Dominic Fike (artist) • The Paul McCartney Project

Born:: Dec 30, 1995

About

Dominic David Fike (born December 30, 1995), is an American singer, rapper and songwriter. Born and raised in Florida, he learned how to play the guitar by the age of 10. Fike first received recognition after releasing several popular songs to SoundCloud. Following the release of his debut extended play, Don’t Forget About Me, Demos, he signed to Columbia Records.
Fike’s song “3 Nights” reached the top ten in multiple countries. He later collaborated with Brockhampton and Halsey. In June 2020, Fike released the single “Chicken Tenders”. In July of the same year, he released the single “Politics & Violence”. Fike’s debut album, What Could Possibly Go Wrong, was released the same month. The album charted in the top 50 of multiple countries, including the United States and Australia.
In September 2020, Dominic Fike became a headliner for the Fortnite concert series. A few months later, NME included Fike on their list of essential new artists for 2020. […]

In 2021, for the “McCartney III Imagined” project, Dominic Fike reimagined “The Kiss Of Venus” as “a retro-futuristic R&B tour de force“, according to the press release. The accompanying music video featured Paul McCartney at the very end of it.

when I started making this, the song wasn’t out yet and it was surreal to think that there was no youtube video to teach me how to play it. that I was the first person to get to figure it out. it started out as an exact cover but quickly morphed into this because there was no world where I was going to try and outdo the original so I made it my own. I still can’t believe this happened, thank you for being the ultimate source @paulmccartney
Dominic Fike – from Instagram, March 11, 2021

How was working with Paul McCartney?
I worked for Paul, which is how everyone always feels about working with Paul. I did get to talk to him a couple of times though. My manager was like, “Yo, Paul McCartney just hit you up.” I went to the studio, and I invited my drummer, Ryan, and he put drums over my singing.
Dominic Fike – From GQ, April 1, 2021

I was in my kitchen, making a sandwich, and my manager came up to me like, ‘Yo, I think Paul McCartney just hit you up. I was like, ‘Shut the fuck up,’ and I went back to making my sandwich. Then a month later, he was like, ‘By the way, that shit’s due in three days.’ So I went to the studio, and in three days, I created it — kind of like God and the earth. It’s kind of a biblical thing, if you really think about it. It’s fuckin’ deep, dude. […]
Normally, with any Paul McCartney song, you can go on YouTube, and type in ‘How to play …,’ and there’s, like, 70 different videos of people from different backgrounds in their rooms on webcams teaching you how to play it in different keys and shit. But there was none of that.
Dominic Fike – From Rolling Stone, April 15, 2021

From Rolling Stone, April 15, 2021:

Once he had the basics down, he invited his friend Ryan Raines to help build out the “fragmented pop-song energy” he was looking for, and freestyled a couple of new verses (“Have you read the paper?/People talking without no education/Go to college, go find your major/Realize you’re minor in the scheme of everything”). “I was like, ‘I don’t know if I like these lyrics,’” Fike recalls. “But [Raines] was like, ‘Nah, man, they’re Paul McCartney-esque.’ So we ran with that.” […]
For Fike, who grew up in Naples, Florida, in the 2000s, things were a little different. “I was made fun of a lot for listening to the Beatles as a kid,” he says. “I would go to school and try to put people on. One day, my friend Pat sat me down, like, ‘Yo, dude, you gotta stop this classic-rock shit.’”
Being tapped to work on the III Imagined project years later was “pretty validating,” Fike says. “Not that I was like, ‘Oh, I’m the man now that Paul hit me up.’ But I never thought he would hear any of my shit, or ever have an opinion on my existence at all.” Now, he’s looking forward to getting in the studio soon with McCartney for an informal studio session (“just two artists, freakin’ it in a room”).
A little while after Fike turned in his reinterpretation of “The Kiss of Venus,” he got another surprise. “[McCartney] called me when I was in Puerto Rico on vacation with my girlfriend,” he says. “He was like, ‘I fuckin’ love your version, man.’ He was telling me about how they made Sgt. Pepper’s and shit.” Fike laughs happily. “I was just trying not to be weird on the phone.”