He hasn’t even touched a cigarette lately. Between drinking his “fucking like 19 bottles of water a day,” he’s indulged in “one Coca-Cola.”
Even his private parts are on sabbatical. He recently declared himself abstinent.
Naturally, the question comes up about whether fans should even bother trying.
“Well, fans don’t bother me,” he says. “We're homies. But, yeah, I'm abstinent right now. I don't know how long it's been, but I'm sexless. There’s no use for my sexual organs other than urination, other than defecation in your nation. I am abstinent as it gets.”
He pauses for a second before adding, “All right, I’m sorry, this is too much.”
But it’s not. We needed to know, on behalf of everyone.
Fike first came into our lives via the uber-popular song “3 Nights,” and that’s practically how long it took for him to land an acting role as the druggie-next-door in the Sam Levinson-produced teenage wasteland in the HBO hit Euphoria. He’s since become an idol of the new millennial, a fresh face with fresher face tattoos, whose honesty is yet unspoiled and whose deeply dysfunctional childhood is somehow relatable.
As former Observer music editor Caroline Pritchard calls it, he's got the “sweet scumbag” appeal, following the tradition of pioneers like Pete Davidson.
The idea of breaking Fike’s abstinence could easily be a long-game play to get fans to vie for the golden ticket in his pants, but something about Fike seems horrifyingly sincere; it’s just another chunk of info hurled from his “word-vomiting.”
The artist’s current tour, supporting his recently released album Sunburn, brings him to Irving’s Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory on Aug. 3.
The album is an upbeat trip through Fike’s unfiltered memoirs that includes a reimagining of Weezer’s “The Sweater Song” in “Think Fast.” His songs are surprisingly peppy for a rapper who’s struggled with the law and drugs. You may expect a forlorn Elliott Smith-ness or jailbird bluesiness to underscore his art, but Fike’s music is in line with his humor and intense humanity. It keeps the ear guessing, has a strong lyrical viewpoint, and Fike’s rapping could outpace a bullet train.
When it comes to finishing songs, Fike has a hard time saying “when.” The album’s first song, “How Much Is Weed?” took over 3.5 years to produce, Fike says, and he’ll continue to work on songs after they’re out.
“Maybe that makes it overproduced sometimes,” he says. “Except for when I have my demos. It's either I release a completely under-produced demo which I love, or I just go to town. I'm still experimenting, you know, it's my second album. I'm 27, and it's not like I got it figured out.”
Even Taylor Swift has been candid about the overwhelming anxiety that comes from dropping an album and the idea that, this time, perhaps no one will care. Fike was particularly anxious with the release of Sunburn.
“I was arguing with my whole team, like, ‘You guys are really gonna let me drop this album? I’m about to ruin my whole career, dude.’” he says. “I swear to God, I was so worried I actually didn't go out or do anything the night it was released, I went to bed before it was out. Because I was like, I don't wanna see my fucking career crumble in front of me on Twitter or whatever.”
Of course, Fike woke up to a feast of positive responses. But his worries are not about whether fans will be indifferent.
“It's not even this album — it's this time in music and the access that people have and the way that they're using their opinions,” he says. “It's always like, what's the most negative, shocking thing someone has said? And let's bring it to the very front and have everyone debate and discuss this. And so I was just worried about that because I've been a very polarizing figure the past couple of years — which is fine with me, you know, I think a lot of the greats are polarizing and a lot of my favorite artists are that way. It's like it's love and hate on both sides, and no matter what, you bring people together somewhere or another.”
Dominic Fike may be great, but the reasons he’s polarizing have more to do with the internet’s general virtue-policing. He's been “canceled” about once per year since he’s been famous, often for reasons that are outright idiotic.
First, there was “controversy” for his reported $4 million signing with Columbia Records, with detractors calling him a manufactured flash-in-the-pan — though he's still sizzling years later.
Then, he was deemed “racist” for making some presumably tongue-in-cheek at best, uninformed at worst, comments about Morocco. Lastly, there was his onstage banter about wanting to be beaten up by Amber Heard.
“I think it's all upside down right now,” he continues. “You know, it's almost like we've become the listeners as artists; we are listening to the fans’ opinions before we're listening to ourselves. The roles are reversed right now. So that just kind of makes me nervous.”
He wrote the song “Mama's Boy” for his recent ex Hunter Schafer, his costar and love interest on Euphoria and trans fashion icon.
