Dej Loaf Drops Reflective New Tracks, Receives Gifts From Nardwuar

Known for her reflective mode, Detroit native Dej Loaf (born Deja Trimble) has dropped two new singles on her Soundcloud account, “I Got Problems” and “You Don’t Know Me,” in which the petite rapper/singer contemplates on her rise in the rap game, fake friends, and not trusting men because they “gossip like women.” Have a listen to the tracks below.

Dej dropped her first mixtape, Just Do It, back in 2012, and generated a ton of buzz last year with her “Try Me” single. The track helped land her on the coveted 2015 XXL Freshmen Class list. After a bidding war, she signed a deal with Columbia last October, and released her debut EP #AndSeeThatsTheThing last month. Loaf is currently opening for the North American leg of Nicki Minaj’s The Pinkprint Tour.

Trimble’s stage name is a shortened version of her first name, “Deja” and “loafer” — as she is a shoe fanatic with a thing for Js (Jordans). According to BET, while in high school, Dej put the sneakers up for a while and started rocking loafers, since then she’s been dubbed Dej Loaf. She described her style in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone as “free.”

“My style is free, I do whatever I feel at the moment,” Dej Loaf said. “If I feel like singing, I sing, if I feel like rapping, I rap. I used to be too shy to sing on my earlier songs when I first started out, recording now is more comfortable. So I let loose and do what I want. Swanging!”

Eccentric interviewer Nardwuar recently quizzed DeJ on other “Loafs” in the music business, and surprised her with a blast from her past, DeJ’s first song she posted to YouTube. Check out their interview below.

Loaf’s confrontational lyrics and signature style are often the focus of interviews, most recently her sexuality has been a talking point, fueled by online speculation of her alleged romance with Nicki Minaj. She briefly addressed the speculation about her sexuality while on the red carpet at the 2015 BET Awards.

“I look at [ it like it] is what it is,” Dej replied when asked about being hit-on by both men and women. “It’s always been like that. My style is different. People gonna come at you left and right with different things. It’s what I present to the world, so they can come and say what they want to say.”

Dej presents herself as a bold, confident MC with an unfiltered passion to create, as she expressed to Rolling Stone last year.

“Nowadays I feel like women rappers come into the game with the same mentality from way back,” she said. “They think, ‘It’s hard to be a female in the industry.’ They come in using that and it gets them nowhere. My mentality is just to create. No rules. No old-school remedies. What’s next for me is to stamp my name everywhere and become one of the best to ever do it.”

Most recently, Dej Loaf was imitated by Chris Brown — a sign that you’ve officially arrived.

[Image courtesy of Rolling Out]