We live in the age of the multi-hyphenate: singers who casually throw back handsprings into their concert choreography or rappers who electrify the Broadway stage. But DAP the Contract takes such a title to the extreme. In a superhero fashion, DAP is both a full-time lawyer and a full-time musician/producer/creative, balancing the ins and outs of tech, telecommunications, and media law with an established music career. On the heels of his first single of 2023, “I Remember,” along with recently becoming a third year associate, DAP the Contract is only headed upwards.
Sitting down with DAP, born Dolapo Akinkugbe, we started from the beginning—in Lagos, Nigeria where he spent much of his childhood. It was here where he was first introduced to the world of music and art—since he was four, he has been playing classical piano. Additionally, he learned the importance of having multiple passions and career paths. “My mom worked in finance but she’s a pianist and still plays the piano every Sunday in church…[She] was a piano teacher for a bit and taught my sister and my older brother when they were growing up…My dad had his own engineering company but also is a photographer and takes amazing pictures. They always understood this ‘left brain-right brain’ thing we have.”
He tells me of a Christmas concert his extended family put on every year for about a decade in Nigeria; “My whole family would perform—my mom, my dad, my cousins, aunties, uncles—and there would be a thousand people coming to watch.”
DAP would eventually attend boarding school in London, where he continued to hone his musical skills while also exploring a range of educational interests—including Classics, the field he majored in at his alma mater, Brown University. His interest in the law would come during his freshman year at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he ended up somewhat accidentally. “I applied for universities in the U.K. after high school…The morning I was supposed to submit that I was going to Bristol University, my dad called me and said, ‘I think America suits you and suits your music and I think you should take a gap year, do your music, and apply to schools in the U.S.’” During his two semesters at Berklee, his favorite class was “Intro to Film Scoring…where the law popped up for the first time,” including the discussion of sync licensing. After transferring to Brown and graduating, he says, “Being a Greek and Latin student left limited options, so the law naturally became an idea, coupled with music. I was starting to do research and understand the value of independence versus the value of signing to a record label, and it all came together at the right time.”
For DAP, music has always been the motivator behind his law career. “At the beginning, it was bigger than wanting to understand contracts and represent me.” From Meek Mill and Maybach Music Group to Megan Thee Stallion and 1501 Certified Entertainment, he notes the continued pattern of “artists getting screwed over.” Even more personal to him is the “amazing talent coming out of Africa, and Nigeria specifically” and the responsibility he feels towards them. “Knowing there’s so much more talent and all of these [artists] are going to come through the ranks and not have much legal protection or even business protection, [while also] trying to find managers and booking agents and publicists” is something he hopes to resolve. He calls his position as both a lawyer and musician a “privilege” and puts the distribution of his knowledge to the artist community, specifically the rising Nigerian community, at the forefront of his career ambitions.
As seen in his attention to this rising talent and lengthy discography, it is evident that DAP is a natural collaborator. He recalls a motto his mother repeated throughout his childhood: “There’s something about Nigerians.” He continues, “Clearly she’s biased; maybe she was just passionate about her people, but I always felt we had something special about our spirit, our music, our sound.” He says that the anticipation surrounding the Nigerian Music Renaissance of the last few years is commonly felt throughout his home country. “It’s always on my mind that we have to stick together, we have to empower each other…All these new artists, from Rema, Ayra Starr, Santi, Odunsi, Lady Donli, Tems, of course—there’s a reason Tems is where she is.”
In many ways, the diffusion of Afrobeat and Alté throughout the world echoes DAP’s personal connection to traveling. Although his roots are in Nigeria, he is a global traveler, picking up samples of local sounds and genres and embedding them into his music. “I always compare Lagos and New York because they have the same hustle and bustle, the same tempo, the same type of crazy—it’s just this interesting comparison of how it is so different but people are more similar than we realize…This recent series I’ve been putting out called Powers is inspired by spending time at the University of Amsterdam Law School in 2019 and being surrounded by the housey, dance, EDM sounds in clubs.”
