DE’WAYNE guides us through his most accomplished collection of songs to date, ‘june’, set for release on July 30 via Fearless Records.
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Love is one of the most complex and wondrous emotions available to us as humans. It is intoxicating, terrifying, multifaceted, and powerful —a mix of chemicals that can change our lives in an instant. You can feel like you have experienced it, but the reality is that you probably haven’t even scratched the surface.
This is what the last few years have felt like for DE’WAYNE, a personal expedition into everything he thought he knew about adoration. What started with falling head over heels for an individual, a relationship that showed him what it means to devote oneself to someone unconditionally, has transformed into a deeper understanding of what it means to let that otherworldly feeling infiltrate every aspect of one’s life. To love everyone, including yourself, so vibrantly that you begin to question the social construct around the emotion altogether.
And then let it infiltrate his art in the same way.
“Whilst I was in the process of making this album, the people around me kept on saying that there was this light happening within me,” he smiles. “They’ve been saying that this feels like the most DE’WAYNE thing I have done, and that’s the highest compliment I can receive. It’s nothing but love and light and joy. I’m really happy about that. The jump towards it felt natural and right, I just knew that I needed to live a bit more life.”
The album that DE’WAYNE is speaking of is ‘june’, his most realised collection of songs yet. As much a nod to the trailblazing black excellence that guided him here as a signal of what happens when you let tenderness guide the way, it is rock and roll the way it should be. Unapologetic, unhinged and insatiable.
“I think that I was doing so much work on myself, as everyone is when they are trying to get close to the centre, I was starting to actually talk to my mum about how much closer to myself I was feeling,” he continues. “I have five sisters and so many aunts. I feel like they could all feel it, but I like to think that this music is a huge letter to all of them. I feel that rather than this being a mere dedication to them, it’s more about the fact that I have tried to show up and learn how to be a more modern man.”
To discover more about the adventure that DE’WAYNE has been on to reach this spiritual plain, Rock Sound sat down with him and peeled back the layers on what love is made of.
THE SOUND
Defining rock and roll in his own way has always been the plan for DE’WAYNE. From the rampant pomp of debut album ‘STAINS’ to the vintage flair of ‘My Favorite Blue Jeans’, he has worked tirelessly to take the genre into vivacious new places, sometimes, to his own detriment, pushing that little bit too hard to break new ground. Such want and need to shake up the status quo should always be celebrated, but with ‘june’, it marks a reconfiguring of focus. Rather than going into the studio and building from the ground up, seeing what came out of the construction process, DE’WAYNE knew precisely what he wanted every aspect of this record to be. And that came from looking back at those who paved the way.
“On the surface, we’re talking about Bowie, Prince, Lenny Kravitz. But then within the content of the music, it’s more Bill Withers and Marvin Gaye,” he states, his eyes lighting up, saying these legendary names. “The idea of surrendering to this love and this feeling. I was basically manifesting in the studio, saying, ‘If Prince heard this, he would get on with it’ or, ‘If Lenny heard this, he would fuck with it’, because I was really starting to believe in myself in that musical way. I was feeling extremely confident in the studio, and I could feel like those spiritual teachers were in the room with me.”
In using such references to guide the way, ‘june’ was already set to be a storm. Embodying the sort of artists who shredded the idea of perception, pushed the borders of what was expected of them and lived life deliciously, it allowed the creation of the sort of bold, beautiful and boundless songs that DE’WAYNE has always dreamt of crafting. And though Prince, Bill and Marvin are no longer here to see their influence in action, Lenny certainly is. And it was with the release of the pulsating ‘highway robbery’, a song dripping with late-night longing and hedonistic thrills, that the pair’s paths crossed, and a very special relationship formed.
“When Lenny hit me up after we dropped ‘highway robbery’, I remember just sitting on my bed crying,” he recalls fondly. “Since then, I’ve been in the Bahamas working on some music with him, and then getting into vocal producing for him. It’s like, this is what I was talking about. Through this process, I felt fucking nice in myself. I felt different, and it felt good. It’s about letting God in the room with you. That’s anyway that you want to look at that, not just the white dude, or black dude, with a beard. But more in embodying exactly who and what I wanted to be. I really did just surrender on this record. I was surrendering in every session we had. We knew that the songs were going to be good, because what was coming out felt good.”
THE LYRICS
There is a distinct difference in the love that DE’WAYNE has found himself singing about this year compared to last year. In 2024, he released ‘I WANT YOU MORE THAN ANYBODY WANTS YOU’, four tracks fueled by the ravenous feelings that the heart and soul conjure when you find your person. Head over heels, utter devotion, gooey-eyed, etc. On ‘june’, the love is just as deep, but it is more considered, more dense and more spiritually entangled. That is down to participating in ceremony, an ancient spiritual ritual taking place over several intense days where the psychedelic benefits of the San Pedro cactus and Ayahuasca are used to take the participant beyond the mortal plain.
