DNT, the 19-year-old Italian artist, wants people to know what he can do, in English, in a variety of genres.
“Girl?,” the showcase track from his debut EP My Five Faces, sports a fun, fast, poppy R&B track that has some funk in it, too.
Electronic funk.
“It sounds silly, but, if you listen to the whole EP, it’s mainly R&B,” he said. R&B is his primary genre, but he brings a lot of other genres and influences to his art.
He continues, “And then there’s some mix between other things, like in this one is electronic funk, kind of little bit like Daft Punk. That’s the vibe. But it’s also a bit ’80s.”
It’s also, he said, the “most poppy” of the songs he has made.
Twice. He had it made, but then found out the girl who is the subject had been “with another man.”
“So, we scrapped it.” He started over, with nothing but a beat, and he re-made it.
“It is 100-percent made by me. I totally wrote and composed it.”
The song is built around DNT talking to her, “asking her what she’s really feeling.”
Girl
He’s not into you
He’s not all for you
Is that sex so good?
Like, girl
What you thinkin’ of?
A heavy influence for him, for “Girl?” and the other four tracks is The Weeknd. Besides “Girl?,” there is “On Top — Takeover”; “Mirage of Us”; “Parties I Eye-Rolled Rolling Ecstasy”; and “Beatrice & The Devil.”
“The biggest influence of this is obviously The Weeknd, but I tried to go in every era of The Weeknd, so, like ‘Beatrice & The Devil’ is kind of early The Weeknd. ‘On Top’ is middle. ‘Parties I Eye-Rolled’ is his starting era.”
“Girl?’ and “Mirage of Us” are also from The Weeknd middle era, but with a twist. In addition to R&B and The Weeknd, these two songs have elements based on “how I imagined The Weeknd or Frank Ocean would make a jazz song.”
“Every song that I put into it is a different emotion, so every face is an emotion,” he said.
And with each song, “I tried to reinvent myself and make everything different. So, maybe it won’t be my strongest record, but I think it will be the one that shows people I can do, actually, anything.”
For instance, “On Top,” “Parties I Eye-Rolled” and “Girl” are all R&B at heart, and so is “Mirage of Us,” but with poppy drums.
“Beatrice” adds to the R&B some heavy rock guitar and a rap section.
He plans albums based on others of his musical influences, Troy Scott especially, but also Tame Impala and XXXTentacion.
“A few years ago, I was listening to those guys, and they actually saved my life when I was in a really dark place,” he said, “and so, I have tattoos for them, just to remind me of what I’ve been through and what helped me get through it.”
His career goal, of course, is to grow his music into his living because, “obviously, if you can do something that you love doing, you won’t work a day in your life, as a lot of people say.”
“I’m just doing what I like doing, what I enjoy doing, and I’m hoping to make it a living. That’s sure the target goal, but mostly what I want to do now is, first of all, helping myself through making music and maybe helping someone else like the artists that I look up to did with me.”
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