“I wrote that about Hunter 'cause [in] the trans community, they call each other dolls,” he says. “I just love hanging out with them and I thought it was like the funniest thing. I made that song for her and it was just, like, how we come from completely different worlds. I mean, the first line is, ‘How did my plans fit in with yours?’ And it's just that song was like, my admiration for this beautiful alien human being that I thought she was and still think she is.”
For Fike, the song’s message is much like a child in a sci-fi film trying to persuade an alien he could leave this planet and join his world.
“I was sprinkling sort of that theme in there about like how I could … eventually go and detach from my lifestyle and live permanently with this person, and it was like, I'm not like this sheltered kid, I understand you, ‘I could come with you’ type of deal,” he says.
On this bizarre plane, however, there’s a trend of crowd members throwing things onto the stage. There's a viral video of Fike getting hit by someone's boxer shorts onstage a few years ago. He hasn’t gotten any other weird hits, however.
“I mean, fans have been pretty respectful about it — I think Steve Lacy kind of took the fucking hit when somebody threw like a phone at him or some shit,” he says of the singer, who smashed a fan’s camera after it was thrown onstage. “When he got pissed and walked off, I think it was like the final straw. Kids were like, ‘Oh maybe we shouldn't do this shit. It's fucking disrespectful, and it's rude as fuck. But thank you Steve Lacy for taking that phone to the body for all of us.”
Beyond throwing objects at performers, Fike doesn’t understand the appeal of live performance to begin with. He’s talked about being surprised any time fans come to see him perform.
“I just don't like going to live concerts,” he says. “It's hot. My knees hurt. I’m thin, I get pushed around. I'm bad at doing drugs in front of people. I'm bad at openly expressing love in the way that people do. Like I remember I would go to church as a kid and people would say ‘Praise Jesus’ and raise their hands above their head and some girls would cry and I'd look at these girls like, what the fuck is wrong with you? I just didn't understand it.”
One recent event gave Fike a sense of what it’s like to be on that other side: Frank Ocean’s polarizing performance at Coachella.
“That changed a little bit for me when I went to that Frank [Ocean] set at Coachella,” he says.”It was like someone that I would have paid just to see this person physically on the stage; he wouldn't even have to perform, you know. And so I understood a little bit.”
Fike grew up with parents who were in and out of jail. His biography is marked with extremes. While he was imprisoned after a battery charge for assaulting a police officer, labels started a bidding war to get him signed after his song “3 Nights” became a SoundCloud hit.
In a recent profile in the Los Angeles Times, Fike says he later lived in a mansion that he called the “porn house” in LA. He’d also learned to play guitar on YouTube, emulating his heroes like Red Hot Chilli Peppers guitarist John Frusciante. But Fike still doesn’t relate to fandoms.
“I didn't even have posters on my wall when I was a kid, blank canvas,” he says. “I just never idolized people and, and I understand that that's like a big part of humanity, you know, like people look up to others and they take after them and maybe I do subconsciously in some way. (...) But Frank was one person where I was like, I'm gonna go fucking stand in a field with a bunch of strangers and I'm gonna like, show love to this person who changed my life. And then I sort of understood why people would come and see it. And maybe I've touched people in the same way, you know?”
This raises the question of whether Fike could see why someone might get his face tattooed on their hand, as he did with Frusciante’s.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he says with a laugh. “Look at me saying I don't idolize people with the John tat — were you waiting for that? Were you waiting to give me shit with that?”
Fike hasn’t heard from his idol directly, but he did get his approval in a way that mattered most to him.
“No, I haven't heard from John Frusciante,” he says. “One thing that I admire about him is he likes to keep to himself, you know, and I don't wanna meet him because if I do have to shake his hand with his face on my hand, I just can't imagine how odd that would be.
“But I'm obviously a huge fan of him and the closest I ever got to John Frusciante was when I interpolated Anthony Kiedis’ and probably John's lyrics from [RHCP’s] ‘Scar Tissue’ on my most recent album. ... We actually had to reach out to Anthony to get permission to use this shit, and they granted me the permission, which was just like, that's all I really needed and that's … acknowledgement this kid exists. That's cool. 'Yeah, he can use the shit,' and just to know that they are like-minded with me.”
Generally, Fike is not in favor of artists safeguarding their music from other artists. He notes that he’s been borrowing works since he first started, and remembers using lyrics from a Strokes song for one of his raps.
“I think we should share lyrics,” he says. “I think we should share melodies and we should be able to interpolate, because if you truly are that precious about some shit and you're scared that this is all you got and you can't come up with some new shit, then get out of music. Like, we should be fucking sharing music because no one's made anything new since fucking like the 1400s, let's be real ... except for maybe like Justin Vernon.”
