Deonte the Alien: Delving into ”All i needed was a friend”
Delving into his veracity, Deonte the Alien presents a euphonic reflection in his latest album “All i needed was a friend.” Conveying authenticity intertwined with melodic rap, Deonte opens a door that takes listeners into a place of vulnerability yet lyrical artistry. As his formulaic expressions are influenced by experience, realization, and growth, the evolution of himself manifests in his latest LP.
Q: Describe a little background about yourself- who is Deonte the Alien?
Who is deonte the alien, I mean shit I don’t know, I would argue that I am just a guy who likes making music and I think there’s a lot of people who want to pretend they’re not just a guy or just a girl they want to pretend they’re more but I think the appeal is just understanding where I’m at and I’m okay with that.
Q: You just released “All i needed was a friend” tell me about your inspo & creativity for this project.
When I started the project I was just going through a lot you know, I moved away from California which is where like you know I grew up with all of my friends whatever, I had been in this toxic relationship and I think I was just depressed and following COVID and I think that manifested itself in this project but I don’t think I ever intended on dropping it. I actually was going to quit music before I decided to take this a lot more seriously.
Q: What were your songs inspired by?
Honestly, the songs are probably inspired by just I guess my life bro. You know I feel like with hip-hop a lot of people love to embellish it or whatever, I just was honest you know like the first track talks about parental love and how that's affected me through my life and I think the album follows through that aspect. In the album, I’m actually talking about my ex, a really toxic relationship, and realizations I had about myself and really how I grew as a person and towards the end of it. All I needed was a friend, it was really a reflection on that. I think that’s all it is… good bad whatever, it’s just honesty.
Would you like to be featured?
Q: How long did the making of the LP take?
The making of this project actually took me 2 years give or take, I started it when I moved to austin in 2021. I had just been alone and I didn’t know anyone, so I locked myself in my room and was recording all the time and when I finally made friends it developed. We test listened a bunch and the album has completely changed from when I first started mostly because I got better and I could hear what I was doing wrong and all this other stuff and I don’t know I ended up changing the last version of it in August, just before I released it just because I wanted it to be perfect, I wanted it to feel like a cohesive story and make people feel things you know?
Q: What does this project mean to you?
I think it’s hard to tell what the project means to me. I think I won’t really know until, maybe two, three, maybe four or five years from now, I won’t really see the impact until then. Right now it’s just a good project and I poured my heart into it and I gave it my best and right now that’s all I got. I would argue that I think that being able to be so honest with myself and with my music and having it received well, that’s taught me a valuable lesson about just authenticity in my music. I think a lot of people want to be authentic but I think they also embellish things, or they don’t delve all the way in and I feel like a song like Into the Garden, doing so well really reflects that people want honesty, and people want you to live your truth.
Q: Why did you choose just one feature in your LP?
I chose one feature for the LP because if I’m going to be honest- I kind of hit at social, I’m not a huge people person. The whole networking thing isn’t for me, I know it’s important, I know I’m supposed to do it. It’s just if I don’t have to I won’t and this isn’t my first album, my first album was called Tripping on Jupiter and I released that in 2020 it was a good album, but it had a lot of features on it and I don’t really talk to most of those people anymore and when I deleted it I was just looking back how that affected me. I didn’t even want to listen to the project anymore because all those connections were disingenuous. So, I think with the albums, it's important to make music with people who you feel a personal connection to –And to go along with that, features are instruments man, I feel like people just really throw in features because they want the fluff of it, they want those people’s audience to come and listen, etc. At the end of the day, if it doesn’t serve the song, if it doesn’t serve the project then you don’t need a feature.
Q: Does your album title have a deeper significance behind it? Why did you choose this title?
I think I chose All I needed was a friend because honestly I was depressed. I was like in a really dark place and I didn't really have people to confide in and talk to and I was kind of losing myself without certain people in my life and I think when I started making friends out here I could feel myself come back to life, come back to myself and I feel like by the end of it I just realized friendship was all I needed to feel better. You know, being around good people, being around people who truly care about you. I think people underestimate the power of platonic love and what not and I think it was important to communicate that with the album title.
Q: What do you hope your fans take from this album?
I don’t really know what I hope people take away from the album, I guess that’s up to them. Arts in the eye of the beholder and so are the lessons but for me personally I know cherishing your friends, but also being honest with yourself and on some level loving yourself for you and your folks cause if we going to keep it a buck, like I talk about a lot of my faults on there like argumentative, gaslighting, a bunch of stuff that I’m not proud of and that stuff I had to work on. It’s important to acknowledge those things about yourself, especially in a social media society where you’re supposed to act like a narcissist to get these likes or do whatever- you know I just think it’s important to keep yourself down to earth.
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