“Ceremony just allows you to lead with your heart and for it to open in ways you could only imagine,” DE’WAYNE explains. “It strips you of all the fears and all the trauma that you go through in trying to be this new person, to a place where you can look up and see it all coming through so clearly. When I would return to the real world after four or five days of a retreat, I would find myself realising I had a state of mind that I wanted to maintain. It’s a state that I wanted to stay close to me. From there, I was able to expand on the concept of love. It was all coming from the inspiration that I had gained from this woman in my life, but I felt like everything I was giving now felt elevated.”
It’s why a track like ‘sundays’ manages to make the ordinary feel extraordinary and ‘biological’ perfectly encapsulates how it feels to notice the dopamine pulsating through your veins when you’re with your chosen one. It’s why ‘forever’ and ‘prize fight’ sound like the work of a man putting everything on the line for what is aching in his chest. In hacking into this higher place, DE’WAYNE has not only further understood the absolute surrender that his heroes preached in the past, but also considered how he presents himself not just to his babe, but also to every woman in his life and beyond. The reality is that no matter how much it is rejected, the shadow of the patriarchy still hangs over our society. Beliefs and practices that, despite not aligning with modern society’s norms, are still instilled in young men simply because that is the way it has always been, as if that is an excuse. DE’WAYNE is all too aware of this, and knows that there is still work to be done in shedding the old skin placed upon him at a young age, which still catches the sun time and time again, even with so much work done. However, by showing that he is listening, learning, and looking to make a change, he hopes that others will begin to question the way things are in the same way he has been blessed.
“Even as I try to be this new man today, I still find myself attached to the patriarchy. It’s so tough to get out of it. I feel that in the past, it has led me to behave in a way that could be seen as being dishonest with the people I love and the things I truly want in life. Opening the heart space has allowed me the chance to live more truthfully, to be a better lover, friend and son. I’m tired of the old ways. It hasn’t worked for the people who came before me, and it’s not working now, and I’m thankful that I get to show off this new way of seeing things with all of the shit that I’m doing.”
THE TITLE
For DE’WAYNE, one of the biggest challenges he faced whilst participating in ceremony was verbalising the things that he was seeing, hearing and feeling. Sometimes those words just don’t seem to exist, but when it came to giving a name to the goddess-like figure that inspired such admiration deep inside him, it was seeing it as if he were writing a story that helped it start to make sense. That story was of two characters called Aim and June, finding each other and falling in love after Aim journeys to LA to follow his dreams. It’s a tale that he hopes he can return to one day in the form of a kids’ book, but for now, being able to put a name to this extraordinary feeling was more than enough.
“During ceremony when this character was trying to come to me, I could tell that I wasn’t there at the “God” level of love yet,” he explains. “But the thing is that the love that I was receiving was at that level. I was with really close friends of mine, and I was trying to express my love for them, but it wasn’t coming out. It’s intense. But I could see Aim and June. I then began to think about how inspired I was by artists like The Ohio Players and Parliament-Funkadelic. They would have these incredible album covers with black women on them, I realised that this is my time to shine and show that in my way.”
It’s a case of being unapologetic in the face of what feels right to you. Being as bombastic and bold as you want, without worrying about how it looks to others. So often, we are told to tone down our passions and impulses by those who don’t see the world in such a vivid manner, especially for men, when it doesn’t fit in with the stereotypes that have been placed upon them. But DE’WAYNE is hoping to never let anybody diminish the light that he is exuding, because life is so much better when you let your passion bloom.
“Prince was raised in the hood, and he wanted to talk about God and fantasy and wear purple and get his mind out of that shit. As a black rock and roll artist, I know exactly how he felt. That’s why I am saying to love yourself. Enjoy the pleasures of life. Because we all go through hell, we all know that there is pain in love and love in pain. But what I really want to do is be the sort of person who can give others inspiration. Show that they can find someone who makes them feel this way. Someone who gives you the vibe. I don’t want to run away from that as a responsibility, especially as a man.”
THE FUTURE
Though ‘june’ as a record represents the sonic revelations that DE’WAYNE has had these past few years, the lessons learnt throughout the process are lifelong. And in him feeling this confident, comfortable and chomping at the bit to share it all with the world, he always understands that patience is a virtue. That everything he has picked up and gained now wouldn’t have had the same effect if it had come to him earlier in his journey. As he approaches the end of his 20s, figuring out who he is over the last decade has prepared him for anything and everything that the next ten years may have to throw his way.
“It’s getting close to a decade of me doing this thing in whatever form, and now is when I am feeling it the most,” he beams. “I am happy now, because as a 26-year-old, I wasn’t ready. As a 22-year-old, I wasn’t ready. I have always been proud because I was getting the opportunity to make music on a level, but now being able to take more control of my career and what I want to say, and how I want to say it, is another level altogether.
“It’s really beautiful to me to see that the magic is coming out in the way that it is and that people can feel the surrender I am experiencing because of it. Now, I want to educate more people in a way that allows us to expand from three black artists on rock radio and playlists to ten, and then to twenty. I take that very seriously, and I want to be one of the people who is doing it and leading with their heart.”
