Features : Duvee Davis and his hip hop career find new life after relocating to Bangkok, Thailand

For Duvee Davis, boxing was life when he was a kid. Even when he would have rather been out playing with friends, he dutifully headed to his father’s boxing gym where he was often forced to spar with grown adults.

“I was just getting beat up pretty much every day I went into the gym,” he says.

But one night during a fight a DJ played Naughty By Nature and the music had an instant effect on Davis. He won his first fight that night and became obsessed with aggressive hip hop.

“It motivated me to go to the gym, motivated me to fight, trained my brain to be ready to take all the stuff I was dealing with,” he says. “It was like a therapist or something for me.”

And the young Davis was dealing with a lot. He lived in perpetual fear of disappointing his father and the physical and mental abuse that would follow. His father started an affair with a drug-addicted cleaning lady who then sexually abused the 13-year-old. She would later run over and kill his father in the family driveway.

Hip hop helped so much, in fact, that Davis pursued it professionally, but he unknowingly impregnated a singer he’d shared the stage with. He only found out he had a son when the boy was four months old, and then his mother departed, leaving him a single father.

Music came to a halt; Davis needed to shift gears and earn money. So he enlisted in the US army and found himself serving in war-torn Iraq. His struggles only mounted after he returned, so he took the bold step of moving himself and his son across the world to Bangkok, Thailand to leave his emotional baggage behind and get a fresh start.

“I remember when I went overseas, the feeling of touching down in Kuwait or wherever and it felt like I was free of my past,” he says. “I wanted to move to Bangkok for the low cost of living, then I remembered that feeling and said I’d like to do that. It’s like a new start.”

And with more money in the bank, Davis – and his son – are back in the hip hop game.

“It’s so cool,” he says. “My son produces beats and it’s a great thing we can do together. He’s got the new style. I’m more boom bap traditional with the kick and the snare when I make beats but he’s like the new school trap.”

Davis has released more than a dozen singles since 2020, including songs like “Glue” and “Success” this year. He’s also put out music videos for “Flowstate,” “Born Alone Die Alone,” and “Glue.”

“Glue,” which already has nearly 30,000 plays on YouTube alone, represents everything going well in a relationship with a woman and the video features several women dancing. But filming pornography is illegal in Thailand and carries heavy consequences – while filming the video at a hotel, the manager thought the crew was filming pornography and Davis and others had to rush out and go on the run for a while.

The video for “Flowstate” was filmed around his Bangkok condo, and “Born Alone Die Alone” was filmed in Bangkok’s Chinatown.

“I want to start spreading my message,” Davis says. “For children that have been abused and to break the cycle of child abuse. I have my son, I had a tough upbringing with my stepmother and father and I’m breaking the cycle, not repeating the same thing. I want to spread that message and I want to make something that my son can step in and take over when he’s older and run with it.”

Davis is back in the studio this fall working on four new songs with his son. They’ll be part of a future EP featuring his son’s beats. He’s also in the process of making another music video, and plans to start doing more on his YouTube channel about music and life in Bangkok.

“Having money in the bank and not worrying about paying the bills, man that eases anxiety and bad thoughts a whole lot,” he says. “Not having to see the same people, the same things that I associate with the past trauma definitely helps. It’s a fresh start, a rebirth. I’m 39, almost 40, and it’s like I’m starting over.”

Make sure to stay connected to Duvee Davis on all platforms for new music, videos and social posts.

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