DDG Gets Real About Twitch, Making Music in Front of Thousands and His ‘Safe Space’ of Fatherhood (Exclusive)

• DDG, the musician and content creator who has since found a new audience live-streaming his life on Twitch, spoke with PEOPLE about his new LP, Blame the Chat, and how his son Halo has connected with the music

• DDG’s created the album during his inaugural Hit-A-Thon, a week-long live stream where fans gave real-time input on his music

• “I’ve been catapulting a little bit and just going up a lot quicker in terms of relevancy,” DDG says of life since becoming a streamer

DDG doesn’t know exactly how many days straight he’s been live streaming his life for. It’s somewhere around 60. He thinks it could be a little longer.

However long it’s been, though, it’s a new and very much welcome problem to have for the 27-year-old musician and content creator — if you can even call it a problem. Really, it’s a sign that DDG, real name Darryl Granberry Jr., has been successful in building a platform for himself on Twitch, where tens of thousands of fans follow his every move at any given hour of the day.

Whether he’s being a dad at home to his 17-month-old son Halo, cooking up in the studio with live fan feedback, buzzing off his signature hairstyle of eight years or sometimes even just taking a nap, fans can expect cameras to be following DDG and a full view of it all going down on the stream.

So as DDG walks into PEOPLE’s Manhattan office with the cameras off this month, it only makes sense that after he leaves, the remainder of his last promotional day in New York City for his new stream-made and fan-assisted album, Blame the Chat, would consist of seven-straight hours of live footage to follow. At one point, he even found himself trekking through Times Square in an attempt to sell some physical copies. All in a day’s work.

“It’s to the point where I can’t even remember how long I’ve been live,” DDG says. “I ain’t really had no real vacation, unplug time in a little minute. Besides getting off live, going to sleep. But when I’m off live, I’m still thinking about what I’m going to do on the next live… When it’s time to vacation, it’s just no cameras. There’s no streaming and I get to relax and chill. So it’s something I’m looking forward to.”

As of now, though, DDG is locked in on spreading the word about an album he recorded with the advice of thousands of fans in mind. Following the release of Blame the Chat, which he recorded in real time during a 7-day, 24/7 live stream he calls Hit-A-Thon, he caught up with PEOPLE about being considered a pioneer by peers, how his life has changed since joining Twitch in 2022 and what his infant son thinks of his dad’s cross-platform career.

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PEOPLE: How would you describe the energy around this fourth album?

DDG: It’s just a way different approach than usual. So it’s just trying to change the game a little bit on how people create music and just being more vulnerable with the fans… This is something I’m trying out, but I feel like it’s really working. It’s creating a better core. And then the next time I do it again, people will be even more intrigued on what’s going on because they’re familiar. And then I feel like by the time I get to my fifth Hit-A-Thon, it’ll be much different, much bigger.

We last spoke three years ago about your album, It’s Not Me It’s You, a title you said was directed to listeners who didn’t like your music. Now we have a project that really involves, as you’ve described it, the consumer. Has Twitch changed your approach to welcoming feedback?

For sure. It’s me being more open-minded to what the people want instead of just being like big-headed or feeling like, ‘They’re not rappers or this and that, they can’t really tell me what to do.’ But now I look at it in a different way where if they don’t like something, why would I give them what they don’t like? I give them exactly what they want. But it’s just easier on my mind as an artist to know for sure that they’re going to like what I put out.

Can you describe the process of mapping out Hit-A-Thon?

It’s a lot that went into it. Just having the location, having all the production around the house, cameras in every corner. It’s a lot of preparation, being ready to stay up long nights, early mornings, recording, interacting with tens of thousands, 20,000 people every single day. 10,000 people watching you sleep. It’s definitely a different type of process, but it creates some type of connection for sure.

You’ve made music on live before but you credited PlaqueBoyMax with inspiring this latest approach. How so?

When we made the “Pink Dreads” joint, that’s kind of when I got the light bulb went off in my brain. And I was like, ‘Oh, it might be cool to do an entire album like this rather than just doing a one-off single.’ Just seeing how successful ‘Pink Dreads’ was, it just made me want to continue to make music on live.

He just gave you your flowers on stream last week by calling you one of the first guys to successfully merge content creation and music. What did that mean and do you consider yourself a pioneer in that space?

