Meet Michael Luke of Mikey Dam in West

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Luke.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Michael. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started out summer of 2009, I was really just playing basketball with a friend and we took the sport serious so we trained a lot and he ended up becoming one of the longest friends I’ve ever had. Behind closed doors he was making beats and showed me them and I thought it was dope, I never really had a passion to follow music at the time but we were making random diss songs for us to laugh at and my friend (Matt Noble) was like your actually good at this and thought lets try make a serious song… From there, everything became musical. Because I thought about it and started doing it I attracted those crowds of people and started to get familiar with everything, bare in mind I sucked – I was still right at the bottom. I guess being around people that were better than me really pushed me to want to be better at the craft… I really just fell in love with the music and from what we saw on tv you could live of it, Little did we know it was really gonna take a lot more than just good raps.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There’s different time periods of struggle, Early stages of my career the struggles involved being doubted, told you can’t make this a job get a real job, Turning up to your girlfriends house and family asking what you want to do for a job once you leave school and seeing there reaction when you say music.

Midway through my career, it felt like I was now looking for acceptance. Little did we know music had no rules but we were told by our heroes that there were rules and your accent couldn’t be American cause you’d be classed as fake. Than trying to get your name out without being on a radar where people hate you just weird situations but ones that taught me a lot.

The tipping point was 2017 when I had surpassed all these struggles. I was really committed to music, Homeless, no eating straight, House jumping, Borrowing money I couldn’t pay back even if it was 20$. Feeling embarrassed was a big one I really felt like less of a man and crazy for pursuing this dream and the girl I was with witnessed the come up from front row but she really had my back her and my brother were just like praying with love. There have been many times were thought “Na man I’m just gonna get a real job and leave it at that”. It leads to me having depression, Anxiety and I guess it was caused from self-doubt and fear of failure, I really couldn’t see life any other way.

Right now the situations are different, I’m just trying to put out music and I struggle with patience, I had been independent for so long that I have an independent artist brain built in my head and having people undercut me on things became hard to trust so letting someone else do the job I was doing is hard to let go now that I have management.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
My business is that I am a songwriter, vocal producer, Producer – I get put in sessions with artists and I try make them a great song.

I am mainly known at the moment as an artists but inside the industry I am a songwriter.

My biggest achievement is and has been working in a room with Ant Clemons. For me he’s a big deal. From where I’m from people really don’t get this far independently.

The thing that sets me apart is I turned a struggle of acceptance into something I just had to accept, Which is the fact that I “genre jump” I make all types of music and if I cant make it I’m willing to learn how to every day the music industry evolves and when it does you have to be the part that doesn’t evolve with it but the one that evolves it, Just like technology – The hottest product will always sell.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Hard working, willingness to learn more. Always wanting to be better. I love listening to people in the same field as me because every piece of conversation is vital.

Contact Info:

• Email: iammikeydam@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iammikeydam/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iammikeydam/

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