We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dale DeSouza a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Dale, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

When I think about whether I am happier as a creative, an experimental hip hop producer, a sonic worldbuilder, I don’t have to think hard about my honest answer—I am happy as a creative, but myself being underground and unsigned, I’ve also had the regular job at points of my life.

I remember in 2021 and 2022, specifically—I had already caught the bug for wanting to make music, and don’t get me wrong, I was enjoying the work-from-home jobs I had at that time, and I do advocate for both work-from-home and work-for-hire positions, but I found myself trying to find opportunities to still create while on breaks and lunches, and I was actively excited when work ended because it meant a freedom to explore what was still out in the world, sonically, as well as the ways I could put it together. I just found it powerful that a person could have a job that they love, and yet, it can fuel creativity like few things can.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

If you’re new to me, welcome. My government name is Dale DeSouza, I do make music under the name Havoc Osiris, and I am an underground hip hop producer from Plano, Texas. I got my start in music as a way of dealing with the quarantine period of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while it just started off as a personal form of escapism, it has evolved into a cinematic, chaotic, and hyper-experimental brand of instrumental/soundscape hip hop based on the dystopian-surrealist futures that exist within my imagination.

Even in 2025, I’ll still refer to it as dystopian hip hop, soundscape hip hop, dystopian-electronic, or whatever name others may get from it—it’s still very much experimental hip hop, still proudly staying the “alternative hip hop” space, but I don’t mind because my sound has been referred to as everything from abstract to “Blade Runner type beats,” all the way to avant-garde and simply being referred to as “atmospheres.”

What I noticed was that even those in the producer space were recognizing that it was very tough to be different or original in an age where everything was being done, even if you had to allocate time to mindlessly comb every corner of YouTube, SoundCloud, BeatStars, and BandCamp among other platforms, to find any of it. Even back then, with little knowledge of how to even get stuff on Spotify, I knew that it was a cardinal sin to ever make any kind of instrumental work that left no room for an artist, but everyone and their moms had a beat for Kendrick Lamar, a beat for JID, a beat for Benny The Butcher, a beat for J. Cole…you get the picture. So what do you do?

You take the chance on approaching hip hop as the soundtrack to dystopian futures that you invented, ideally ones that could never happen in real life (because life in 2025 was supposed to basically be the live-action version of The Jetsons, and you can’t tell me otherwise). Five years of that, along with 50+ albums across all platforms, will take you places that eventually get you excited to take that name you built and give it a life of its own—the life of someone battling between living faceless as a creator with agency worth more than any record deal, and dying forever as a person whose name could one day live in public circles, as long as my name generates profit for entities that couldn’t care less about the vision that music helps me to realize.

To be candid, if there is anything newer fans must know about me, it’s that I build my sound to last long after people have forgotten—without Google—if I ever had a hit, but then, if I have to make anything other than what I want just for people to hear about it, y’all can keep the plaques and all that other nonsense. Anyone else can do that. Not Dale. Not Havoc.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

In my view, the best thing society can do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem is to connect to the art in the way you need to connect to it, and if you feel comfortable sharing that, know that you can always feel free to do so without any judgment. Because of the nature of my music, this means that if there was a deeper meaning you got from it, you have every right to feel that and express that. Likewise, if you didn’t get anything at all, or if you really just got some vibes from it, that’s okay and you should not feel pressured to feel anything more than that. If there is a wrong way to listen to my music, that’s stripping yourself of the power you have as a listener, and to me, that’s not okay, never has been and never will be.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Truthfully, the social media presence came from a combination of incorporating my real life personality into the Instagram Reels and TikToks I would make to promote my music, often using the more abstract, psychedelic filters with a blank-facing screen on each of those platforms, as well as embracing my status as a “faceless” producer. compared to more known producers across both mainstream and underground circles—and building an online persona of it. I made no bones about the nature about my sound or the fact that, at this stage of my career of only five years, as of this interview, I’m really someone who could really be anyone, anywhere, at anytime, and those that found me knew that this was authentically me, hence why they stayed.

The best advice for anyone just starting to build is to really be honest with yourself and build on that because that’s the only way to guarantee that we hear from you in the years to come, as opposed to someone else’s idea of who you should force yourself to be, and if you have to force yourself to be anything less than yourself, you should put that to one side until you’ve found a way to put your authentic self at the front, where it belongs.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/havocosiris888
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialHavocOsiris
• Other: https://havocosiris.bandcamp.com

Image Credits

Havoc Osiris