Dej Loaf

DeJ Loaf blends the fluid delivery of modern R&B with rap verses and choruses that shift between threat and allure. The Detroit native first drew widespread notice in 2014 via “Try Me,” a track that spread online before earning gold status and securing her a major-label contract along with a slot on Eminem’s Detroit posse cut “Detroit vs. Everybody.” Platinum-level team-ups with Big Sean on “Back Up” and Future on “Hey There” quickly followed, both appearing on the 2015 Columbia EP #AndSeeThatsTheThing. Across the subsequent decade she continued issuing standalone singles and featured verses while also dropping the Jacquees collaboration Fuck a Friend Zone in 2017, Sell Sole II in 2020, and the 2024 full-length End of Summer, each released on her own Yellow World and Family Foundation imprints.

Born Deja Trimble on Detroit’s east side, she began composing rhymes as a child. After leaving the junior-varsity basketball team in high school she turned her attention more fully to music. She later adopted the stage name DeJ Loaf, pronouncing the first half like “beige” and taking the second from her habit of wearing loafers. While briefly attending Saginaw Valley State and holding a custodial job at a Chrysler plant, she kept honing her craft without attracting much attention. In July 2014, two years after her debut mixtape, she posted the understated, melodic “Try Me,” produced by Ypsilanti’s DDS; Drake’s Instagram shout-out dramatically raised her visibility and sparked numerous unofficial remixes, though she endorsed only the Wiz Khalifa version.

Once signed to Columbia she issued a follow-up mixtape and joined Eminem, Royce da 5'9", Big Sean, Danny Brown, and Trick Trick on the Aftermath track “Detroit vs. Everybody.” The label’s official single release of “Try Me” climbed into the Top Ten of Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs chart. DDS also handled “We Good,” her next major-label single. Following several headline shows she closed 2014 by supporting admirer Erykah Badu at Detroit’s Fox Theatre. In 2015 she dropped the #AndSeeThatsTheThing EP and the charting “Back Up” with Big Sean. The 2016 mixtape All Jokes Aside preceded her Lil Durk collaboration “My Beyoncé.” Fuck a Friend Zone, a joint project with Jacquees, surfaced in 2017, the same year Columbia released the non-album singles “No Fear” and “Big Ole Boss.”

Now operating independently, DeJ issued the six-track EP Go DeJ Go, Vol. 1 in 2018. Early 2020 brought the subdued single “Bubbly,” which was soon followed by the four-song projects It’s a Set Up! and No Saint; both paved the way for October’s Sell Sole II mixtape. After several largely solo singles she returned in October 2024 with the album End of Summer. That second LP mixed sparse, hard-hitting beats on cuts such as the Kash Doll duet “Ladies Leave Your Man at Home” and “Miami Flow” with the Babyface Ray slow jam “Can You Take It.”