymes she so effortlessly spit as a 14-year-old have slowly evolved into the razor-sharp lyrical adroitness some of her peers can’t hold a candle to today. She’s not the same little girl people still compare her to from Lifetime’s The Rap Game. Much has changed for Deetranada since her 2017 appearance on the teen competition show. Her enlightened outlook on life, reformed artistry, and stronger grasp of her identity have allowed her to let go of her inhibitions and get lost in her own world — NADAWORLD.
The 20-year-old is fresh off the release of her sophomore album, which she worked on tirelessly for two and a half years. “I've been listening to this album for a year straight before everybody else could hear it,” she tells me on a video call. On the day of its release (2/22/22), she posted up at Baltimore’s Motor House, face primed with makeup wearing long wavy tresses down to her waist, to eat empanadas and toast to her accomplishments along with fans and supporters. Two days after NADAWORLD dropped, we hopped on a zoom call. She looked cozy, wearing an oversized white tee with slime green lettering. She’s not in album mode anymore. “Excuse my hair,” she says, looking down at me with a thick afro, fresh out of braids, framing her face. Her physical appearance doesn’t mirror that of her usual flamboyant style as she’s understandably fatigued from album rollout activities, with a few appearances scheduled in the coming days. The same day we speak, she’s set to pop up at local strip joint Two O'Clock Club for CIAA tournament week and has a DTLR event the following day. In between gigs, she’s home catching up on sleep. But she still musters up enough bubbly energy for an illuminating 30-minute conversation, peeling back the layers of her orb. Her phone screen shakes as she walks and talks with me, aimlessly wandering around her new apartment — a proud accomplishment that still puts a cheesy grin on her face.
Just a year ago, I spoke to the young talent about the new age renaissance taking place in Baltimore, an exciting time for the city’s brightest stars getting their moment to shine beyond state lines. During that exchange, Dee was in awe of her peers that were drawing more eyes to the city’s DIY scene. But tonight, she only speaks on her own path and what her intentions for NADAWORLD are. “I wanted to make sucka-free music,” she shares. “Basically, I didn't want to have to second guess anything that I made. Every song that y'all hear on NADAWORLD, I didn't once think, ‘Oh, I hope they like it.’ Like, nah, I felt 100% about every song that I put on there and I wasn't going to finish that album, or put it out, until I felt like I was putting out quality shit.” Her particular approach has been groomed since she was a young girl, growing up on her parents’ stacked CD collection that included legends like Rakim, Lauryn Hill, Wu-Tang Clan, Lil' Kim — “all that good shit.” Her aspirations of becoming an artist were seeded in her mind when she was a preschooler writing papers claiming her future as a “famous musical artist.” Rapping was never not an option for Deetranada. “I always told my mother, ‘Ma, if rap don't work out, I'm going to jail,” she shares amusingly. “She would be laughing and shit, but like I'm dead ass serious. That's why I always make sure I'm the best rapper out of all these streets, for real.”
Deetranada’s vision for the future was built largely out of her dreams to be a rap star, but much of it also had to do with getting her life on the right track. “When I was going through a lot of dumb shit in school and people was making fun of me, it was getting to a point where I had to defend myself every day in and out of school, at home, and in the streets,” she remembers. “I saw my life going a certain type of way and teachers were alerting my mother. My mother was worried, crying to me and shit every day.” So, in an effort to steer herself onto a better path, Deetranada made a change and adopted poetry as a practical outlet for her emotions. Writing down rhymes and turning them into melodic flows saved her life, and she hasn’t looked back since.
Up until she traveled to Atlanta to star on “that show,” Deetranada had only toyed with the idea of being a rapper. Still a novice at her craft, she started making music by recording songs on her phone and uploading them to SoundCloud. Early tracks like “Deheyedration” and “The Real (Live)” that she wrote in her teenage years are some of the first displays of Deetranada’s passion colliding with her ambition. But as far as true belief in her skills, she was still finding her footing. To push herself, she used her music as an opportunity to wrestle with the criticism people had of her music: “Ah, shut that up, yo thought she could sing / that was whack, backtrack, bring it back,” she raps on “Deheyedration.” “Yo Diamond I told you should just quit this whole music thing, I mean you can’t rap you’re never going to make it.” Once the people around her started pushing her to keep chasing her dreams, it lit a fire under the budding rapper. For her 15th birthday, Deetranada’s mother gifted her a special surprise: an hour of studio time at Above Ground Studios. She took full advantage of her small window, ripping beats off of YouTube and SoundCloud to play around with, figuring out what sounds fit her bars best. But low and behold, that day at the studio, she ran into someone else who would be pivotal in jumpstarting her career. “This nigga walked in, he had braids and like golds and glasses and shit,” she recalls. “And he was like, ‘Damn, she hard. I got to get your information.’ He asked me for an interview and that was my first time being around people, as like a rapper, who were actually listening to me. His name was Lawrence [Burney].” Before she even graced our TV screens or called herself Deetranada, the rapper knew she had people right here in the city holding her down. So she had no choice but to start believing in herself more.
