The viewers are displeased. Over the past week, streamer-turned-rapper DDG has been on Twitch 24 hours a day putting the finishing touches on his upcoming album Blame The Chat, which seems poised to take the Michigan artist over the edge from “popular content creator who makes music” to “decent rapper with talented friends.” Today is Day 7, and Ty Dolla $ign has already laid down a catchy chorus, but the chat is buzzing, unhappy. Edits and critiques scroll by apace as DDG punches in bars: you should say this, it would sound better phrased like that, this ain’t it, etcetera.
DDG doesn’t have to read the comment section to know what they’re saying: four years into being a public figure, DDG is more than inured to the love and hate cycles of the internet. So despite the album’s tongue-in-cheek title, he’s savvy enough to ignore the unhelpful chatter. When I catch up with the rapper born Darryl Dwayne Granberry Jr. on the phone a week later, he’s unphased by the incessant feedback, he tells me, “ If I'm getting criticized, I at minimum, finish my idea and follow through with my creativity before I allow any opinions... Sometimes you gotta just take what they say with a grain of salt.”
Lately, it’s been feeling like DDG doesn’t need anyone else’s input to make a good song anyway. Before this year, you might have called his rap songs “decent for a YouTuber,” but since the January release of “Pink Dreads,” a collaboration with fellow streamer-cum-hip-hop-artist Plaqueboymax, the Pontiac, MI, rapper has leveled up to pretty good, full stop.
That song found the duo trading flexes over a particularly bouncy jerk beat, DDG’s slinkily slurred melodies a perfectly legato counterpoint to the track’s typically staccato snare patterns. Naturally, DDG’s verse became one of the year’s first viral TikTok audios. I won’t hold my breath for a legion of DDG clones to spring up in his wake, but his approach to the sonic palette of mainstream hip-hop feels fresher than many of the past year’s major label releases. In 2025, I’d rather listen to DDG over a Drake-type beat than an actual Drake song.
His upcoming album Blame The Chat ranges across a cross-section of radio-friendly sounds, from Afrobeats-lite jams to rage-adjacent knockers. There are a couple of jerk songs, both uptempo and more subdued, and a collaboration with Skilla Baby titled “In GTA” where the Detroit rapper hilariously threatens, “play with DDG and we gon take the stream on a hit.”
While some of the songs on the record are years old, others are brand new, recorded on-stream as the fans watch. DDG is still finetuning the album’s tracklist and mixing (he’s holding out hopes of securing a guest verse from a rapper with millions of monthly listeners that I can’t name), but the songs and demos I’ve heard from the album are a marked step up from his previous output, his flows more assured and adroit even if his subject matter remains studiously shallow.
“I never been a lyrical artist,” DDG explains. “I throw metaphors here and there to make it more fun, but I like to vibe to the music I listen to. I don't really want to hear about politics and saving the world.” He says the album, which will be “around 15 plus songs” is longer than his typical full-lengths, with a “wide range” because he wants to, “feed any listener.”
Part of that approach includes listening to the chat’s input on the album. The weeklong Hit-A-Thon stream sits squarely between Plaqueboymax’s In The Booth series and Kai Cenat’s month-long Mafiathon streams, mixing the low-budget, live recording aspect of the former with the high-wattage antics and Billboard-charting artists of the latter. Guests ranged from Shaboozey and Kevin Gates to Rob49 and 310babii, interrupted by challenges like “hot chip in ice bath” and “Fear Factor” as rewards for every additional 5,000 viewers.
Consider it a logical endpoint of the IG Live and SoundCloud snippet economy, where fragments of songs by A-listers (Playboi Carti, Lil Uzi Vert) and beyond (Pi’erre Bourne, OsamaSon) form their own sort of currency. Fans’ obsession with the details and detritus of the creative process, multiplied by instant, unceasing media cycles, means watching their favs make a song in real time isn’t enough – they want to weigh in on every part of the product, from the music to the marketing.
“During that week, I just let all the supporters get into my creativity and kind of collabed with them on what they want,” DDG says. “Because at the end of the day, they the consumers, it's not me. I'm creating the product for them to enjoy, so I'd rather just give them exactly what they like.”
This album-by-committee approach would be off-putting from almost any artist, liable to yield insipid music. Blame The Chat avoids focus group fatigue because its title is a bit of a misnomer -- talking to DDG, I get the sense that the most important part of soliciting feedback from viewers is knowing how much of it to ignore. Accordingly, the title reads more grateful for their support than accusatory -- “It’s just basically blaming [my viewers] for this great album that I’m finna put out.”
I’ve always thought of clipfarming and auramaxxing as two sides of the same coin, split only by a performer’s commitment to the bit. DDG strikes me as indicative of our current era of imagemaking, where the gap between being corny and being cool isn’t just razor-thin, but nonexistent; the same footage will be gassed by fans and lampooned by haters. In the face of polarizing reception, some artists appear scared to be earnest, deathly afraid of being labeled cringe by onlookers.
The wisdom of the crowd can be a double-edged sword, but DDG knows how to wield it better than most major label rappers. So what could be a self-conscious exercise in pleasing people instead feels like a Platonic ideal of what a low-stakes, on-trend album might sound like, invigorating if not inventive, with a little something for every mood. Imagine if RapCaviar wasn’t just listenable, but enjoyable.
The FADER caught up with DDG ahead of the release of Blame the Chat to chat about his favorite Michigan rappers, working with NLE Choppa and Kyle Richh of 41, and his best advice for dirty macking.
