Sometimes Dominic Fike sounds like Sublime and Weezer, or even John Mayer and Jack Johnson. Other times, he raps.
Over the last eight years, this formlessness has been both an asset and liability. It has also helped define Fike, 30, as a thoroughly modern rock star. Following a major label bidding war that began while he was in jail for his role in a skirmish with a police officer (and, later, a failed drug test), he has alternately run toward and away from the limelight. He’s released a handful of albums and mixtapes, and even landed a role as Elliot in “Euphoria,” alongside his eventual on-and-off girlfriend Hunter Schafer. But he’s also battled addiction, and has often seemed to be a reluctant star.
This year, though, something unusual happened: “Babydoll,” a casual and sweet song from Fike’s 2018 debut EP of demos, somehow ballooned into a TikTok hit, and then a radio smash. In October it reached No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 — his biggest song to date.
Fike had been working at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La Studios on his third proper studio album when he reversed course and decided he needed to take a different path. What followed is his new release, “How to Quit Smoking,” which he made in a feverish stretch on the road, in hotels and tour buses, documenting the whole thing as a digital scrapbook across Instagram, YouTube and an elaborate livestreaming website. It features guests including Kevin Abstract, Jorjiana, the incarcerated rapper Tay-K and Danny Brown.
In conversation with Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli on Popcast, The New York Times culture chat show, Fike spoke about (sometimes happily) wrestling with fame’s temptations, letting go of some of his youthful impulses and his urge to return to a form of music-making that reminded him of how he started out.
JOE COSCARELLI You were in the studio working on a proper new album, you have this tour planned and along the way, you have a surprise smash hit with “Babydoll.” Why then make an album live on the road?
DOMINIC FIKE I was staying at Shangri-La, getting ready to go on tour. Me and [the producer] Jim-E Stack had made an album. I was drying out, coming off of a lot of anxieties and maybe some habits and just some issues. I just kind of decided that I wanted to be a different human. I wanted my life to be cooler than what it was. I was getting tired of this monotonous, celebrity-ish life in Los Angeles. I live in Topanga, and I was driving 45 minutes to West Hollywood to go to some bar and hang out at the Chateau. All the stuff you’re supposed to do.
I also had a kid, and that is a wake-up call as far as that lifestyle goes. It just doesn’t feel right living the way I was living with my child. And I was falling out of love with making music.
CARAMANICA You mentioned you were drying out. Do you connect that to the clarity that you wanted to bring to the music, but couldn’t?
FIKE Once I was on the tour, we were making music every day. And there was really no time to sulk or do anything. Once I was so immersed in purpose, it became clear that my body wasn’t longing for substances or quick sex or, you know, validation.
I was like, when I was 19, how was I able to put the demos together if I was so [expletive] up all the time?
COSCARELLI Well, you were on house arrest.
FIKE Still, the walls were moving in house arrest. How the hell did I put a project together? And then I was like, well, because I really wanted to. I was drinking all the time. That stuff, it didn’t affect what I needed to do or the product I had to make. I had clarity and purpose. And then, you know, I lost it for a while.
COSCARELLI When did you feel the new openness and purpose start to click into place?
FIKE During rehearsals for this tour. I went and stayed at a Courtyard Marriott in Sherman Oaks, because that’s where all the crew was staying. And I was like, man, I’m really not trying to do this pampered, eye mask, jade face roller, tiny dog version of this touring [expletive], acting like we had just did a good job when really there’s more we could be doing. When you’re 19, you’re like, man, we’re moving ferociously. I’m shooting music videos everywhere, I make a song wherever. Have you heard the story about NBA YoungBoy, and he makes people face the wall when he goes into a show? I was moving like that.
COSCARELLI Like a diva.
FIKE Like a diva! And this [expletive] was not cute.
CARAMANICA What did you get out of that?
FIKE Well, time — you save time.
CARAMANICA But did it actually make you feel more important?
