Dilz breaks into mainstream
Horowhenua rapper Dilz says he is finally breaking into the mainstream after 10 years in the music industry.
Dillon Lamb, 25, performed his first festival, Sound Valley in Whanganui last month, and has booked his first international gig in Brisbane.
He grew up in Foxton and said it was hard to make a name for yourself when living in a small town.
‘‘There is an established scene in the big cities. But I amthe only one doing this in Foxton.
‘‘As an artist I am Dilz, and I get recognised. But in Foxton, I am dillon.
‘‘I grew up here, they know my family. It’s hard to get them to separate the two of us.’’
Foxton locals had watched him grow up, and saw him at the supermarket and at the petrol station.
He said it was hard to get them to spend the money coming to his shows, when they already knew him.
‘‘I’ve been doing this for 10 years now, and it feels like things are finally moving.’’
Lamb performed at the Sound Valley festival with well-known artists Kora, Kings, Sons of Zion and Ria Hall.
He wasn’t on the original set list, but after the festival was postponed due to Covid-19 restrictions and the organisers expanded the one-day event to two days, Lamb made it to the stage.
It was his first festival performance, and the biggest show he’d ever done.
He said the nervousness of normal gigs had passed, but the festival gave him butterflies.
‘‘It was the next level. I love it, it’s living my dream. Being on stage is like a high.’’
A music collaboration with Australian artist Cking was taking him to Brisbane to film a music video, and Lamb had booked an international gig international gig while he was there.
He would perform at the Banshee Bar in Ipswich on June 18.
He thought the increase in attention and bigger gigs was a representation of all the hard work he put in on a daily basis, where consistency was key.
‘‘They see howmuch I want it, how hard I’m working.’’
He said socialmedia and word of mouth helped a lot.
‘‘I’ve hit a pointwhere people have started to pay attention. But they journey is important, I’m not trying to rush that.’’
Lamb paid for everything himself, funded by his full-time job at Levin’s Oxford Finance.
Costs include paying for a producer and sound engineer, for the cover art and for the filming and editing of music videos.
He had finally started making money in the past year or so, but said his career was more about his love for music than making a living.
His music was also on Spotify, and Lamb said you only earned about $7 every 1000 streams, and the people he worked with took a cut from that income.
Spotify only paid once you had collected about $70.
Mostly he made money from his gigs, where he could make a ‘‘few hundred’’ from a show.