Former college student strives to “Stay True, Stay Fly” to himself with music career

By Michael Tuzzolo | Assistant Editor

Since he was in third grade, DustyStayTrue has been writing raps in class and freestyling at the lunch table while his friend “Nugget” provided the beat.

“I always knew I wanted to be a rapper, I just didn’t know when it was going to happen,” DustyStayTrue said.

Two summers ago, he was a second-year business administration major preparing to transfer to Southern Connecticut State University. Now, he is the most recent signee to hip-hop powerhouse label South Coast Music Group and has released his first-ever project on Oct. 8 titled “True To Me” (a 12-song mixtape). He is also gearing up for a six-week long tour with rap artist “Toosii” that stops in Tallahassee on Oct. 23.

The name DustyStayTrue is both unique and symbolic. “Dusty” was a nickname he adopted when he was one of the only skateboarders from his neighborhood growing up. The “Stay True” portion of his name comes directly from a book he read in his school library.

“One of the quotes in the book said ‘stay true stay fly’, so then I instantly put together ‘DustyStayTrue,’ ” he said.

After attending community college for two years, it took a bit of soul-searching for DustyStayTrue to decide whether or not he would enroll at SCSU, or focus solely on becoming a rap artist.

The summer before he was supposed to attend SCSU, he worked as a counselor with some of his closest friends at a camp in the mountains of New Hampshire.

“After the summer with those people and just really catching the vibe, everybody there has this real ‘you only live once’ type of mindset,” said DustyStayTrue. “So, I really took that home with me and was like ‘I’ve got to make this happen by any means necessary.’ ” 

Once returning home from camp in the fall and ultimately deciding not to attend SCSU, DustyStayTrue immediately started working part-time jobs to save up money for studio time. A few months later, while bored at work one day, the tune and chorus for his first song “Never Change” popped into his head, repeating over and over again. Once he left work that day, he knew he had to act quickly and went to the studio to record the song. 

Following the release of “Never Change” during May of last year, Dustystaytrue has been able to naturally grow and evolve his popularity with the help of various social media sites such as Instagram and TikTok.

“Never Change” experienced mild success at first, accumulating a few thousand views within the first two weeks of being released. Then, an Instagram account dedicated to promoting new rap artists posted the song and it started gaining popularity. After that Instagram post, numerous popular TikTok accounts and stars began using “Never Change” in their videos. This provided a new and innovative avenue for promoting his song to millions of ears without any major label support at the time.

“That’s when people really took notice of it. Before I knew it, it just started moving,” said Dustystaytrue. “10 thousand [YouTube views], 100 thousand… now all the way up to almost 10 million.”

In the 16 months that Dustystaytrue has been producing music before the release “True To Me”, he has released a total of seven songs (six solo), garnered over 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, and over 16.5 million views on YouTube .

Even before the release of his first project, he was asked to go on tour with popular rappers Toosii and Lakeyah. With only a few live performances under his belt so far, he’s been working tirelessly at rehearsals to perfect his on-stage presence.

“Personally for me, I want people to see when I’m coming up that I actually care,” said DustyStayTrue. “Most of my favorite performers in the world are rappers, but I know that there’s this stigma that rappers can’t perform… just to make sure I don’t fall in line with that, I work hard at these rehearsals and make sure everything is the way it needs to be.”

With the new release of his 12-track project “True To Me,” DustyStayTrue took a different approach by not recruiting any featured artists for the project. 

“This one is just me; I want my fanbase to fall in love with me first,” said DustyStayTrue. “I don’t want features until I’ve already put myself on first. I want people to be like, ‘Yo, I listen to DustyStayTrue because I love him.’ ”

His performance with Toosii in Tallahassee on Oct. 23 has already sold out of the first round of general admission tickets. Click here for tickets.  Download his project “True To Me“