From Chicago to the world, femdot.
While touring the country, the rapper finds time to give back with his non-profit.
By SEBASTIAN DOMINGUEZ
Femi Adigun, more commonly known as femdot., is more than an artist.
With more than 30 singles, four studio albums and countless tours under his belt, it’s clear that femdot. is an ever-present figure in the rap genre. The Windy City rapper has found a way to stay true to his personal ambitions while maintaining mainstream relevance as a creative artist in an extremely demanding genre of music.
In September 2019 femdot. released “94 Camry Music,” a song with more than 20 million streams to date, which served as a tribute to his 1994 Toyota Camry. It was only a week later that the Chicago native dropped “94 Camry Music,” the album. This work of art disguised as an album featured seven tracks that describe the trials and tribulations of a teenager stuck between two lifestyles, with the only consistency being his feeling of freedom every time he got behind the steering wheel of his car.
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“You got to hold onto what freedom is and find it where you can, and for me a lot of that was in that car,” femdot. said in an interview with the Daily Trojan.
A humanistic approach to each and every project is what makes the rapper’s vulnerability so credible. With each album femdot. releases to the public, it’s guaranteed that the concept will be based on his experiences. Prioritizing vague vulnerability is how the underground rapper, soon to be mainstream, makes his music impactful, digestible and relatable to listeners.
This is especially true of his most recent album titled “Free Samples, Vol 1.,” which features a handful of tracks, including “NCAA Rules,” that touch on growing up around normalized violence in Chicago.
“NCAA Rules [track six] is pretty much a mixture of different things I’ve seen from people I know and things I’ve seen just in Chicago of pretty much how left a career can go,” femdot. said.
femdot., on this track, dives into the struggles of how the issues of his neighborhood have never left him, despite the distance and milestones he’s achieved. He raps from the perspective of a Division I athlete who plays basketball at the University of Houston, struggling with moving on from his past life plagued by gang violence.
“It’s very difficult to be a D1 athlete or any type of athlete, and I wanted to kind of document that and show how, sometimes, the system doesn’t set you up to win,” femdot. said.
The 20-minute project released in June was followed by a tour announcement only two months later. The rapper’s first-ever headlining tour, it was only right that femdot. would have a childhood friend, Charles Lauste, control the show’s ambience.
“We both met each other in highschool,” Lauste said in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “When I was doing our friends’ sweet 16 and basement parties, it was [femdot.] performing and I would be the one DJing.”
Lauste said that even at a young age, femdot.’s appreciation for rap helped him manifest and visualize his current lifestyle.
“My senior year [of highschool], we did a radio show together,” Lauste said. “We would talk about random culture topics and I would do a mix on the radio show and we would make Fem freestyle for 15 minutes.”
It’s safe to say that femdot. was introduced to the right people from a young age — a key aspect of any rapper’s toolkit. Now, more than ten years later, Lauste and femdot. maintain that brotherly relationship while living through what they once viewed as mere classroom daydreams.
“Being from highschool saying, ‘Okay this is possible,’ and putting in the early stages of groundwork to now, where we’re doing all the things that we said we wanted to do ten years ago,” Lauste said.
Aside from describing and commenting upon urban problems on each track, femdot. is using his platform to commend and push for student advocacy through his non-profit, Delacreme Scholars.
“It started off as a scholarship,” femdot. said. “We focus on civic engagement and keep trying to help people through education. It don’t really hurt to help nobody.”
Delacreme Scholars has branched out into food, clothing and toy donation initiatives. The organization is focused on repairing communities by making education obtainable and prioritizing community engagement.
Unlike typical scholarships that are awarded directly to a student’s school at the start of each semester, Delacreme Scholars grants its successful applicants a sum of money at the beginning of the second semester.
Bragard Kizenga, the associate director of Delacreme Scholars and longtime friend of femdot., not only executes the nonprofit organization’s mission statement but values it on a deeper level. As a former student himself, he realizes that times can get tough around the start of the second semester.
“It’s always nice to have some extra bread for the second semester, or if you need to pay off a bill to get to your next semester, having that bread to just do it rather than having to go through the predatory school loan system that is FAFSA,” Kizenga said.
femdot. has established himself as one of the most driven, consistent and genuine rappers in the genre.
From riding in a 1994 Toyota Camry to now being able to travel across the country spreading his message through each and every song performed on tour, femdot.’s story is inspiring. It proves that patience and hardwork overcome it all when combined with genuine selfless intention.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article failed to include an introduction for Bragard Kizenga, the associate director of Delacreme Scholars. An introduction is now included. The Daily Trojan regrets this error.