Deetranada had everyone’s attention after her impressive TV debut, and momentum from the breakout moment gave her the perfect opportunity to formally carve a lane for herself. Despite it being a launching pad for her nationwide buzz, the experience taught her more about how to move in the industry than how to be a successful rapper. “I can say fuck it now because I noticed myself feeling like I needed approval from motherfuckers after that experience,” she says now five years removed from the show. “I realized I had to surround myself with people that actually had good intentions for me and I have.” After filming her season of The Rap Game, Deetranada went on to make noise on her own merit, advancing from a talented local teenage rapper to an artist with notoriety. Her vicious freestyle on The Breakfast Club in 2017 put a lot of people on notice to take her more seriously, but that was only the beginning.
Deetranada’s 2017 mixtape, Adolescence Swim, arrived shortly after her radio appearance to offer a taste of her musical prowess. But its title was a constant reminder of her age and a hindrance that gave people an excuse to be skeptical of her skills. With that in mind, her actions became more intentional and she started working on material that could allow her to control her own narrative: DEEvsEVERYBODY!, her 2019 debut album that finally placed her at the center of the world she was living in. “At the end of the day, it's like don't nobody got me but me,” Deetranada declares to me. “I could vent to as many people as I want, but I'm the one who has to deal with my problems. I'm the one who got to feel these emotions and go through these struggles, so why not make the best out of it?” The dark nature of tracks like “FLAWS!” from the album offered a deeply personal understanding of Deetranada’s scattered mindset and purely embodied the idea of everyone being against her: “I hate myself for everything I do, everything I say / Everything I lose and everything I made / I don't do this for you, don't this for they.” The album as a whole helped paint a bigger picture that humanized Deetranada’s most intimate feelings, and for that, she finally discovered what could become her superpower: freedom. DEEvsEVERYBODY! proved that the rapper matured significantly in the two-year gap between her mixtape and album, but it also demonstrated she had a lot more growing up to do. So instead of dropping another project the following year, Deetranada instead released her solo single “19” — a track that appeared on NPR’s esteemed list of female rappers who dominated 2020 — on her 19th birthday. The fiery two-minute song was her way of proclaiming herself as the hardest rapper out and previewing the kind of rhymes she aimed to flex on NADAWORLD. Compared to her previous works, Deetranada had a goal to be more carefree and carry on with an unapologetic attitude on her new album. This time around, there’d be no mistaking her capabilities as an artist. “I obviously have a God-given talent,” she says, “so I can't sit here and ignore my purpose and act like I ain't got shit to do, because it can get taken from me just like that.”
The title of Deetranada’s sophomore album means more to her than just a new body of work. To her, NADAWORLD is a lifestyle she embraced in 2019 and has been engulfed in ever since — she even has it colorfully tattooed on her right arm. That lifestyle, of course, being all about her and existing in her own world after always feeling alienated. The rapper tapped Baltimore’s Static6ix to produce head-bobbing tracks like “Yuh Yuh!,” “Get Paid,” “I’m That,” and “Purple Punch” featuring OTR Chaz because she favors how hard her voice sounds over his beats. SevynTheVillain is another local name she enlisted to handle the booming production for “Bread Talk.” The album also features Atlanta rappers Yung Mal and Mpa HeadShakur — folks she connected with years back during her time in the city. Unlike her debut, Deetranada mixes the opposing styles of Baltimore and Atlanta on NADAWORLD, two places that have shaped her, to innovate a sound that fits her musical brilliance like a glove. Her eclectic network is another contribution to her experimental sound and popularity outside of Baltimore — popularity that's helped her reach folks in places she hasn’t even stepped foot in yet.
The new formula she’s testing is one she took a chance on because she wanted to prove her style shouldn’t and cannot be put in a box. “My first album, I had nothing but Baltimore producers and nothing but Baltimore features,” she explains to me. “But I'm more than just my city, for real. I can show niggas I can do more than one thing and I can cater to a different type of crowd.” The obvious difference between DEEvsEVERYBODY! and NADAWORLD is the choice in content, but the stark contrast is attributed to Deetranada’s maturity. She’s no longer rapping like she has something to prove. Now, she’s only concerned with her own opinion more than others. “DEEvsEVERYBODY! was my teenage emotions really getting the best of me, and me taking all the negative that was in my life and amplifying it,” she adds. “NADAWORLD is just taking that negative and going like, ‘Fuck y'all, fuck this shit for real, like I don't give a fuck about none of this.’ I could be gone tomorrow so I might as well drag while I'm here."
As Deetranada continues her transition into adulthood, she hopes that the life lessons she’s learned can be heard loud and clear on NADAWORLD. But more than that, the real takeaway from her new album is elevating her reputation from the “lyrical miracle” rapper she’s been labeled as to an artist confidently making decisions that show how far she sees herself going. So for her, it’s alright if her more seasoned peers choose to still sleep on her, or solely praise her skills in public rather than offer a chance to collaborate. “I act accordingly with shit like that,” she says. “So, I still stay to myself, and I don't take nothing too personal because it's all a gimmick and a game.” But that thought is a part of her master plan as the people’s underdog because she’s still aiming straight for the stars. “I got a whole bunch of plans this year,” she says before we conclude our conversation. “I just can't wait to take this shit to the moon, because I really have been manifesting it, and it's crazy seeing everything coming to fruition.”