Local Rapper Dexter Shack Celebrates Personal Growth at his First Headlining Concert

By Niko Abian

Dexter Shack performing at the University of Washington Battle of the Bands on April 13 (Photo/Courtesy of Howard Shack)

Seattle rapper Dexter Shack performed his first headlining show at the Seattle Drum School on Dec. 21. The bill was filled with local and young talent that Shack enthusiastically enjoyed from the crowd as he waited for his closing set. His energetic performance did not disappoint. He encouraged the crowd to mosh to his frenetic song “Artichoke” before joining in himself and dancing so hard that he had to take off his shirt and throw it to the crowd. Shack ended the night triumphantly, thanking his fans who support him and help him to continue to pursue music. I sat down with Shack, who released his debut album “Galactic Melody,” earlier this year.  

Shack, who grew up in Beacon Hill, briefly made music in high school, but chose instead to focus on filmmaking and social media content. He gained notoriety for his skits, short narrative videos, and dancing, but was unsure of his direction after graduating from Franklin High School in 2021.

Shack said he wasn't interested in college but his mother persuaded him to give it a try. So he searched for affordable schools in the south. He decided to go to Loyola University New Orleans, after being admitted to its filmmaking program.

When he arrived in Louisiana in August of 2021, he immediately met his best friend, Jagger Rhodes. Rhodes was unlike anybody Shack had ever met in Seattle. 

“He was so warm, so open, nice, not closed off at all,” Shack said. “On the first day I met him I felt like I'd known him for a couple months”

Rhodes’s roommate was a producer, and Shack quickly found himself in a social group full of musicians, spending time in the studio and making songs together. 

Despite his friendships with musicians and his own experience making music in high school, Shack didn’t make a real effort to get involved with his friends’ work. 

“I wasn’t confident enough to call myself a rapper… Sometimes I would hop on songs, and write verses, but I would also just dance and annoy people,” Shack said.

After two months of filmmaking classes, Shack had become frustrated with the curriculum and program structure. He began filming his own skits with friends rather than attending class. He stayed for the second semester only to remain with his girlfriend, whom he had met at college. At the end of the year, he dropped out and moved back home.

When Shack moved back to Seattle, he pursued YouTube and gained 45,000 subscribers between May and August 2022. However, he was unfulfilled by the content he was producing, and began experimenting with different styles. In April 2023, he said he hit “rock bottom,” his latest video project had stalled, and his long-distance relationship was falling apart. 

Moving back to Seattle was humbling for Shack. Not only did he work well over a dozen jobs to afford rent, but he was lonely as his friends were attending colleges across the country. Eventually he became disillusioned with the comedic persona he used for his videos. Music became the creative outlet he could use to express his sincere feelings.

During this period, Shack freestyled over instrumentals he found online, but he didn’t view it as a project worth publishing. He recorded his song “I Miss You” for the first time on April 12th 2023, after he broke up with his girlfriend a week prior. 

He said that making songs was an outlet for expressing his feelings during this difficult time. 

“It was like therapy for me … it was getting me through this time of separation from this person I depended on for so long,” Shack said. 

He hadn't shared these songs with anyone, until one night when his sister came home while he was working on a song and asked to hear his work. His music brought her to tears and she encouraged him to pursue and share his music. 

Shack recorded frequently during the summer of 2023. Shack worked closely with Rhodes, who shifted away from rapping and began teaching himself to produce, the duo sent each other beats and verses. Gradually, they both began to take their new interests seriously. 

It was also around this time that Shack began a new job and quickly became friends with a coworker named Sephyr. When he learned Sephyr was a singer, he asked her to sing the chorus for a song he had written a few months earlier. 

When she recorded the song, he realized it differed from anything he had recorded before. The song became his first single, “Around the World”, which he recorded in October 2023. This led Shack to write more songs with Sephyr’s voice in mind, and she began coming over to record on a daily basis.

At this point, Shack had well over an album’s worth of songs, and wanted to work toward releasing his music. He reached out to Seattle artist, Charlieonnafriday and asked if he could recommend any engineers. It turned out the engineer he recommended, Jordan Santana, was a huge fan of Shack’s YouTube videos, and upon hearing Shack’s music agreed to help out. By January 2024 Shack had finished his debut album, “Galactic Melody”.

After shooting and releasing a music video for “Around the World,” he released the album in April. 

The first half of “Galactic Melody” consists of introspective beats often featuring emotional soul samples and mellow piano melodies. In these somber songs, Shack’s lyrics carry his unique sense of humor while still being vulnerable, honest, and often self-deprecating. He stressed that these songs were a product of his tough times. 

“It’s not like I sit there and I plan it … It’s like, I’m hurting right now and I’m in pain and I need to get this out,” Shack said. “Sometimes it isn’t even in a song. I got it out because I got coffee with a friend and I talked about it … But I think during that time with a lot of those songs I felt like I couldn’t even describe it to my friends or my parents … I need a beautiful beat and then the music fills in the emotions and says what I’m not saying”

Shack and the elephant mascot from his album “Galactic Melody” (Photo/Courtesy of Howard Shack)

Shack admits he isn’t obsessive when it comes to songwriting. He doesn’t write when he’s out and about, and his journal isn’t full of lyrics but rather simple recaps of his days and his mood. He understands the value of being in touch with himself and making art that reflects that. Shack’s goal isn’t to tell listeners how he’s feeling but to show them.

While the first half of the album focuses on the frustrating circumstances that led Shack to make music, the second half features more upbeat instrumentals, with club-inspired rhythms. He credits this dance music sensibility to his mother. 

“My mom is the biggest dancer, the most full of life person … She used to club all the time in New York City, she would play house music for me growing up,” Shack said.

Shack says it also reflects his happier emotional state as he began spending more time with Sephyr. He says they would often dance together at work and working with her inspired him to take his music more seriously, once again showing how he uses music to express his mental state. 

“The reason I started the album with a slower sadder sound, and then it ends in that upbeat way is because that's how that year had progressed,” Shack said. “It started with me breaking up with my girlfriend but then it ended with me meeting a new girl and feeling more optimistic about the future and about life.” 

Since releasing “Galactic Melody,” Shack has released singles, “Mario Kart”, “A Lil Sum,” and “Gemini”. Shack hopes to release another project in 2025, and says that his goals for the next year are to improve at piano, gain more experience performing live, and play with other musicians and artists. However he doesn’t want to rush the artistic process. He wants his next project to be something new, he described it as “Different sounds, different melodies, new stories.”