Sitting in a cold garage in Columbus, Ohio, seven years ago, Devante Collins was desperate to keep his dream alive.
He wanted to make music. No, scratch that: He had to make music.
It has been in his veins since he was a little kid growing up in Palm Coast and was more excited about smacking household items against the cardboard boxes that Christmas and birthday presents would come in, than whatever the present actually was.
Growing up in a musical household, thanks to Mom Charmyn having eclectic tastes ranging from rap to classical to pop, Devante knew music was what he was destined to do.
He’d worked at a variety of fast-food jobs over the years since graduating from Flagler Palm Coast High School in 2015, and even spent some time in L.A., as one of the millions certain they’d make it.
But now here he was, shivering in a cold garage in the Midwest, looking for anything he could find to help him make sounds that would make people think, and feel.
He used some bricks he’d found, and an old calculator or two. A friend had given him a decent microphone a few years back, and he combined that with a sock pulled over a hanger to make a filter for his song.
“It’s like I was dumpster diving at Radio Shack,” he laughed. “Whatever I could find, I’d use, just trying to get the sound I was going for.”
Collins continued to work at his craft, upgrading equipment slightly from that Ohio garage, and soon he was living in Philadelphia and releasing a song a week on SoundCloud, then a very popular (if not financially lucrative for artists) website.
Little by little, the kid who used to perform at “all the house parties in Flagler that the sheriff’s office would break up” has developed a following on Instagram and other sites.
Performing under the name Devante, The Artist, he’s back living in Florida now–he returned in 2021–and performing at a Justice for Hip Hop music festival in Jacksonville tonight (March 1) at the Justice Pub at 315 East Bay St.
Collins hasn’t quite blown up in popularity and fame, but he’s working hard to get there.
“He’s just a guy who’s always had the whole package: writing, rapping, producing, he’s always been able to do it all,” said Christian Sassani, a close friend and manager. “He’s come a long way because he is so committed and dedicated to learning and getting better. If I had to put my money on anyone in the world to succeed, it’s him.”
“I’m not meant for anything else; believe me, I’ve tried a ton of different jobs,” Collins said. “This is what I’m supposed to, and I’m investing my whole head into it. I just want to get my music out there.”
Collins’ musical journey started from toddler-hood, and as he grew he taught himself how to play Charmyn’s keyboard by the time he was 4. The early 2000s was a fertile time for hip hop, and Collins gravitated toward Southern rappers like OutKast, Big Boi and Killer Mike.
In school, Collins said he did enough to get by but spent most of his time writing poetry in his many notebooks, trying to express himself and figure out how these rappers and hip-hop stars did it.
He found his crew in middle school in Palm Coast, as music-obsessed kids like him watched older kids freestyle and tried to do it themselves.
“I never had backup plans, or ‘what happens if music doesn’t work out,’” he said. “It was all I ever wanted, and my Mom really encouraged me to follow my heart and my passion.
“People would just walk up to him at parties and be like ‘can you spit some beats?’” remembered Julien Collins, Devante’s younger brother by two years. “He just always had the passion and creativity to come up with songs people would remember.”
After graduating high school Collins went on a winding journey in search of musical success. He moved to Los Angeles and slept on couches while trying to make connections. Instead of pushing his own music on people, he tried to help others with his producing and technical skills, and acted as head cheerleader for any musician he would meet.
Learning anything anyone would teach him, he snuck into the Hollywood School of Performing Arts and managed to record a few songs there, and slept in a friend’s room who went to the school.
Eventually, he was caught and told he had to move out, but Collins kept writing and recording, even as he moved to Ohio in 2016, then Philadelphia in 2018, where he became an employee and later co-owner of a coffee shop.
Around 2019 he began to see some success. Challenged by Sassani to write and record more, Collins started putting a song a week on SoundCloud, and soon was seeing significant downloads of his compositions.
Collins started recording and releasing one song a week for about six months. As a result, his songs improved, and he was learning more about how the business works.
“I think it pushed him to try new things, constantly mastering and mixing and making new beats,” Sassani said. “When you get out of your comfort zone, you can make great things happen.”
Collins also began making connections with relatively-well known people in the music world, including Whey Cooler, a rapper from 1980s band Pretty Poison, and this year released a project featuring Cam’Ron.
The show in Jacksonville Friday night could lead to bigger things, which Collins said he’s most definitely ready for. He’s had enough of Cheesecake Factory and Steak N’ Shake jobs.
“I just love getting up on stage and breaking the matrix, and having people watch you do something a little different,” he said, getting excited talking about his craft. “I want to get successful and give back to the next person, and help people on the way up as much as I can.
“In five years I hope to look back and feel like “oh, I’ve written my first good song. I think I can keep getting better and better.”
–Michael Lewis for FlaglerLive
