Femdot. is Up Double Digits
Photography by Michael Salisbury
I first met Femi Adigun in 2016 while we were both undergrads at DePaul University. I’d previously heard of him rapping under the name femdot. from my big homie Adan, who co-hosted a college radio show with me. After checking out his SoundCloud, I thought he was decent. Like Chicago decent. Like, “This is the next big thing” decent.
Following a chance encounter on campus, we added each other on Facebook and would run into each other semi-regularly at odd hours of the day. I vividly recall seeing him study in the library around 3:00 a.m. during finals week as he was trying to cram his biology homework before driving to Texas for SXSW the very next day. I watched him perform freestyles at open mics hosted by DePaul’s Black Student Union (s/o Soul Fo’ Monday), and other random creative events in the city. He even stopped by my college radio show as a guest on a few occasions.
On October 30th, 2021, we met up again to talk, this time just a couple of weeks before the release of his newest album, Not For Sale. A lot of things have changed in the last four or five years I’ve known femdot. Since getting his degree, he’s gone on a national tour, started a non-profit organization named Delacreme Scholars, and shiny silver grills that are clean enough to see your own reflection have replaced his previously pearly white smile.
One thing has remained the same though: the signature mechanical pencil he keeps tucked behind his right ear. Ready to be used as a prop twirled in his hand during freestyles or a tool ready to lay down a verse, it’s a subtle reminder that even with newfound success, he’s still the same Femi he’s always been.
Extremely honest and open in his work, the North Side rapper unveiled new layers of depth into his soul on Not For Sale. “You cannot buy me, I'm already free” are the first words he spits on the album. It’s an emphatic opening statement that’s already being tattooed on people’s bodies, but what exactly does it mean to be Not For Sale?
“The album is pretty much a conversation that I'm having that is rooted around the idea that you can’t put price on experience,” femdot. explained. “So like my relationship with money, romantic stuff, and dealing with, you know, religion. I kind of tried to touch on all these topics. In that, I've found a kind of confidence, or a new form of confidence, in myself based on everything I've been through versus anything I can make monetary wise.”
In order for femdot. to make a project around the price of experience, he had to first, well, go through those experiences. “I've had the idea for this project since like 2014. I just had to make Delacreme 2, and ‘94 Camry Music to get to this point. I know what I want things to sound like, but I know I don't have the resources, or the writing ability, or the life experiences to talk about what my next project will be about. So I have to live or I have to go through whatever.”
Not For Sale effortlessly weaves the positive and negative aspects of femdot.’s life in a way that reminds me of the light and dark that exist within a Yin-Yang symbol. All things are inseparable, even if they contradict one another.
In “Back on the Road,” he references the fact that he was assaulted by police officers during the 2020 summer uprisings, and how it lingered in his psyche while serving his community through a Delacreme initiative to buy groceries for families. “Target on my back during the riots, wasn't having that / So I hit bro like ‘Where the strap at?’ / So whole summer, I was feeding n----s moms with a glock in my backpack.” That bar stands out because it captures femdot.’s duality: a man of the people who is also a man of his environment. For much of the album, he battles with the inner turmoil he faces between trying to do what’s right while still feeling like he’s coming up short.
It takes about 25 minutes to listen to Not For Sale from front to back, but in that time, femdot. takes us through just about every high and low he’s experienced since he first came up with the project’s concept. He experiments with different voices in a way that’s akin to Kendrick Lamar and on “Funds / Broke[N] Interlude,” he even sings his feelings over a guitar. The album serves as an audio time capsule that shows where his mind has been and how it’s shaped him for better or worse.
“Digits” finds femdot. celebrating his ascent as an independent artist —but success tends to come at a cost. On the very next track, “Sacrilegious / Pray Part 1,” he opens up on an uncomfortable conversation with a friend who just paid him the ultimate compliment, “He said he pray to be like me, man I pray that he don't / 'Cause all my prayers turning capitalistic / Praying for money to be the answer like money'll fix it.”
In the album’s final track, “Mueen / Pray Part 2,” he fills listeners on what he went through in the last couple of years. They range from being heartbroken to being a heartbreaker to run-ins with the law and losing friends to juggling music with his education and having imposter syndrome.