It’s always dope to get flowers from your peers, especially in the streaming industry. I feel like the streaming industry is very supportive versus the music industry. So it’s just dope to see the support that I’m getting. But yeah, I definitely do feel like a pioneer in what I do. I feel like it’s … humbly speaking, I feel like it’s not really too many people that you can say crossed over.

Specifically from YouTube over to music, I can say myself, Queen Naija. You could say people like KSI. It’s only a few people really that’s really crossing over and doing the music thing for real at a high level… There’s a few people that went from acting to music, but YouTube to music a little different.

You’ve obviously made content before, but how has your life changed since becoming an active streamer?

Since I became an active streamer, my life has been, I feel like I’ve been catapulting a little bit and just going up a lot quicker in terms of relevancy. I’ve always been relevant, but with streaming, it’s just this clipping era where it’s like you can be on stream for three hours and then if you get a thousand clips, it might live on TikTok for weeks. So it’s like with streaming, it puts you in a lot of people’s faces on all platforms.

When we last spoke, you talked about the stigma that you feel came from the YouTube-to-music pipeline. Do you feel like finding a new audience on Twitch has alleviated some of that, since your content on there is so attached to your music?

For sure. People get to see the process live and they can see the talent. It’s not easy just to hop in a booth on live and then make music from scratch without having a full writing team and this and that. People get to see my actual talent live rather than just hearing a song and trying to figure out if they like it or not. So I think it definitely eliminates that stigma for sure. If you’re actually watching the process happen, you would get why I do music and why it’s successful.

Is there a favorite piece of feedback you got from the chat during Hit-A-Thon?

The chat really picked the beats, the songs they want on the album. They pick everything. So that takes a lot of stress off of me where I don’t have to guess, because sometimes what I like to hear, they might not like to hear. So I would say it took a lot of stress off of me just being picky, because I’m kind of an over-thinker. So when I get to hear them saying, “Oh, we like this, we like this,” and they standing on it, then I got to go with what they say.

How do you maintain your own artistic vision when you have a chat with differing recommendations?

I still keep my same mindset in what I initially think. I just heavily involve their opinion. So my creative process is the same until after I’m done. And then I let them judge and see what they like. I let them pick the beat and then from there I cut the chat off and I just go ahead, do what I do and then I get back on the chat and see what they’re saying.

I think when I’ve done it before while watching the chat, and it definitely makes you overthink. But sometimes they do be in the chat, like typing little bars or whatever. And some of them be sounding cool, so sometimes they can help you get out of a funk. But a lot of the times, they’ll make you overthink.

Do you wish this was a process that you could have been a part of when you were growing up as a music fan?

I wish this was done back in the day with people like 50 Cent or people I used to grow up listening to. I always wonder, I used to always Google ‘What mics do this artist use,’ or ‘What program this artist record on,’ just to kind of figure out what’s the best process. So I think this is making it way more vulnerable, way more open to the public and just letting people get inspired.

… I think it is creating more and more artists. The people that’s watching me, now they want to make music on live, or now they want to try to do it because they can see me doing it. So if I can do it, they feel like they can do it as well.

You cut your hair at the end of Hit-A-Thon. What did that represent to you?

I think it just represents just me just keeping my word. Cutting my hair was definitely a big deal for me. I had dreads for eight years. So when I cut my hair, I was definitely not thinking it was going to be a good turnout. But it ended up being a good thing. It’s just the start of a new era basically.

We know how your chat feels about the music, but this is your first album as a father. How has Halo reacted and how has fatherhood impacted you as a creative?

He enjoy it. His favorite song is “Pink Dreads” right now. He does a little dance, little-kid, one-year-old bounce-dance. It’s dope.

I think [fatherhood] just creates a safe space for me. My line of work is sometimes very negative feedback and things. So being a dad gives me that safety net, just feeling like I got some type of home.

What are you hoping to take from this moment?

This gave me a lot of reassurance that people are enjoying my music, because you get live feedback. And sometimes when you just drop music and you just keep it pushing, you don’t really know if people are really connecting to it. But this feels much more like a moment between me and my fans.

DDG’s Blame the Chat is available now via Epic Records.

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