2020 was a dark year for Portuguese-born, Macunian artist IAMDDB. She was burnt out, grappling with “a shitty situation with her ex-management and label” and was looking at moving towards independence. Her music had been on hold and, much like the rest of us, was standing at a crossroads between conforming to a system and individual freedom.

“I was such a mess,” she says, her bright smile fading slightly on camera in retrospect, “I was going through it.”

In 2023, upon her return to the limelight, those feelings coalesced into a YouTube video titled “A Conversation with IAMDDB”. She’d navigated the obstacles of that year and was back: grateful, at peace and with new music. Though she wasn’t in business with those past collaborators anymore, she was “handling the situation with grace” and using the lessons she’d learned to make better business decisions even though they still received her royalties. She also wanted to warn her fans that she couldn’t “be bound by being stuck in one place or one sound” and to expect music from her that was new and experimental.

The music that now sits in her first independently released project LOVE is WAR, volume 6 is a diverse representation of that former chaos, with genres rarely heard from the innovator of “urban jazz”. The biggest change is tracks like ‘KOUNTiNG CHiCKENS’ that instigate hard-hitting trap, larger-than-life 808’s and a voice screaming to a crescendo with lyrics like “Sick and tired of these hoes”.

It’s a far cry from the love and light-spreading IAMDDB that we came to know on global hits like ‘Shade’ and Volumes one through five of her episodic EP series, but a necessary chapter in her journey. It’s symbolic of the closing of one, too.

“One thing that I appreciate about myself,” she says, “is that I don’t give up. No matter the obstacles, where there’s a will, there’s a way. So I kept going, and here we are.”

In celebration, we sat down with IAMDDB to discuss going independent, her new project, and why this is a new era for the artist.

How have the first few months of 2024 been treating you?
Oh, girl, where do I start? They have been very intense. I’m not gonna lie. It started off with a lot of just self-reflection and a lot of redirection. That kind of felt a little bit disheartening. But now that we’re getting into the real beginning of the year, I’m seeing, ‘Okay, this is why this had to happen’. Like sometimes things have to fall apart before they fall together. So that’s the process I’m in: redirection and recentering and really redefining what I want to do, who I want to become.

Does it feel like it’s coming together now that you’ve dropped the full album on Spotify?
Yes, Oh my God, I feel like I can breathe a little bit. You know, dropping a project is always such an overwhelming, stressful time because there are so many things to organize, especially as an independent artist, but now that the people have the music, I feel like okay, they can stop coming for me.

I was actually going to ask why it had been five years [since you’d released] but I saw the video, “A conversation with IAMDDB” on YouTube, where you laid it all out. But I think one thing that really stuck out to me was that you said to fans, “Don’t expect this to be the same IAMDDB”. So I was wondering what your mindset behind putting that video out was?
I think for me personally, it was important to give my fans context, just because I have been gone for so long. So I really wanted them to understand like, ‘Okay, why has she been gone? Where has she been?’ And I thought, ‘Okay, what better way to explain that than having a vulnerable conversation, speaking my truth and I have been through a lot in 2020. And I thought, okay, at the time, I definitely didn’t feel ready to speak about what I was going through because it was happening in real-time. I thought, before I dropped, I owe it to myself to speak my truth, to finally close that chapter. So I can move into the next chapter, which is volume six. So I had to give myself that closure.

I always say, fans have this thing where they get stuck to a certain version or sound, because they have memories connected to it, because it helped them through a certain phase or relationship. But what they have to understand is that as artists we’re always evolving to we’re going through life with you.

How does it feel to be moving into being independent instead of doing things on a label?
I would say it’s a lot of hard work. I’m not gonna lie. It’s a lot of just getting up every day and doing it all by yourself. But I love it because it’s given me vision. I love to have transparency. I love to know what’s going on. After being in a space of not knowing for so long at the peak of what I was doing. I think now I’m able to move at a pace that feels comfortable to me as a woman, as a human. And as an artist. I think finding your balance and finding the silver lining in between being in the industry, being a friend, being a sister – there’s so many different elements to who I am as a person that I love it. I love being in control. It feels good to be able to say today I need to take care of myself. So I’m going to pull back and be a human being. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes without having discipline and discernment, you can kind of get lost in the work, and then your health deteriorates, and then your relationships fall apart. So I’m really having fun with just finding that balance.

I feel like there’s been a huge trend where people are kind of moving away from the more structured “9 to 5” lifestyle, but also labels when it comes to music.
100%. because it takes the fun out of it. I get it’s business, but at the same time, we need to have time to play, we need to have time to experiment. True artistry is free-flowing. If you try to cage somebody in and tell them, ‘Okay, you have to make this amount of music, ‘ it literally drains the fun out of the art. So yeah, man, it’s been intense, but it’s been fun.

I think after the fifth volume you said that the next volume [the sixth] would be an album. Are you still waiting for the right time to drop the album?
I feel like an album is such a serious term. And it’s such a defining moment in your journey. The reason why I chose to go with volumes to begin with is because I feel like my musical projects are always going to be a reflection of the journey I’m going through in life. So I prefer to go with volumes because it’s like phases. I don’t know whether I’ll actually ever officially say, ‘Okay, this is my album’; that feels so weird.

I also saw that you were originally going to call this volume “I Like To Make Boys Cry”. Why did you change the name?
[Laughs] Because I didn’t want the guys to get in their feelings. Because I do care. I just felt like it was a good title, but it didn’t truly define the feeling behind the project. In 2019, I got a tattoo that says Love Is War. And I had no intention of ever using that for a project. But the more time went by I was like, ‘damn, love is war’. It described the reality of this project. It’s really going to war for everything I love. It’s really destroying everything to rebuild from a place of love. It’s really going to war with myself, with my shadow, with my ego, and killing all the toxicity out of that and nourishing it with love. That’s why you have the calm jazz vibes. That’s why you had the rage, the trap, the heavy 808’s, it’s because it’s all a representation of the emotional transmutation I’ve had to go through in the last five years.

