Rappers rap about smoking pot. So when Danny Sky writes a song about “my relationship with marijuana,” you’re not really expecting him to drop this on you:
“It's kinda weird because it's such a harmless thing but for me I'm like, I might die.”
“Well, I have a heart condition—it's called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome,” the 22-year-old Portland hip-hop artist explains. “So I'm technically not supposed to be smoking marijuana because my heart can short circuit basically. And it speeds up really quickly. I've learned to mostly control it through meditation and stuff like that.”
Born in Georgia as Daniel Howard, “I moved to Portland when I was 3,” he says. And although “THX” is a clean, catchy cut—one you wanna put on repeat, and his debut to boot—from a new artist just starting to dip his toe in the local scene, music did not come naturally to Howard.
He played the saxophone in band when he was younger “and I hated it,” he says. “I was forced into it ‘cause it was like just a family thing. My brother was way better so I was like that kid in the shadow. So I didn't have the best relationship with music just because I looked at it in that light.
“But then I heard Kendrick Lamar when I was in high school and I was like, ‘Oh, hip-hop music. Oh, I can dig that.’ And then some dude I went to high school with dropped a mixtape that I thought was terrible and I was like, ‘Damn, I can do that!’ But I couldn't. So honestly not being able to is what put me in a cycle of getting better. And it evolved from there.”
We’re now at the point in the evolution where Danny Sky has hooked up with rising production team and label Burn Money Music to drop this single, which showcases not only his adept flow but also his smooth vocals.
As for what’s next, “I'm not 100 percent sure,” he tells. “I definitely want to get to a point where I can do a project, but I've been more on the side of taking my time and making sure I'm not cheating myself out of a good product. So I'm thinking I'll probably get one or two songs more under my belt and then drop a project.”
