We recently connected with Dakota Travis-Gilmore and have shared our conversation below.

Dakota , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?

My work has definitely been misunderstood, the reason it always has been is because a lot of people don’t understand the things that I’ve been through and that’s okay. Sometimes you won’t understand until you’ve gone through it so you can really feel the pain but that’s another story for another time lol. One thing that I’ve took from that experience is to ALWAYS stay authentic and true to myself, people will love you just based off of you’re authenticity.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Well I’m a Rap Artist known as “DeeThaBaddie” Tha baddest in the Motorcity! I’m also an influencer. What I offer is a whole experience from the music I release, to being booked for hosting, walkthroughs and performances. Now with being an influencer, my job is to influence my community and to give them an aesthetic that they’ve always wanted or want to achieve. What sets me apart from others is that I’m the REAL THING! Everything isn’t glitz and glam, I’m going to give it to you raw and uncut. That’s as real as it gets. The most proud moment to this day is performing at Motorcity Pride in Detroit last June. Being around my community and seeing what I’ve always felt made me feel whole especially people jamming to my music it was a real special moment for me, I’ll forever cherish that. What I want my fans/followers to know about me is that I’m not perfect, I go through things like everybody else and I’m still human! I’m going to always give you an experience and always know that being your authentic self will take you so far!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson that I had to unlearn is that everybody doesn’t have your best interest at heart. I had the opportunity to do an event and I thought that it would be a good idea to bring on some people. To have a different type of audience and to gain a different type of exposure. Everything was good and all but I started to see a bit of a turn, a few months after that. It progressed and that’s when I started to have some pushback and reevaluate of what I wanted for my brand, being a rap artist and my influencer journey. I started to observe and came to the conclusion that I had to think about me and what I want. So in that moment when it did not service me anymore than that meant for me that my services were no longer needed. I say that to say this, you have to know the difference between somebody that has your best interest at heart and wants to see you Grow. From somebody that only wants one thing from you and when you’re no longer worth it to them you’re no longer needed. At the end of it all that’s the name of the game and the industry that I’m in it definitely was a life lesson that I had to unlearn.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

For me, I was already well known before I stepped into the industry, but I had to continue to keep my audience and my followers entertained. There are definitely days were I don’t feel like being on social media and I’ve had lacked in some areas that I’m still working on to this day. My advice would be to literally just be you and people will Either love you for who you are or would love to hate you for what you have! It isn’t easy building an audience on social media and I know this may sound cliché, but you have to stay consistent. We are all human so things happen, but you have to be consistent and keep people entertained. Because in this society, a lot of folks on social media have a short attention span. That’s my take on that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Bio.site/DeeThaBaddie
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deethabaddie
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/p/Dee-Tha-Baddie
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@deethabaddie

Image Credits

@urbanoutrageproductions @eyemediatre @bryantlee._