“Projects become checkpoints and it always ends up working out where I end up creating the exact idea I wanted to create years ago somehow,” femdot. shares. “I've been working on that for a pretty long time. I'll be keeping songs to fit an overall theme, or like, I just be forgetting that I have them then I go back to it, I’ll remember, ‘Oh, this is the thing that's missing.’”
One of the most important checkpoints of his life came when he decided to quit his day job and pursue music full-time. He admits that he essentially gambled on himself to “figure it out,” but betting on himself sure seems to have been paying off.
“I think I had like a month or two of rent saved, you know what I’m saying. That was like three or four years ago and here we are. Seeing what we were able to do with our backs against the wall, I’m like ‘yeah, I can do this forever.’”
Just because femdot. has been rising as an independent artist, by no means has he been doing everything by himself. He credits his support system —consisting of family, tight-knit friends, and management team—to his success. He attributes his support system for keeping him grounded even when he admits to acting “too crazy,” and he emphasizes just how much more important it is to have a team that genuinely believes in you wholeheartedly than it is to have a team with “connections,” saying, “Having people around that believe in you as much as you believe in yourself is 80-90% of the battle.”
Another big checkpoint he had to let him know he’s on the right path was when he was able to perform in front of his parents for the first time at the homecoming show of his first nationwide tour with Tobi Lou. “I've been rapping for 20 years. Been rapping since I was six years old, and the first time my parents are able to see me perform was on the last night of a sold-out tour at Lincoln Hall.”
Among the more notable figures that have believed in him wholeheartedly are the members of West Side boy band Pivot Gang. From song collaborations to Pivot Gang members opening up for femdot. at his very first headlining show at Schuba’s Tavern in 2017 to him returning the favor by opening at the last John Walt Day Show at the Metro in 2019, their relationship is more familial in nature than anything. Together, they hosted regular scheduled writing sessions on Twitch during last year’s lockdown.
In our conversation, I noticed femdot. was wearing a green wristband in remembrance of fallen comrade and DJ/producer, SqueakPIVOT. So I had asked him what’s something he’s learned from Pivot Gang that he continues to keep close to his heart.
“I mean, outside of the fact that just like you can [make it] with ya homies, also like don't be too stuck on the idea. Keep going and keep moving. Whether that's just like the 16s we were writing in 16 minutes or if it's through, just even like sessions with them, they’ll be like ‘okay this idea is out, let's just keep moving.’ They’re my brothers, man. I’m glad to be able to work with them for real.’”
If there is any validity to the old cliche of “you are the company that you keep,” then it's evident that the company femdot. keeps around him are first-class individuals. Other than his music, Fem also founded the Delacreme Scholars foundation, which started off as a scholarship for Black and Brown students at his alma mater, and after the 2020 protests following George Floyd’s death, they started to collect donations in order to give free groceries to families on the West and South sides of Chicago.
At one point in Not For Sale, he asks “You ever did a final in a green room? Become a role model when you ain't mean to? [...] Ever told yourself that you really need school? Knowing damn well them loans gon' eat you?”
Fem has come a long way from those days of pulling all-nighters in the library before traveling for shows and writing essays about Space Jam backstage. Before our conversation, he added another brick to the house he and his team have been building with an appearance on Colors Studio for his song “Bussin.” Familiar midwestern names like Saba, Mick Jenkins, Smino, Ravyn Lenae, and Freddie Gibbs are among the numerous talented artists to have been featured in the famed music discovery platform, and now femdot. is among them doing what he does best.
“I always think I shine through performance. Anytime I can perform on a platform and bring more attention, then I really try to do that for real… I would tell a 17-year-old Fem that you doin’ alright. The world is just as big but also just as small as you think it is. So continue attacking how you are and even if you're walking in a direction and you don't know which way you're going, at least you’re onto something there.”
To wrap up our conversation, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity by completing a full-circle moment. In 2019, I was one of the recipients of the Delacreme Scholarship in which the writing prompt was “If you can title the current chapter of your life, what would it be called?” It only seemed fitting that I ask that same question to him. His response? It’s simple, but obvious: “Not For Sale.”