I always wanted to do it, but I just felt shy, you know what I mean?” she says. “It wasn’t that I never wanted to do music. Eventually, she says, the songwriting “just gradually grew and I was like, Yo, this is what I want to do.”Īfter graduating high school in 2009, Trimble enrolled in nursing at a state school in Michigan and worked as a janitor briefly, but eventually realized that music was where she wanted to put her energy. Writing music, as a child, was an “escape,” almost like a diary. She was raised around music: Her mother and her grandmother would put on Mary J Blige and Erykah Badu her dad, before he was killed when she was four, would play her Miles Davis and 2Pac. Born Deja Trimble-her stage name comes from a mix of “Deja,” shortened, and “loafer,” her footwear of choice-she grew up on the east side of Detroit. Indeed, the way she tells it, she mostly kept to herself when younger. For someone who commands such a presence on stage and whose sense of fashion carries such bravado-at Coachella, her hair reached beyond her waist and she wore a translucent top so rosy it outshone every shade in Janelle Monáe’s video for “PYNK”-it’s surprising to hear the 27-year-old musician describe her younger self as a “shy kid.” The performance was a strong contrast to her offstage persona, where, away from the microphone, sometimes she speaks so quietly it can be difficult to hear her if there’s background noise. The crowd had no problem obeying her and Bridges’s plea. Her voice was rich and honeyed and decorated with a Detroit drawl when she rapped, it punched when she sang, it seduced. Next to her, Leon Bridges shuffled around the stage, singing along with her, “People, get liberated!” Behind her, a backdrop of date palms soared and swayed. “If you feel free, you should lift your hands,” she sang from the title track of her upcoming album, Liberated, beneath an iridescent Chanel visor that covered most of her face.

In her début performance at Coachella last weekend, DeJ Loaf had a good time. DEJ LOAF BRINGS HER POWERFUL PERFORMANCE AND ALL-EMBRACING SOUND TO COACHELLA

Dej loaf no fear cover art