In Season 2 of Euphoria, there were many obvious parallels between Fike and his character Elliot. He may be “exactly like" Elliott as he’s said, but Fike holds his own as an actor and is exquisitely natural even next to a heavyweight Emmy-winning performance by Zendaya.
But Fike is more interested in talking about Sam Levinson's other recent HBO show ("Let's talk about The Idol! he interjects) which has more controversies than viewers. Before it was even released, the show made headlines for its messy production and “torture porn.”
After its release, Abel "The Weekend" Tesfaye, who stars on the show, was criticized for his “cringe” sex scenes.
“That's all I hear from anybody, though, like, I didn't watch it. I just read that it was bad,” Fike says of The Idol. “But I watched it. It was kinda cool.”
Fike brings up his own recent quote about Levinson: “I remember I said in an interview — because I don't even remember half the shit I say, I’m just word-vomiting — but I was like, if it's from Sam Levinson, it's probably misunderstood. That's true. If you've ever met the guy … I just see all the shit people say about him on Twitter. Like, dude, he's the nicest fucking guy. He's the coolest guy.”
Although Levinson was born into Hollywood via his director father, Barry, Fike finds some common ground with Levinson, who gave him his first acting job.
Sam Levinson found an Idol in musician Dominic Fike, star of Euphoria and your daughter's constant TikToks.
Bethany Vargas
In true Fike fashion he adds as an aside: “Anyway, that's me sucking Sam Levinson’s dick for two minutes. You can put that up there in that article right there.”
There are many other types of expression we've yet to see from Fike as an artist, he says.
“Oh, hell yeah, oh absolutely,” he says. “That was my second official album. And I will release many over the next couple of decades. I plan to have a prolific career, whether people are listening to it or not, whether people are engaged or not. I plan to keep evolving and experimenting and changing the scape of music and hopefully inspiring other people to do the same. So, yeah, there's a lot of shit. I wanna go make a folk album. I wanna go make a metal album. I wanna go make … not a bossa nova album because I'm not an idiot … but a lot of shit, I wanna go make a lot of shit.”
When time comes to break Fike’s abstinence, there is only one way to make it to his next tattoo.
“The reason I'm kind of abstinent right now is because casual sex sort of makes me feel empty and I'm constantly looking for connection,” he says. “When I share a physically intimate moment with someone I'll turn over and be like, ‘So what's your whole thing?’ And if it doesn't live up to the expectation, I get sort of sad and I get let down and I feel like kind of a piece of shit."
Shared experience is important to Fike, he says, which is why he normally dates people in his field of work.
“I think it just has to be like, written, it has to be, like, meant for me, you know? Otherwise there's no point in pursuing it,” he says. ”I like love. I'm like a real … I don't wanna say romantic, but I believe in … I like to be monogamous. I love relationships. I love sharing things with just one person. I like the idea of having one person that I can share everything with. I like having a secret language with someone. I miss it. I think my favorite thing about humanity is that we get that, that one person.”
He also loves the planet, which is why Fike does his share to keep landfills from piling on any more “mass-produced bullshit” by shopping at vintage shops in Middle America, which he finds “less curated” and “less corny” than those in LA.
The road to sobriety, he says, has been full of realizations.
“I was raised different,” he says. “... I just had an early introduction to drugs and drug abuse and it was very normal to me. So it took me a little bit longer. I had to hit many rock bottoms. It wasn't just one instance, and I haven't been to rehab just one time and I haven't had relationships fall apart just once. It took many times. I'm a slow learner, to be honest with you.”
One thought that stuck with him was a quote from Nietzsche from the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. His memory from the movie, however, is as fuzzy as Jim Carrey’s character’s. But he wants to get it right, and is intent on finding it.
“Kirsten Dunst says it and she says something about the forgetful," he says, while typing. “Let me look it up. ‘Eternal … Sunshine … of the Spotless Mind … quote.” Look at that. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, there it is. It's about forgetting: ‘How happy is the blameless vessel.’ What? No, that's not it ... 'Kirsten Dunst' ... I'm getting there. You know what? Oh, there it is: ‘Blessed are the forgetful for they get the better even of their blunders.’"
The irony of his forgetting the quote and then forgetting what he's looking for is lost on Fike’s uncynical mind.
“I thought that was so beautiful when she said that because it's like, I wish I was forgetful of all the shit that I fucking did,” he says. “I wish I could forget it but I can't. And therefore I remember the whole of my childhood, the entire addiction, not just the good parts of them, you know, I don't get the better even of my blunders."