I noticed the structure starts soft, then you get those hard trap songs, and then it goes back. I was wondering why you structured it like that.
The last couple of years have been a roller coaster. And I thought, “Okay, how do I want the listener to feel?”. For me, a project is like a performance. I want to feel nostalgia, I want to feel the essence of who the artist is. But also show me your evolution. I want to feel surprise elements. I want to climax. So that’s really the experience I wanted to create sonically, but also finish it on a mellow vibe because I just feel like, after volume six, I am ready to just return to my jazz roots. It’s been great, raging. I made sure to provide high-energy tracks because I’m always thinking about live performances. But now, I think after number six, I think seven is just returning to the root which is always jazz.

What was the process of making the more trap songs? Were they just an explosion of emotion in the studio? The lyrics seem very to the point and very literal.
I think the energy in the studio sessions was really like—guys get to talk so much shit about women. They get to speak so low of us, and we just accept it. We even sing along. So how about we flip the script? How about you have a bad bitch, talking her shit about these guys? Let’s see how you guys feel when you see 100,000 women screaming this at the top of their lungs. So it’s really like a social experiment to see how male energy responds to alpha females giving them the same version of them. Sometimes you just need to let it all out but now reviewing, I’m like, “Okay, I’ve done it. I enjoyed it. It was fun”. But I just feel different moving forward. I’m ready to just be a flower and just be in that divine frequency of love.

Have you seen any men react to those songs yet?
I mean, some of them are offended, and that’s cool—that was the point. But some are eating it up. It’s really showing me the difference between secure men who understand, “Okay, this is just a woman talking as they do.” And then it exposes the ones who are slightly offended, but if it’s not the truth, why are you offended?

But the collaborations on this album are men.
Exactly.

What can you say about those kinds of collaborations? Did they just fit into a different kind of perspective?
So the whole point of me only having male features on the project was again to play with the concept of duality. I’m talking much about men and kind of sending them a little bit. But I also wanted to show that listen…we women are allowed to feel some type of way. But the essence of a woman is love, we are made out of love, we give love, we receive, we bring life with love. So I wanted to make sure that I also honored the divine masculine. And that’s why I only put males on it. These are two people that I’ve admired for a very long time. And we’ve got the same blend. And I felt like it was the right time. I don’t really do collaborations too much, just because I want to build myself to a certain level. So I can say, “Okay, I built my foundation”. So I think that they definitely added value to the project. And they also just added dimension. I think it’s always beautiful to hear a collaboration that I could always envision, but now it’s actually manifested. Like, I think that’s, that’s dope, right?

I feel like the collaboration with Masego is a dream collaboration. You definitely complemented each other nicely.
I tell this to everybody every time I listen to that song, “Wow, I literally pulled this into the physical world”. Ever since I found out about Masego, I was like, “damn, I feel like we are cut from the same musical cloth, wherever we came from”.

I noticed that a couple of the songs are a dedication to your faith and God, especially  ‘SAVED’ and ‘SiRENADE’. How important is it for you to put those kinds of messages in there?
I think it’s everything to be honest. Without God, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve anything I’ve achieved without God, I wouldn’t have been able to survive the trials and tribulations I’ve been through in life and in this industry. I’ve spoken from a place of vulnerability, ego, happiness and love. So how can I now just show my creator I’m singing for you? On ‘Saved’, there’s a sample of an Angolan pastor and he’s just speaking, just goodness over everybody’s life and I thought, ‘This is so beautiful’. And he’s from my country. I want to show him love and be able to give this vibration to other people because I want our people to receive that same healing.I think especially in such a dark, demonic industry, it’s important to make space for light. I think it’s important to not be afraid of speaking about your beliefs, not being afraid of saying what you believe in and really standing on that. And it’s been received well, I’m pretty sure that people appreciate it. And especially in the times that we’re in right now. I think faith is something that we all need more of. So that was really the intention behind it.

One thing I got from the video that I mentioned at the start, and also from this album, is that you really value authenticity. Would you say you’re better at figuring out who’s authentic in the music industry these days—more than you were at the start?
Honestly, I think I’m more aware now. But I’m still the same way I was at the beginning. I’m literally living in my own world. I don’t pay attention to anything. If I’m out and I hear something that resonates, then I’ll go and search for the artist. Other than that, I just be in my own element. I really just stay in my own way. And just find different ways of producing and creating and speaking from a place of relatability because if it’s not relatable, then what are we really doing?

I know that you just put out this last project. But are you looking forward to the future? Do you have any upcoming projects?
One thing about me is that I make so much music that I annoy myself. I’m currently in the process of making a deluxe version of volume six. Like there’s so much music, but I also have to just pace myself and just go release at a pace that feels good and also give people enough time to digest the music and get accustomed to the new vibes. The older I get, the more my vocals change. So I’m also relearning how to use my vocals and just enjoying the process, but definitely more music on the way always.

I listened back to my first project, and I was like, I don’t have a clue how to use my voice. The fact that it even connected with so many people, and I was just starting, is crazy. Only now do I feel like I understand the instrument I’m working with, and now I’m nurturing it. I understand that this is my comfort zone. And this is where I want to push. I hear the growth.

Follow IAMDDB here for more and stream the new project LOVE is WAR, volume 6 here.