Dahi Steps Out as a Solo Artist With ‘Black Boy (Alternative)’

Dahi is done staying in the background. The producer born Dacoury Natche, whose fingerprints are all over the last decade of rap and R&B — from Kendrick Lamar’s “Money Trees” to Drake’s “Worst Behavior” — will release his debut solo album, Black Boy (Alternative), on August 28 via ALTER Music. It’s a turn that pulls his own name to the front of a career built on shaping other people’s sound.

The album, announced alongside a new single and video for the Childish Gambino collaboration “Running,” doesn’t retreat from the communal approach that defined his work. It is stacked with voices he’s already in conversation with: Lamar, Vince Staples, Channel Tres, Fousheé, Ravyn Lenae, Baby Rose, Moses Sumney, Amber Mark, and others. In that sense, Black Boy (Alternative) is less a departure than a reframing — the same relationships, but with Dahi now acting as the central character rather than a facilitator.

The project’s title gestures at a specific challenge: recasting Black identity through a musical lens that refuses easy genre boxes, pulling together the hip-hop and R&B Dahi grew up with and the alternative and rock that later pulled at him. “‘Running’ pays homage to my heritage,” he said in a statement. “Black is beautiful. Bringing all I love into one space.” The album follows two earlier singles, “Rest of Your Life” and “Find Me,” and arrives after a stretch that includes a Grammy for 21 Savage’s “a lot” and a 2023 Producer of the Year nomination. But for the first time, the accolades are just context — this is Dahi’s own narrative to steer.