ThiDaniel, or Daniel for short, was born on the 1st of September in a place he has little to no memory of. As with his birthplace, Maryland, Daniel briefly resided in many different locations during his early childhood due to his father’s military service. The longest stints of his life, 9 years each, being spent in New York and Boston. He credits the geographic activity in his life’s early years as the reason behind the way he views himself in the context of life and music.“I’ve lost a lot of friends [moving around], and I guess that translates to my records; how I can move through songs. I can recognize them as moving spirits that I’m just passing through.”All through his childhood, Daniel patterned himself after his brother, 9 years his senior and a musician, as many little siblings do. His admiration would prove responsible for his foray into music at only 3-years old, when, after sitting through his older brother’s piano recital, a good-hearted young Daniel ran up to the stage his brother was still receiving applause from, sat himself on the piano bench, and proceeded to hit upon the keys in an attempt to replicate the performance he had just witnessed, earning the interest of his soon-to-be piano instructor who sat in the crowd. Daniel employed a fusion of his lessons in piano, as well as guitar, with a play-it-by-ear technique through the years, and earned himself a place at the Berklee College of Music. He attended Berklee despite his feelings that the technical study of music was conflicting with his inclination toward free-flowing expression, until one day during Finals week when his computer, full of his Finals assignments, was stolen. He never returned to Berklee.

ThiDaniel

Beginning the next chapter of his life in Los Angeles, Daniel took steps outside of his comfort zone of ‘Consume, Create, Repeat’ and started going out to build relationships with people. One of those relationships resulted in the connection of him to his now manager, Malik Rasheed, who in turn introduced him to super-producer Tricky Stewart. Stewart was immediately struck by the way Daniel could command a room, appearing to already be a superstar whose rise to stardom you had somehow just managed to miss. In addition to Daniel’s social allure, Stewart was taken by Daniel’s talent. “He without question was put on earth to make music, and I believe I was chosen to help him deliver it,” Stewart informs. Soon thereafter, Stewart and Daniel entered into a strategic creative partnership with the singular objective of presenting the highest quality music to the world as possible.

ThiDaniel is a student of funk and feeling. A deeply spiritual young man keen on meditation, Daniel’s musical influences fall to those capable of conveying their message through a single tweak of a guitar string or a gyration of the hips. Whether Jeff Beck or James Brown, B.B. King or Michael Jackson, Daniel intently studies that common thread that runs throughout the master class: devotion not to the self but to the art. Each day he sets off on his journey of self-discovery, because only when you know yourself can you give yourself. Daniel’s focus lies on the bigger picture, and he believes his voice is his path to a place in that picture.“I gotta fight for something that’s bigger than myself, with music being the weapon. Songs are a weapon; they fight a purpose.”


— Maya Alexandria Stewart (October 2016)