California native DL Down3r, born James Williams, rose to viral hip-hop fame in 2015 with his single "Suga Boom Boom," a catchy yet harrowing look at addiction. The song, which features choruses sung by Down3r's niece, started as a poem Down3r composed while serving a lengthy prison sentence, and helped launch the rapper's touring career.
Now back in Bakersfield, California, Down3r called Bend home in 2016 and 2017 while he collaborated with singer Lady Dice. Their collaboration included a remake of "Suga Boom Boom," for which Down3r is currently working on a new music video.
Down3r's latest single and video, "Hear Me Now?," featuring Bend rapper Jay Tablet and Unoxprodigy, is even more unflinching than "Suga Boom Boom." The song deals with child abuse and was inspired by 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez of Palmdale, California, who was killed in 2013 after suffering months of abuse at the hands of his mother and her boyfriend. Down3r hopes the video will raise awareness of child abuse, especially as millions of abused children are trapped in their homes right now due to coronavirus pandemic lockdowns across the country. He has donated to The Kid's Charities in Lancaster, California, and urged his fans to donate to local charities helping to combat child abuse. Check out the bottom of this post for some Central Oregon groups to support.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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| DL Down3r |
Q: So I watched the video and man, I almost didn’t make it through it. It is hard to watch.
A: Yes. We had to have it like that, and the reason why -- and I got a lot of slack. I got some hate mail over it. “How can you do that? This is a very sensitive subject.” Yeah it is, but you know what? There’s a lot of people out there that are blind to these kids. And I don’t want to say blind because they’ve never seen them before; I just want to say blind to them because they don’t want to deal with them. And that’s our biggest problem, because we’re all aware of a child being beaten, we’re all aware of that sign. It’s the fact that you don’t want the confrontation -- you don’t want to step up and be that person for that kid -- and that’s where I feel like we lack in society. So I needed it to be right in your face. To the people that don’t want to look at it, fine. But I needed it to be that impactful so it can hit somebody in the guts, so hopefully we can raise awareness. Especially right now, these kids are locked down. My girlfriend the other day was talking about it. She’s like, “Yeah, they’re locked down 24 hours with the parents that they really don’t want to be with because they get beaten on.” School was their only outlet and now they don’t even have that.
Q: Obviously as you mentioned, this is very timely coming up now with people in lockdown and a lot of vulnerable people in lockdown with their abusers as you mentioned. When did you write the song and record it, and was it just fortuitous timing?
A: It was fortuitous timing. Some real talk. We were sitting here, and … I had seen it on Facebook about the Netflix documentary (“The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez”). So we sat down as a family and we wanted to watch it, and we did man. We literally watched every episode without taking a break until it was done. We spent literally a whole day dedicated to watching this thing and wanted to watch it, and we did, and we all left out of there with no dry eyes in the house, I promise you that. And that inspired me. … A friend of mine named Uno out there in San Diego had just asked me to get on a song with him, and the song that he got that he sent to me was so real and raw, and the type of stuff that I really want to get into is that real stuff. I was like, oh, he’d be perfect for my project that I want to work on for this Gabriel track. And then obviously Jay Tab with his amazingness -- Jay Tab was a shoe-in already. … But that inspired me, and I wrote my verse, I believe, in probably I’d say a day -- I wrote it within the day, and that was it, man. The rest was like I said; we went and recorded it. And we actually shot the video right at the beginning of the pandemic, where it started really getting crazy out here. We heard about it, but my video crew came in hazmat suits. It was pretty crazy.
Q: That’s the Gabriel Fernandez documentary?
A: Yeah, “The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez.” And I actually talked to the uncle of Gabriel as well as the aunt. They both reached out to me; I’m part of their Gabriel Fernandez page. And they had reached out to me with some kind words, and we had talked for a brief second. It was really cool, man, so I’m gonna help them out in whatever I can as far as spreading the news, spreading the word. That’s why I implemented this Blue Light Challenge. I challenge everyone to put a blue light in their front porch, and we’re gonna do this for Child Abuse Awareness Month. And I do this because we don’t know who we’re living next to. You could be living next to a child that’s getting beat on, you just don’t know it. But if that child abuser sees that blue light, he might think twice or she might think twice about putting hands on that kid because they may have seen the post; it might have went trending. ... We’re letting these kids know and the abusers know that, hey, we’re watching, we’re listening, but most importantly we’re reacting.
Q: You mentioned filming the video in the pandemic, and that’s gotta be its own level of craziness. But just with the subject matter of the video itself, what was it like filming it? What was it like directing the kid and the people playing his parents?
A: Hard. Very hard, man. The little boy, his mom is a fan of mine. He loves “Suga Boom Boom.” So we made him feel very special that day. We wanted him to be like the king; we wanted to make sure he was very comfortable. It was very hard though, man. He didn’t have to go out to Lancaster, but for me and the film crew, we went out to Lancaster, to Palmdale. We actually went to Gabriel Fernandez’s apartment building, and we shot it -- we actually talked to the people that live inside of his apartment right now. So that was surreal just to look inside the apartment and know this is where this little boy -- where all this happened. It was, ugh, it was bone-chilling for real; it was crazy. It was sad, especially with re-enactments of the parts. Everything fell apart for me, for real. The day of the shoot, everything fell apart. I didn’t have a Gabriel, I didn’t have a Pearl (Fernandez’s mother), I didn’t have the boyfriend. I didn’t even have a location. All I had was, we’re gonna meet in front of Gabriel Fernandez’s mural outside of his apartments, and we’re gonna go from there. Everything fell in place after that, though. It was really amazing how it worked out.
Q: What has the response been so far?
A: The majority of them feel the way I feel: It needs to be said, it needs to be said at this level. People need to recognize and see the signs of these kids, because this is exactly what’s happening. And it’s happening in places that you may not think. “Oh no, I live in this nice neighborhood. We have everything we want right here. No, it doesn’t happen here.” Yeah, it does. It happens in the ghetto, it happens everywhere. So we just need to be aware of it, that’s all. Because I think that’s the pandemic, for real. We talk about the coronavirus, and I get that, but we’ve got kids dying especially right now. To me it’s scary, for real. It really is.
How to help:
The Kid's Charities, Lancaster, California
KIDS Center
CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) of Central Oregon
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