No matter what you think of his music, give Dallas Cotton credit for this: His alter egoâfresh-faced future funk producer Yung Baeâhas a clear and consistent aesthetic.
His new album is called Bae 5, and follows B4E, BA3, BAE 2, and his 2014 debut, Bae. Each project features cover art that hovers somewhere near the nexus of Japanese anime, gleaming Miami Vice pastels, sunsets on the beach, clean-cut suburban vibes, and a faded style of nostalgia that particularly appeals to people who didnât experience the â80s the first time aroundâand itâs not going anywhere anytime soon.
âIâm fully committed to a lot of that â70s- and â80s- style branding that comes off as corny to anyone else who would see it,â says Cotton, 25, in a recent phone interview. âI label it as corny for the masses, but I genuinely love that stuff. I think itâs amazing.â
Yung Baeâs look wasnât necessarily planned. âWe just kind of fell into it,â Cotton says. But as hip-hop has become flooded with MCs using Yung as a handle, it has become a helpful differentiator for people trying to figure out what the buzz is all about.
âAt this point, I just own it,â Cotton says. âPeople will see it online and be like, âWow, this guyâs not a rapper. This Yung Bae guy looks like heâs on his first day of school in every picture. Okay.â And weâre just rolling with it now.â
âRolling with itâ is a pretty good descriptor for Cottonâs approach to Yung Bae in general. Born and raised in Portland, he had just dropped out of Oregon State University when someone showed him how to use Ableton, a popular software for music production. Cotton picked it up quickly, despite having very little musical training.
âWhen I was 12 or 13, I took piano lessons briefly, but I thought it was the dumbest thing ever, so I quit,â he says. âI still regret that.â
He did, however, grow up in a home where music was valued. His parents were fans of easygoing â70s rock ânâ roll like the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan, and by the time Cotton could go to a record store, he was drawn to the bargain bins.
âIâd look for the most obscure records that nobody wanted,â he says, âand then those were the ones I ended up sampling and becoming the popular ones.â
Working first from his parentsâ basement in Tigard, and then an apartment in downtown Portland, Cotton took his disparate interestsâyacht rock, hip-hop, obscure samples, and the breezy, backward-looking form of electronic music known as vaporwaveâand began forming them into a sound of his own. Soon, Yung Bae became known as part of a new microgenre called âfuture funkââa more upbeat, rhythm-driven take on vaporwave thatâs deeply indebted to vintage funk and disco.
âI pretty much never left [my home] and just worked on music 24/7,â Cotton says. âThis was right when I was really starting to understand hip-hop and [sampling]. I just found it super fascinating the way they manipulated samples and gave it their own touch and spin, so that hooked me immediately.â
When Cotton posted Bae to Bandcamp in 2014, it got a âton of traction,â he says, though to this day he still doesnât know why or how. By 2016, he was getting offers to perform live, even though he had never even played out in Portland.
âI always wanted to, but I never understood DJing or what went into that,â he says. âSo that was another cool thing to learn and get into.â
Even now, Cotton has done only two local shows, with his third and fourth happening this weekend at Holocene. But he did spend most of October and the first part of November touring around the country to promote Bae 5, which is currently listed among the best-selling future funk releases on Bandcamp.
In a way, Bae 5 feels like the next evolution of Yung Baeâs sound. Itâs sturdier and punchier than his previous work, no doubt a result of his decision to take a step back from samples this time around. Instead, Cotton estimates Bae 5 is split 50/50 between sampled tracks and live music played in the studio.
One track, âStart from Nothing,â was composed in Cottonâs apartment, but recorded by a full orchestra and a live band, he says. Another, âUp All Night,â features the vocals of an actual childrenâs choir.
âThatâs something Iâve wanted to do for years. Iâve always written out all these different tracks and then played them with [digital] instruments and it would sound super fake or really tacky,â he says. âHere, we wanted that live aspectÂâto take it up a notch and make it as real as it could possibly sound, like it came out of a studio in the â70s or something.â
Live instruments? Real sounds? Even as Cotton sticks with his visual aesthetic, itâs clear that, musically, heâs wary of staying in one lane for too long.
âWe try to keep it different here, otherwise itâs too boring,â he says. âCanât be making the same drops as everybody else.â