FIKE It kind of does the opposite, especially for someone that’s self-aware. You know what you’re doing. You’re playacting the guy. Sometimes you’ll be in the green room after a show, and your shirt’s open, you’re like, hell yeah! But the next morning you wake up like, what a [expletive] dork.
COSCARELLI That push and pull, that’s your whole relationship with success, right? As much as you’ve found pop stardom, you’ve pushed it away. Were you self-sabotaging along the way when things would get a little too big?
FIKE Absolutely. Being diva-like accelerates your crashes and your need to self-sabotage. It comes from being scared and needing to be isolated, because you’re exhausted. And so you protect yourself in a way that may seem brutish or rude. But, you know, sometimes it is warranted.
COSCARELLI Like, how could you not have to put yourself in this bubble?
FIKE I decided to cast all that away and just give myself fully to this idea. It was like a now-or-never type thing. I was like, man, I don’t like this cycle that we’re in — make an album, maybe we do a little bit of press, we go on tour, disappear. It just became predictable. And so we’re like, man, what do we miss? We miss the messiness. I miss [expletive] being ugly. Everything’s really cute now, everybody’s real manicured. Which becomes annoying.
CARAMANICA Working on a capital-A album, but then saying, I actually reject that notion and want to put out this much looser thing — are you running from expectations?
FIKE A little bit, which I think is OK. I don’t hate that process of making an album — I’ll go back to that. I think that with what music is becoming now, too, and with how technology is and how everything is digested so quickly, I think we should just be making it quickly, too. I don’t know if I’m speeding it up or I’m slowing it down. Maybe both at the same time.
COSCARELLI Where are you at in your sobriety journey?
FIKE I’m pretty good in it. Yeah. I’ve been trying to stop smoking weed. Purpose is the throughline for me for staying sober.
COSCARELLI You’ve said it got bad at one point while you were filming the second season of “Euphoria.” Sam Levinson got you a sober coach and you said that wasn’t quite working for you. When you look back on those choices to play an addict on television — you also play one in this new movie, “Junk” — what do you think about how that fictional version of yourself dovetails with your real life? How does it affect the ways you may or may not pursue acting in the future?
FIKE I mean, it affects the roles I want to take. I don’t always want to be a junkie onscreen. But I’m good at playing it, because I’ve been there.
COSCARELLI In 2018, you emerged from jail to a whole new life. You’re thrown in the deep end, and expected to become a pop star in the face of all of this trauma and drama. When you look back at that period — people are throwing millions of dollars at you, telling you you’re going to be the next big thing — are you proud of how you handled that pressure? Because I know it’s been rocky, but you got through it.
FIKE Yeah, sort of. I wasn’t using all the different parts of me correctly back then.
COSCARELLI Say more about that.
FIKE Like I’ll really be code-switching, you know? And I can really move in a lot of different rooms. And it sort of felt like I wasn’t even trying to appeal to people’s better natures or sort of make it easier for myself in the future.
COSCARELLI Where does that code-switching come from in your life? Because it’s also present in your music. You can sound like a SoundCloud rapper and you can sound like the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
FIKE It’s because I am both, you know what I mean? I’m just very multidimensional. It comes from my mom having to move through spaces similarly and being met with resistance at every turn. My mom — God bless my mother — was a tough cookie back in the day, bro. I would get in trouble in school and I felt so bad for my teachers. I’m like, she’s gonna be on my side.
She was always in different relationships, sometimes, I would suspect, to support us. My mom is a boss, but when we would be around dudes that were also bosses, she would have to mold into a girl again. I saw how necessary that was to do, and how to get what you want, get what you need.
COSCARELLI You’re mixed race [Fike is the son of a Filipina mother and a Black father], struggling financially in an affluent part of South Florida. When you started taking to music, how quickly did you relate those things?
FIKE I didn’t really notice that I was doing stuff like that until it was written about me. I hung out with kids that were skaters, and we would listen to Pepper and Sublime or surf rock, and then they would show me country, which I liked. And then I’d go back and my home life was different. My mom was always playing R&B, Usher. Different stepdads that would be there would introduce me to different kinds of rap. And so I just really come from it. Those things came to me naturally.
