Why I Made “Damn Yo DNA”: Biracial Identity, Black Unity & Responding Through Music

“Damn Yo DNA” started as my response to the Kendrick Lamar and Drake feud, but the reason I made it was more personal than celebrity rivalry. The arguments I saw around who was “Black enough” touched something I had lived with long before either artist entered the conversation.

Why the rhetoric hit me personally

I am biracial. I was born in 1972 to a Jamaican father and a Canadian mother, with her family roots running through Newfoundland. My identity was never an abstract discussion. It was family, culture, how people saw me, how I saw myself, and the lessons I received about where I came from.

So when the Drake–Kendrick feud spilled into arguments about racial legitimacy, some of the commentary around it felt familiar. I was less interested in defending one celebrity than in pushing back on the idea that someone else gets to reduce a mixed-race person's identity to a purity test.

What my father taught me about race and solidarity

My father was deeply proud of being Jamaican and made sure I understood that heritage. He also told me stories about our family's connection to the Marley family and about spending time around the Marley household when he was young. I preserve that here as part of the family history he gave me, not as a genealogical claim I have independently documented.

One of the lessons that stayed with me was much broader than genealogy: racism does not stop to honour the fine distinctions we sometimes use against each other. My father's way of expressing that lesson was blunt and unforgettable. The point was that division inside the community does not protect anyone from prejudice outside it.

That idea is at the centre of “Damn Yo DNA.”

The song began in anger

I did not write the track from a calm, academic distance. I was irritated by what I was seeing online, especially people using a music feud as permission to turn racial identity into a weapon. The song carries that frustration.

That matters because creative work does not have to begin from a perfectly processed emotion. But the creator still has a responsibility to decide what the emotion is for. Anger can produce energy. It cannot automatically produce clarity.

What I was actually trying to say

The core message was not “Drake is right” or “Kendrick is wrong.” It was that I reject the idea that Black identity should be narrowed into a test that people with mixed heritage have to pass for someone else's approval.

I also wanted to challenge the contradiction of using language of unity while creating new categories for exclusion. I have always believed that faith, culture and community mean more when they survive disagreement rather than disappear inside it.

Listen to “Damn Yo DNA”

The track is still the primary evidence for what I felt at the time. Hearing it now, I can also hear where the emotion is sharper than the reflection that came later.

What changed when I looked back at it

The useful lesson for me was not that every public controversy deserves a response track. It was that a response becomes more durable when I understand the part of the story that actually belongs to me.

The celebrity feud was the trigger. My biracial identity, my father's influence, my reaction to exclusionary rhetoric, and my belief in solidarity were the material I actually owned.

That distinction has become increasingly important in how I create. The strongest work is rarely the part where I summarize what everyone else is arguing about. It is the part where I can say: this is why it matters to me, this is what I believe, and this is the experience I can bring that someone else cannot.

A creator exercise: separate the trigger from your point of view

Where this fits in my creator-development method

“Damn Yo DNA” now makes the most sense to me as a Find Your Voice example. Making the song was one thing. Understanding why I made it, whose point of view it carried, and what message was actually mine came later.

If you are working through that same problem—having material but not yet knowing what makes it yours—the free Creator Academy continues into Stage 2 around creator identity, audience, point of view, message and building a world around the work.

Continue with the Creator Academy →

Why I am keeping this song in the record

I do not need to pretend every early reaction was perfectly measured for it to have value. “Damn Yo DNA” documents a real moment in my development: I felt something strongly, turned it into music, and later became better able to distinguish the public controversy from the personal message underneath it.

That is the part worth keeping.