Teri Henderson: How do you describe yourself? What do you do?
Butch Dawson: I produce music. I’m a recording artist. I like to design. It can be a lot of mediums, as far as creating and designing, editing videos, stuff like that, doing funny skits. That’s kinda my thing right there, just creating and designing.
I was watching the Enigma Skits earlier today, they were funny.
Thank you.
I’ve been watching them as they came out and rewatched them this morning to prepare for the interview. So where are you from? Where are your roots and where are your people from?
I’m from Baltimore, Maryland. My roots are African-American and Korean. I grew up in West Baltimore, my whole life. My mom, she grew up in West Baltimore, her whole life. My grandmother, she’s from Korea. She moved to the US during the Korean War. My grandfather was in the Korean War, I guess that’s when he ran into my grandmother in Korea. They had a son, my uncle over there, and I think when he was two, they moved to the US and that’s when they had my aunt and then they had my mother. We just been in Baltimore ever since.
What is your favorite song of all time that it’s not one of your own songs?
“You can do it too” by Pharrell. The feel and the subject matter and what he was talking about in the message, all the frequencies just match, it all feels good. I’m getting a whole bunch of wisdom when I’m hearing that song. And also I’m just vibing out when I’m hearing it. That’s my favorite track.
I love Pharrell’s production, it’s so good.
Too good.
I saw recently that In Search Of… is almost twenty years old and I was like “I am old!”
It’s still timeless.
Yes! Congratulations on the upcoming release of your EP Stardust. How are you feeling about the project overall?
I feel really good about the project. I just wanted it to be out. It took a long while for me to even get any real music—and I don’t mean I’m just putting out all fake music—just project-type music, music that’s with a project, and just a project in general. It took me so long to put one out.
Just off the fact that I’m just trying to level up every project, and now I work with management, CMPND Group, so everything just gotta be planned out perfectly. It took me probably a year and a half, you know, all the COVID stuff happened. On my end, [this] is a leverage project. It’s about taking that next step and taking that next transition into stardom. I’m building leverage to actually put out the project that I want to put out, and building momentum after all the COVID stuff that’s been going on. That basically sums up what Stardust is.
How is Stardust related to your Jazz Star project?
The songs and everything don’t have any relation to Jazz Star, except for the name.
How all this went is because I was supposed to drop Jazz Star last year in the summertime. I had a lot of label offers and stuff, and once COVID happened, everything just went out dry, and me and a lot of other independent artists didn’t really know what was going to happen. [Editor’s note: Jazz Star is still unreleased.]
Throughout that I was getting all depressed, and I was trying to figure out how to give my fans something for the meantime. So I wanted to put out an EP called Stardust. I originally had a list of songs for it, and then me and my management changed a lot of songs around.
Eventually one of these labels was fucking with the EP; they wanted to pick it up and work with us. And then I had to wait a little bit more for all that to process. ‘Cause that’s a whole ‘nother process.
The good thing is that I got the opportunity to put out this project with Asylum and I’m able to just be here and to still be able to put out music. It’s just a blessing within itself. I’m very grateful for that. Basically I’m just excited for the next thing. So once this thing comes out and I’m just like, “all right, I’m ready,” I already know what I need to do for this next project.