COSCARELLI Has L.A. been bad for you?
FIKE You know, I’ve complained about it throughout the years, but it’s the best. As soon as I got music money, I was like, now I gotta do the Drake [expletive], where I’m emotional. I gotta do, like, oh it’s lonely at the top. I have that feeling about the scene in L.A. sometimes, but that’s also why I love it. I’m from Naples, Fla. it’s not [expletive] going on. I wish I had something to talk about like that in Naples. It’s fun to talk about when you’re in L.A.
COSCARELLI It’s a muse for you, even if it’s frustrating.
FIKE It’s my favorite muse. I grew up looking at that muse. Anthony Kiedis would talk about it. All the rap I love talks about it. That’s my [expletive].
COSCARELLI So you don’t see yourself separating from that lifestyle, even though it was dragging you down.
FIKE I’m gonna separate from it. I’m gonna keep my house there, but I’m going to start living differently, and that’ll just require me to be elsewhere.
CARAMANICA Being in L.A. as a young famous person — does it heal any of that “I feel less than” stuff? The fact that you can hang out at the Chateau —
COSCARELLI Zendaya knows who you are!
FIKE That kind of stuff moves you backward, actually. Because if, say, you mess up one of those relationships, say you date one of those people from your TV show —
COSCARELLI Hypothetically.
FIKE Say it crashes and burns. After you’re left with a way bigger hole than when you came to L.A. It moves you the opposite direction. I had to go to Utah, dry out. You don’t really do that a lot in L.A.
COSCARELLI What happened to your role on “Euphoria” Season 3?
FIKE I didn’t make it in there. I shot for it, but, you know, I guess it was a lot. I didn’t watch it, but I think it just had a lot going on. I think it’s for the best.
COSCARELLI This persona that you’re alluding to — people who know you primarily as Hunter’s ex-boyfriend, this idea that you’re a bad boy — do you lean into it, or do you run from it and correct people’s understanding of you?
FIKE It’s kind of nice to have, because at the end of the day, the [expletive] I go through, I’m just going through it normally. I mean, I would invite anyone else to sort of try to stand up in the circumstances and see if it shakes out any differently.
There’s moments where it’s like, I gotta always wear hoods and stuff like that. I find myself turning my face away from younger crowds of people. That part weirds me out, and I realize it’s affected me in weird ways, especially when I talk to my family. I just have to move a certain way and take account of certain people in the room and examine surroundings a little bit more.
COSCARELLI Is it a counteroffensive to say, “in my artistic life, I’m going to be more open, I’m going to be free with my process and do something like ‘How to Quit Smoking,’” to counteract the way you feel you need to be bent over and behind a hood?
FIKE Yeah, absolutely. I’m trying to move like LeBron, you know? He can go anywhere, and people recognize him, but he seems to be at ease about it, because he’s this superhero to the world.
COSCARELLI So you’re puffing your chest a little bit to say, if you’re going to look at me, I might as well be —
FIKE I might as well be me while I’m here.
Credits
Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli and produced by Kate LoPresti, Felice Leon and Sophie Erickson. This episode was filmed by Nikki Dodd, Dave Mayers and Pat Gunther. It was edited by Amy Marino with help from Rebecca Blandon. Our theme music is by Elisheba Ittoop. Nick Pitman is our audio engineer and Amanda Webster is our photo editor. Brooke Minters is our executive producer. Header video cinematography is by Gus Aronson.
Special thanks to Sarah Bonn, Dahlia Haddad, Mike Cordero, Nicole Huber, Aaron Byrd, Carl Mazurek, Zach Caldwell, Maddy Masiello, Brad Kimbrough, Andrew Wilcox, David Malitz, Elena Bergeron, Sia Michel, Nina Lassam and Sam Dolnick.
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