The FADER: You're from Pontiac, Michigan. I wanted to hear about some of your favorite Michigan rappers.
My favorite Michigan rappers? All time, I say… Doughboyz Cashout. Tee Grizzley, gotta put Eminem in there, shit… Blade Icewood, what else can I say? I’m more of a current type of dude, I like artists like Babyface Ray, I like a lot of the Flint artists.
It's cool to hear you mention Doughboyz Cashout and Blade Icewood and even Ray [who’ve been around for a second], just because I don’t know that the sound of Detroit and Flint is always in your music.
I don't really try to sound like where I'm from, but I enjoy Michigan music. But I also always feel like Michigan music, as well as L.A. music, they have they own cult listeners. As an artist, I don't want to have a cult sound. I want to have a cult fanbase, but not a cult sound.
Thinking specifically about the new album you're about to put out, I'm curious when you first started recording the material, and whether you knew initially, “Oh, I'm in album mode now.”
Man, just doing the Hit-A-Thon for the week, and being live for 24 hours and just making music. And you know, when you get the whiteboard out, you get to writing the songs down, it just feel like album mode. So during that week, I just let all the supporters get into my creativity and kind of [collaborated] with them on what they want. Because at the end of the day, they the consumers, it's not me. I'm creating the product for them to enjoy, so I'd rather just give them exactly what they like.
Even when I write something for The FADER and I see people talking about it, it can be a lot to digest. So I'm curious what that's like for you as a creative person, when you're very much in real time, on livestream, getting feedback.
I developed a very thick skin and [tolerance] for it. I know it's just the internet. I know it's not going to translate into real life. I know if someone is hating on me or whatever, it comes from a place of obsession in a way. It's like, I like this person so much I want to talk about them, you know what I'm saying? [And] I don't even know them.
So I don't really let it get to me at all, especially in the sense of making music. If I'm getting criticized, I at minimum, finish my idea and follow through with my creativity before I allow any opinions. So during the week, a lot of the times, the fans’ll hear a beat and they be like, “NO!” I got a song with Ty Dolla $ign and Rich the Kid called “Speed.” And when Ty Dolla $ign played it everyone said “No, No, this ain’t it, this ain’t the one, do this.”
They wanted me to do this super singy record. And I was like, “Nah, summer time. Why would I do that?” So then I hopped on the “Speed” song, and now it's everyone's favorite. Sometimes you gotta just take what they say with a grain of salt, at least finish your idea, and then keep going and see how they feel afterwards.
I know when you did the project with OG Parker, [at the time] it was like, “I found this producer that I really want to work with.” This one you've got a bunch of different people working on it. How are you connecting and forming relationships with producers in your current era?
I don't like to use too many different producers, but I tried to keep it really close to home in terms of, my label people know them, or their manager know my manager, or something like that, just to alleviate any problems and make it an easier process. Because I dealt with using random producers. I like to use beats off of YouTube a lot, and in doing so, you might run into these kids that, they really want to take advantage of a moment, and they might want to charge you an arm and a leg for a beat that's not even worth that much.
So dealing with that in the past, the people that I work with are people that, we have mutual business relationships outside of just us. You might know my manager, you might know people at my label, you might be signed to the same publishing, whatever, just to make everything easy so we can get the project out quicker.
I just let all the supporters get into my creativity and kind of [collaborated] with them on what they want. Because at the end of the day, they the consumers, it’s not me
One of the collabs on here I really fucked with was “Fine Shyt” with BIA, which I saw on stream your ex didn't want you to put out?
Nah, that’s an old song, like five years ago, four years ago. We just never put it out. “Fine Shyt” is definitely coming out though.
At the time, I feel like people were under the assumption the reason you didn't put the song out was because of the pride line [“That boy feminine, he pussy, he be celebrating pride”].
Yeah, that's what they was saying [coughs]. But at the end of the day, music is art, you know? I don't have anything against no one that is gay or lesbian or bi or transgender, whatever -- that has nothing to do with me. I have friends that's a part of that community, I don't discriminate whatsoever. So that's why, when I said the line, especially saying it on live, I didn't feel no type of way, you know what I mean? I didn't feel like I messed up, or I'm gonna get canceled because of this, or whatever, you know. It made sense, the bar made sense. I feel like it was a bar.
The other collab that I really wanted to ask about was working with NLE Choppa and Kyle Richh – I think “Ouch” might be the best song on there. And I just wanted to hear–
Really?
It’s between that and “Phone Off” for me. I also really like “Pump 4,” I can’t lie, you were kind of on some Drake outro type shit with “Pump 4.” You’re not going all the way confessional with it, but I see the vision for sure. But something about “Ouch” – it’s a cool song, and I didn’t feel like [you] got totally cooked on [your] own beat.
The fans been telling me they didn't like that song, that's why I'm like -- I don’t know, they just… it's not mixed at all, so it sounds very dry, but aside from that, yeah, I just, I didn't know that people actually liked it. So that's honestly good to hear, because every time I play it for them, they be like, “Nah, this ain't it.” And I'm like, “Man, it's Kyle Richh and NLE Choppa,” like, that's kind of an easy layup, right? [But] I'm gonna revisit that song since you said that.
And the last question that I wanted to ask you, because you're very famous for this. If I have a homeboy who I'm trying to anti-wingman and curve out of bagging somebody, do you have any advice for me?
Well, you got to start off by letting them know that he has a girlfriend. And then, if that doesn't work, you can say you know, maybe he got an STD or something. We can take it as far as you want to take it in terms of dirty macking.
