Lucky Daye hit rock bottom before finding fame.
According to Vice, the New Orleans, LA, native, who lived through Hurricane Katrina, uprooted his life to live in Tyler, TX. In his earlier years, he attended a church that discouraged secular music and enforced strict rules on singing only church hymns and nursery rhymes. Daye also mentioned that the church was an environment that reportedly used harsh discipline toward children in the congregation. His mother would later leave the church and brought his family into various organizations in search of a new church home.
Daye would later choose Christianity through new eyes, which separated him further from his family before the 400-mile trip to Tyler.
“I went [to church] and said, ‘I know I’m supposed to sing, but God is telling me that this is not what I’m supposed to be doing,’” he explained. I left and never went back to [that] church. They never talked to me again. My grandma, my mama, my uncle—none of them. Nobody talked to me. Nobody supported me, and at that moment I realized it was just me.”
No longer feeling constrained by his upbringing, Daye chose to pursue a solo career in music under his birth name, David Brown, and moved to Atlanta, GA. He was able to snag a gig with fellow New Orleanian August Alsina as a songwriter, but in a quest for a new start he made his way to Los Angeles, CA. Daye’s initial foray into in the entertainment capital of the world was far from glamourous.
“I came to LA and I realized I didn’t know sh-t,” he mentioned, according to Vice. “There were a lot of deals I was in that I didn’t know I was in that I had to get out of. I was sitting in lobbies like I was Ice Cube and sh-t, thinking, ‘Somebody gon’ talk to me.’ I’m going through it, and I’m realizing it’s just a bunch of people listening to a bunch of people. Nobody wants to hear me say, ‘I’m tight’; they want to hear somebody else say it.”
He added, “It got to a point where I ran out of friends, money, and hope. Ever since I was a kid, people have always said, ‘You’ve got a gift.’ I realized maybe music ain’t for me, and it hurt because I swore this is my thing. This is all I’ve got.”
During an interview with Amazon Music, Daye cites this time period in Los Angeles as his “darkest tipping point.” With limited funds, he resorted to water fasts, occasionally stopping near a Shell gas station to buy celery sticks.
“My darkest tipping point, it was in LA. I was out here. I was still going to sessions and I was in a terrible situation. Not terrible, but terrible for me, especially with all this purpose I feel like I’m supposed to be doing, and I’m stagnant, but I’m doing that and struggling outside,” Daye said while speaking with Amazon Music. “Ran out of money. Dude from Atlanta, got my bag, came out here, and I’m eating celery every day. I used ‘going on a fast’ as an excuse to not eat. Cause I couldn’t afford full food. So I would go on, like, water fasts. And then once it was over and I felt like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna die.’ I started buying celery stalks. So I would just catch the bus to my sessions, buy celery, and that’s what I would eat. And that was my lowest point.”
He continued, “I was like, I can’t afford nothing n-gga. Like, 69 cent celery stalks is all I can eat. And I would just hit that Ralph’s over there on Fairfax, I think it’s on by the Shell station. That was probably the lowest for me.”
Ready to see the world differently, he changed his name to reflect his new approach to life and how he saw luck, using “Lucky Daye” with an “e” like Marvin Gaye, per Vice. He then gave himself an ultimatum while couch hopping: fully commit to his music career or move back to New Orleans. He chose to pursue his music and rekindled with engineer Dernst “D’Mile” Emile, whom he initially met in Atlanta.
His debut album, “Painted,” would release in 2019 and featured tracks such as “Real Games,” “Karma,” and his breakthrough hit, “Roll Some Mo,” which had been streamed 60 million times worldwide by 2021, per The Grammy Museum.
The album received favorable reviews from Rolling Stone, Complex, NPR, Essence, Hypebeast, and Billboard, among other outlets.
Daye also received four Grammy nominations surrounding his debut, including Best R&B Song, Best R&B Performance, Best Traditional R&B Performance, and Best R&B Album.
