Dominic Fike Calls To Defund The Police In Powerful New Essay

Dominic Fike has been poised for his debut breakout moment for the past few years right now, scoring a No. 1 on the Option Songs chart in 2018 ("3 Nights") and palling around with Brockhampton. He also got his own song, the ethereal "Dominic's Interlude," on Halsey's album Manic earlier this year, where he managed to create a mere 76 seconds sound like a maximalist celebration.


Fike's first single from his first album was due to be released last week, yet in a new note posted to Instagram on Monday (June 8), he explained why that was put on hold. As a substitute something much more crucial happened," he wrote. "People were forced to have a conversation that's long been overdue. It doesn't feel right to release music today although it does feel right to continue this conversation."


From there, Fike dives into his family's own troubled backstory with police, one that's resulted in, as he says, the beating of his mother by law enforcement and also because the incarceration of his brothers, aunts, uncles, and his father. "My life has felt cursed since I was a little bit kid," he writes. "I've since realized the real curse is [that] the system we stay in is designed for us to lose, again and again."


Fike also mentions his own felony battery charge, for which he served eight months in county jail in Florida. "I attempted to defuse a situation with the police and my younger brother, I interfered and the cop made up a story to fit his actions," he wrote. "The judge thought I was better off with this shit on my record. I'm lucky I may do music, since no one will ever hire me." Despite this, Fike says he can't tour in the U.K. And go other places due to his conviction.


"None of those decisions were based on attempting to assist us, they wanted us to vanish he wrote.


The second half of the note is more optimistic, grounded in the reality that within the past few weeks, global demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality have begun to spur lawmakers to change certain longstanding policies. "This is a time for us to stand strong and demand justice for the innocent [B]lack lives being taken from us — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and all of the names we'll don't get to know."


Fike ends his note with a phone call to defund the police, citing how the Florida community where he grew up — Naples, a "sleepy, conservative beachtown that doesn't like disruptions or disruptors" — boasts a yearly police financial range of $200 million, while mental-health resources obtained a comparatively paltry $5 million. "Our tax dollars are paying for unfocused, undisciplined over-policing alternatively opposed to going towards the people they're supposed to be protecting," he wrote. "I'd love to be able to see all these fucked-up departments defunded."


"I'll get you the music soon nevertheless we've got other things to do now he concluded, plus a link to resources about defunding the police. Read Fike's note in full above.