Meet Dralon Moreland of Atlanta

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dralon Moreland.

Hi Dralon, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Absolutely! When I was a child growing up, I remember enjoying going for car rides with my Dad, and he would always be playing 2 Pac through the CD player. I loved listening to everything that my Dad played, and at some point I found myself trying to understand why I enjoyed the music that I enjoyed so much. I started breaking down the way an artist would sound and how the beats complemented them, or vice versa, even the micro-details like the thumps in a kick or the snappiness of a snare drum. It really sung into my ear.

Eventually, I started mentally isolating my favorite parts of the music that I enjoyed and tried to create full songs in my head from them, and over time, I naturally gained a trained ear for music composition. It wasn’t until I was maybe 8 years old where my uncle introduced me to a music program called FL Studio during a Christmas holiday. He showed me how to play around with it, and when he finally left me to it on my own, I would get sucked into it for hours! It was fascinating trying to bring my musical thoughts to life, but also scary to see something take so much of my focus at a young age.

I kept creating to myself for years, for about a decade, mostly for personal emotional and therapeutic purposes, but I was always trying to create thematic albums that spoke to my heart and where I was in life at the time, each album improving on the last in my ability to tell a story. I decided one day that I would share my music with a friend out of curiosity for what they thought about it, and I remember them asking me, “do you have more?”. I just laughed, but before I could even respond, they told me that they could go to sleep to it, or it would help them when they had a bad day. I stopped laughing as soon as they said that, and something clicked in me where I realized that my music was much bigger than me, and I realized that I had to get it out for people that really needed to hear it.

Fast forward to today, I’ve been continuing to create instrumental albums every year for the past decade. Each album is intended to be a unique experience. I mostly lean into themes of meditation and spiritual alignment while blending hip-hop, jazz and sampling elements together for a unique sound that hopefully encourages people to feel something within themselves that they may not have known was there or had been laying dormant for years. I want to give people an opportunity to experience moments of peace, self-reflection and a higher source in a world that can feel overwhelming from overstimulation and identity politics, and my music is the best medium that I’ve been developing my entire life to hopefully achieve that.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely has not been a smooth road for me. I struggled a lot with depression and self-isolation growing up, some of that still follows me today in shorter bursts. Some of that was from being an only-child for a while with a single, hard-working mother. I had to learn to take care of myself, but my mom would always stress to me that it was important to keep my grades up in school, and whatever I found that I loved to do, do it with passion and don’t let it go. Apparently, I carried that forward to this very day.

I also dealt with imposter syndrome for a large chunk of my music career which kept me from sharing my music as aggressively as I probably should have been doing years ago, but I also feel like I still had things that I needed to experience to build my confidence. It’s been a long journey, but I love where I am now because of those struggles along the way. They’re like the petals that make the rose.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I compose and produce instrumental albums. I’m a storyteller and mood evoker, I would say mostly known for creating completely new worlds out of familiar samples. I like flipping sounds on their heads and changing how they’re perceived.

I’m most proud of my J-Dilla inspired hip-hop tribute project that I created back in 2019 called the Experience: Vol. 1. I spent an entire month only listening to J-Dilla’s famous Donuts album from start to finish in the car, during work hours, wherever I could, just to get lost in his sound and energy. After that month, I created music only off of what I felt after listening to the album non-stop and it became what I think to be one of my greatest tapes ever that very few people know about and that I really don’t talk much about.

I think what sets me apart from others is how I experience the world around me and how I channel that into my music. I’m very neutral spiritually, but I bring a fire to my art, so there’s this interesting contrast in expression. I find environments to be an endless stream of information through sounds and inspiration to process and release, and I enjoy engaging with others as though I’m having a conversation with another version of myself. It sounds kind of creepy, but I genuinely feel like we’re all connected and there’s a reason why we can sometimes feel naturally drawn to people or things, even when we can’t explain them ourselves. I know that there are others that share that belief, but there are even fewer that share that openly, whether verbally or creatively, and I hope to speak to that group through my art.

Any big plans?
In the future, oh man, I really want to form a music group or a band! I get super excited at the thought of having a dedicated group of musicians to create and experiment with. I think it would be a crazy merger with my production skills and having other musicians with me to create something truly cinematic. It’s definitely coming one day!

Until then, I’d love to meet other passionate artists who share a similar mindset of wanting to be creative, help others and just be great human-beings. That tribe is out there for me, as one is for everyone, and I know I’ll find them in due time.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dralon_thedragon
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4XsDEmG1JuKmRFr8IEjDBF?si=3oCqC5haRWqE3MkHBX7clQ