The first time Fike released his debut EP, in December 2017, he was in jail.

“I couldn't check the views or respond to the homies,” says Fike. “I couldn't talk to people.”

He had recorded the 6-track collection while he was on house arrest, then 21 years old and charged with battery of a police officer. The only thing he will say about the arrest is that it was “just a wrong place, wrong time, charge with my brother. It's public information now, it's all right there.” He doesn’t feel like he has to explain it further.

He was put on house arrest for two months before he went to jail. His manager at the time, David Fernandez, bought him the equipment, and he began making the tape. Don’t Forget About Me was meant to be a grander project. He had 17 songs planned, with visuals for each one. He saw it as a feature-length film in his head. But, by the time he had to go to jail, only two of the songs were finished. He handed them over to Fernandez. All he wanted to do by then was release the songs, even if just as a demo tape.

“We had fights over some of the songs and how the order would be for a little bit,” he says. “Sometimes when the argument would get so heated, we would be back to the ‘we're not even gonna do this’ talk. Like ‘3 Nights’ wasn't supposed to go on the EP at all. I pushed for that so hard. I was like, ‘That's the zinger!’”

The project was eventually uploaded to streaming services, and Don’t Forget About Me somehow landed on the desks of label execs who were taken by Fike’s potential. Fike is unclear about how he got their attention—he thinks his friend, the artist Yeek, must have posted about it. Either way, Fike found himself being aggressively courted by the music industry. By the time he was released in April, he was already being scheduled for important meetings, negotiating for the deal he wanted.

“I really needed money for [my mom's] lawyer, straight up. That's why we couldn't settle… It was like now or never, they gotta get some crazy amount of money.”

In the summer, it was announced that he had gone with Columbia Records. There were plenty of reasons he decided to forsake his independence as an artist (including, he says, the opportunity to meet and work with Billie Eilish, who is now a fan and collaborator) but at the end what really did it for him was his family. His mother was facing serious drug charges. “I really needed money for her lawyer, straight up,” he says. “And that's why we couldn't settle below anything that what we were working with… It was like now or never, they gotta get some crazy amount of money.”

When the EP was released, again, by Columbia in October, Fike’s instincts about “3 Nights” were proven correct. The song is, by far, the tape’s most popular track, a catchy tune whose bouncy guitar chords has Jack Johnson’s influence baked into their genetic code. Since its release, the song has been effectively incorporated into all the appropriate official iTunes playlists and new music round-ups, including BBC Radio 1’s “Best New Pop” list. It amassed enough attention to produce a (negative) Pitchfork review that dismissed Fike as “your next hate-listen.” The tape also served as a surprise to his local fans, who were not expecting a pop record from the rapper they had grown up with.

“That Naples crowd, they know me for rapping, but this whole part of the world doesn't,” he says. “They’re like, ‘Damn they don't even know, bro! Dom gonna rap, though, Dom tell 'em!’ I'm just like quiet, not even on Twitter responding… I know it's just coming from them wanting to hear that shit, not mad at me. They're happy for me. But they just want me to boss up real quick. And I'm going to.”

There exists, also, some suspicion about the trajectory of Fike’s career within the industry. Even a favorable write-up for RollingStone.com puzzles cynically about the Columbia Records deal: “it was as if the label had thrown a reported $4 million to a ghost,” they write. Cultural commentator Chris Black tweeted resentfully, “We live in a post-Post Malone society where Dominic Fike gets a "$3-$4 million" deal with Columbia. He is from Naples, Florida and has face tattoos.” New York Times music critic Joe Coscarelli responded, “pretty amazing to watch how, in one weekend, months of growing industry buzz turns into good old-fashioned online HYPE (+’influencers’ like Kardashians, Khalid, et al).”