While he has been all over, DAP seems to return to these various locales in some capacity, including London, when he won the 2015 Converse Rubber Tracks Competition and a chance to record with phenom producer Mark Ronson. It is a story that emphasizes his multiple spheres of work and interest. “The same week I took the LSAT, I got flown to Abbey Road Studio…I had two days at Abbey Road, but the first day I got there he invited me to his personal studio and I just played him a bunch of songs and a couple of beats.” He recalls Ronson telling him to “try and make one color,” noting the wide range of influences in his music. From Afrobeat to Motown to gospel to classical, Ronson emphasized the idea of fusion, and urged him to create something distinctly “DAP.” It is a motto that has stuck, as DAP continues to “weld these [influences] together so that they are seamless and you can’t even pick apart the different pieces, but it just sounds and feels good and rich.”
Such an experience illuminates his production skills and work behind the boards, but it is clear that live performance is DAP’s greatest joy. “People always ask, ‘What do you like most about music? Is it discovering new music and listening? Is it creating it?’…It is 100 percent performing it. When I perform, that’s the freest and most powerful I feel—the only thing that comes close to that feeling is soccer. [It] is the most euphoric thing to me.” Still, he points out the difficulties of a full-time job that keeps him primarily located in New York City. “I wish I could perform more…I think performing is the best part of my artistry, before producing, before storytelling, before lyric writing…It’s crucial to me.”
Along with performance, DAP describes another passion revolving around music: visuals and music videos. For a while, he and his wife solely created the videos together, from filming to video treatments, including that of his most popular streaming song, “Nobody Like You.” Drawing on the age of silent films with title cards and grainy camerawork, the video features DAP growing older with a lover, while interspersing scenes of him and other performers joyously moving throughout a 1 Train. An intuitive learner, he says, “I figured out was a similar language to editing music and music software so I taught myself the visual version of that, and it’s one of my favorite things to do.”
As he gets ready for the release of his new single, “I Remember (featuring Chandler Elyse),” and the third installment in his Powers series, due later this year, DAP is still learning how to grow and rely on others. “I’m at this junction where I feel like I need the help and I have the money to invest in the help, so it [makes sense] to delegate more things, but I was having a conversation with my wife about how much I’m always going to care about my music more than anyone else—I’ll give up weekends, nights, sleep, whatever I need to do to get the art done.”
Along with new music, he is keen on accomplishing a long list of goals. Within the merging of music and law, he says, “I think sync licensing as an independent artist is a major thing…Ultimately I want to be able to tour extensively…whether it’s starting small in the Northeast with 100 to 500 cap rooms and building my way up. If we’re talking about performance, I want to do the classic YouTube shows: Colors, NPR Tiny Desk, late-night shows.” Most importantly though, he wants to be more consistent: “I put out a tape in the summer of 2021 and didn’t put out anything else until November of last year, so I feel like I spent a little too much time waiting to put business plays together when I could have been building momentum.” Still, that single, “Dancing in the Rain” with vocalist and flutist Elena Pinderhuges, was well worth the wait. With the pair’s vocal chemistry and the groovy melodies that ride over the song’s snappy beat, it is a perfect teaser for DAP’s current direction.
With so much on the horizon, DAP the Contract emphasizes his commitment to each of his ventures and their coalescence. As has been the case his whole life, DAP proves that existing in multiple spheres of interest—as disjunct as they may seem on paper—is only beneficial. “Don’t divide yourself into pieces…You can like academia and the arts…You can be at an Ivy League school and make rap music. Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize at Columbia.” He concludes with two values that have guided him throughout his life: discipline and sacrifice. “The work ethic has to be the most important thing…It’s a tough pill to swallow, especially in college—‘The best time of your life’—as you’re told, but that’s what it takes. It’s being who you really are, listening to yourself, and your passions, and putting in the work.”
“I Remember (feat. Chandler Elyse)” is out Friday March 3, 2023. Presave here.