Sam Dew

Falsetto-voiced Chicago native Sam Dew characterizes his forward-leaning R&B as "soul-pop," while his collaborative credits stretch from subterranean club tracks to chart-topping hip-hop. Beyond penning platinum-certified singles such as Wale's "Lotus Flower Bomb" (2011) and the Grammy-nominated ZAYN & Taylor Swift cut "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" (2016), Dew has methodically assembled his own catalog, culminating in Moonlit Fools, his debut full-length.

He first attracted notice early in the 2010s by co-authoring Wale's "Lotus Flower Bomb" and Rihanna's "Numb." Subsequent work on Wale's The Gifted and The Album About Nothing, plus guest spots on Skrillex's "Stranger" and Prefuse 73's "Infrared," preceded his own RCA-issued solo debut, the April 2015 EP Damn Sue, which was tracked alongside TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek. Throughout the balance of 2015 and 2016 he lent his pen to Lianne La Havas, Julio Bashmore, Santigold, and Clams Casino, supplied music for Spike Lee's Chi-Raq soundtrack, and co-wrote Taylor Swift and ZAYN's multi-platinum Fifty Shades Darker theme "I Don't Wanna Live Forever," earning a Best Song Written for Visual Media Grammy nod. Dew resurfaced as a lead act in 2017 via the singles "Runner" and "Remember," and supplied a radical reinterpretation of Bill Withers' "Use Me" for the Netflix series The Get Down. After maintaining a lower profile as a solo artist in 2018 and 2019, he joined Rafiq Bhatia of Son Lux for "Breaking English" and formed the Red Hearse alias with Sounwave and Jack Antonoff, releasing a self-titled EP. Still on RCA, Dew issued "NTWFL" (short for "Now That We Found Love," the Gamble & Huff song referenced in the hook) in 2020; produced by Sounwave and DJ Dahi, the track marked the first glimpse of the forthcoming Moonlit Fools.