No matter what you think of his music, give Dallas Cotton credit for this: His alter egoāfresh-faced future funk producer Yung Baeāhas a clear and consistent aesthetic.
His new album is called Bae 5, and follows B4E, BA3, BAE 2, and his 2014 debut, Bae. Each project features cover art that hovers somewhere near the nexus of Japanese anime, gleaming Miami Vice pastels, sunsets on the beach, clean-cut suburban vibes, and a faded style of nostalgia that particularly appeals to people who didnāt experience the ā80s the first time aroundāand itās not going anywhere anytime soon.
āIām fully committed to a lot of that ā70s- and ā80s- style branding that comes off as corny to anyone else who would see it,ā says Cotton, 25, in a recent phone interview. āI label it as corny for the masses, but I genuinely love that stuff. I think itās amazing.ā
Yung Baeās look wasnāt necessarily planned. āWe just kind of fell into it,ā Cotton says. But as hip-hop has become flooded with MCs using Yung as a handle, it has become a helpful differentiator for people trying to figure out what the buzz is all about.
āAt this point, I just own it,ā Cotton says. āPeople will see it online and be like, āWow, this guyās not a rapper. This Yung Bae guy looks like heās on his first day of school in every picture. Okay.ā And weāre just rolling with it now.ā
āRolling with itā is a pretty good descriptor for Cottonās approach to Yung Bae in general. Born and raised in Portland, he had just dropped out of Oregon State University when someone showed him how to use Ableton, a popular software for music production. Cotton picked it up quickly, despite having very little musical training.
āWhen I was 12 or 13, I took piano lessons briefly, but I thought it was the dumbest thing ever, so I quit,ā he says. āI still regret that.ā
He did, however, grow up in a home where music was valued. His parents were fans of easygoing ā70s rock ānā roll like the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan, and by the time Cotton could go to a record store, he was drawn to the bargain bins.
āIād look for the most obscure records that nobody wanted,ā he says, āand then those were the ones I ended up sampling and becoming the popular ones.ā
Working first from his parentsā basement in Tigard, and then an apartment in downtown Portland, Cotton took his disparate interestsāyacht rock, hip-hop, obscure samples, and the breezy, backward-looking form of electronic music known as vaporwaveāand began forming them into a sound of his own. Soon, Yung Bae became known as part of a new microgenre called āfuture funkāāa more upbeat, rhythm-driven take on vaporwave thatās deeply indebted to vintage funk and disco.
āI pretty much never left [my home] and just worked on music 24/7,ā Cotton says. āThis was right when I was really starting to understand hip-hop and [sampling]. I just found it super fascinating the way they manipulated samples and gave it their own touch and spin, so that hooked me immediately.ā
When Cotton posted Bae to Bandcamp in 2014, it got a āton of traction,ā he says, though to this day he still doesnāt know why or how. By 2016, he was getting offers to perform live, even though he had never even played out in Portland.
āI always wanted to, but I never understood DJing or what went into that,ā he says. āSo that was another cool thing to learn and get into.ā
Even now, Cotton has done only two local shows, with his third and fourth happening this weekend at Holocene. But he did spend most of October and the first part of November touring around the country to promote Bae 5, which is currently listed among the best-selling future funk releases on Bandcamp.
In a way, Bae 5 feels like the next evolution of Yung Baeās sound. Itās sturdier and punchier than his previous work, no doubt a result of his decision to take a step back from samples this time around. Instead, Cotton estimates Bae 5 is split 50/50 between sampled tracks and live music played in the studio.
One track, āStart from Nothing,ā was composed in Cottonās apartment, but recorded by a full orchestra and a live band, he says. Another, āUp All Night,ā features the vocals of an actual childrenās choir.
āThatās something Iāve wanted to do for years. Iāve always written out all these different tracks and then played them with [digital] instruments and it would sound super fake or really tacky,ā he says. āHere, we wanted that live aspectĀāto take it up a notch and make it as real as it could possibly sound, like it came out of a studio in the ā70s or something.ā
Live instruments? Real sounds? Even as Cotton sticks with his visual aesthetic, itās clear that, musically, heās wary of staying in one lane for too long.
āWe try to keep it different here, otherwise itās too boring,ā he says. āCanāt be making the same drops as everybody else.ā