By: Robyn Mowatt | Photography By: Juwan James

To understand Dawn Richard is to fully engage with her humanity and her creative inclinations. Richard is more than a brilliant musician and singer—she’s a self-actualized Black woman who has found what sparks her internal excitement and zest for life. This is inherent in the work she has released throughout her musical career. It’s also apparent in her visual interpretation of style. Her contributions to the alternative-music market are extensive, but what’s equally remarkable is how she has marched to the beat of her own drumthrough every era.

Her latest album, Quiet in a World Full of Noise, is a genre-­bending collection that continues to build on her boldly original artistic vision. With the neoclassical composer Spencer Zahn, Richard has created an atmospheric blend of soul, jazz and vocalizing, for an acoustically layered contribution to the contemporary classical music space. The album feels intimate and mysterious; it’s a testament to how the artist has blossomed and matured as an independent music maker, unafraid to experiment and chart her own course. 

Richard is often associated with a period in her life when she was part of the mainstream music industry. She was part of the cast of the reality show Making the Band 3, and her musical journey includes having been signed to Bad Boy Records by hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs. It was Combs who created the ­television series and the groups Richard would become a part of, including Danity Kane and, later, Diddy-Dirty Money. That season of her life reportedly brought some painful experiences, which led to ­Richard filing a lawsuit against Combs last September, alleging sexual abuse and battery.

Originally from New Orleans, Richard can trace her family back at least four generations on her father’s side. Her mother was born and raised in New Iberia, Louisiana; Richard grew up with one sibling, a brother.  “My great-great-great-great grandfather came from Haiti, and emigrated from there to New Orleans,” she says over a video call. Those deep roots in the Crescent City were instrumental in shaping how Richard sees the world, especially with regard to music. There are many musicians on her father’s side of the family; and her father himself is the lead singer of the funk group Chocolate Milk.

“I grew up in a very artistic family and also an academic family,” Richard says. “Education was very important to my family. On my mom’s side, academia was predominantly the job choice. My mom went into education, as an elementary school teacher.” 

Her mother also founded a dance school and taught tap classes, so it’s no surprise that dance played a large role in Richard’s life through her childhood. Her relationship with movement became a way for her to release emotions.  “It’s spiritual,” she notes reflectively. “It’s something from our ancestral origins.”

Richard recalls that her mother also used the art of dance to express the richness and depth of her family’s lineage—and of the community’s as well. She recalls her mother bringing people together through movement; and the dance school made classes available to those who couldn’t afford more expensive  programs. 

“My mom’s school became a haven for young parents and children,” Richard says. “Not only did the movement she taught create freedom, it also created a community of people who deserved more—people who needed to have a voice.” Her mother’s love for movement, and the way she shared that with her community, helped Richard create the stories that inspire the music on her albums. In that way, dance served as a gateway to her music career. 

Her relationship with clothing can also be traced back to the artistic influences of her childhood. Richard remembers resisting her mom’s efforts to get her to wear pink and ruffles in her earliest years. “I knew who I was,” she states, and being a traditional girly-girl wasn’t it. She recalls being active and athletic growing up—and getting her hair dyed pink and blue for her 16th birthday. During this era of her life, she embraced alternative styles—ranging from what she describes as “alt bunny girl” to tomboy. She was also heavily into rock and alt-rock music then, and she dabbled in that style aesthetic, too. “I was a Black girl who was pushing completely outside the norms,” she says.

For her junior prom, Richard turned to Harold Clarke—a well-known and highly sought-after couturier with an atelier in New Orleans—to design her dress. For Richard, the gown Clarke ended up creating for her became an unforgettable fashion moment. It was a satin Elizabethan garment with a deep green, intricately laced bustier that evoked grand period pieces. She insists that the gown would rival anything being done at Elsa Schiaparelli and Jean Paul Gaultier currently. 

“My mom was so taken aback by me choosing that style—and I paired it with a white baby’s breath crown, like a halo crown,” Richard recalls. “And that was my junior prom. I wore these massive curls and looked like I should have been in the 1500s.” In keeping with this dramatic fashion statement, during her senior year, Richard made her official debut in society wearing a gown made of 4,000 pearls. Her mother and grandmother came out of pocket for the dress, which may have cost around $7,000. This fantastical yet exacting sense of style offered a glimpse of what was to come: Richard’s hyper-fixation on how she presented herself within the mainstream music industry. 

At 17, Richard chose music—and never looked back. Her career began with gigs in New Orleans; her first big break arrived when Anthony Hamilton invited her to open for him at a ­Valentine’s Day concert at the UNO Lakefront Arena. She continued honing her musical craft and improving her dance skills. The Valentine’s concert was followed by the opportunity to go into the studio with her father and work on her first album—titled Angeliqué, her middle name. “I never thought that my voice would be accepted,” she says of her honeyed contralto tones. “I thought I was too different.” 

Her involvement in Making the Band 3, in the 2000s, was highly publicized. Following the show, she was a part of the girl group Danity Kane, up until the act was disbanded in 2009. ­Diddy-Dirty Money came next. By 2012, that music group too had been disbanded, and Richard was released from her Bad Boy contract.

Richard recalls that when she first branched out as an independent artist, she frequently heard that what she was doing was overly ambitious—that her dreams were beyond reach. Fortunately, she kept following her own beat. Now, 12 years after staking her claim, she recognizes that there has been a creative shift in the industry. She notes that the music market these days features independent artists who initiate “a lot of the themes and trends that mainstream artists now carry.” 

Richard’s own body of independent work is both impressive and pioneering. Her 2019 album, New Breed, and the exploratory singles that preceded it displayed an assured artistic sensibility. Her willingness to experiment also led to her dazzling Second Line, released in 2021 under indie label Merge Records. Fusing bounce, jazz, disco, house, R&B and soul, the album is a  love letter to New Orleans; it pulls from Richard’s family history and her experiences in the city she holds close to her heart. 

Her next album, Pigments, created with Spencer Zahn, also explores multiple musical genres. It highlights contemporary and jazz riffs—and is a riveting example of the otherworldly collaborations of the two artist-composers. As a team, Richard and Zahn make music with a unique shine. 

“I’ve been able to be on both sides. I’m grateful that I can be underground now, and have been mainstream, and have been respected on both sides of the coin,” Richard says. Many artists who’ve been where she is can sound jaded when discussing the differences between the mainstream music industry and the independent music market, but Richard is anything but. Rather, her vantage point is refreshing. 

“Everything Dawn does feels cutting-edge and forward-­thinking,” says Jason King, dean of the USC Thornton School of Music. “She has such a strong sense of identity, grounded in the present moment and in her connection to family, home, loved ones and her artistic community.”

Richard is regularly showcased in avant-garde and ­Afrofuturism-inspired pieces, for various musical releases or special occasions. Music and fashion are integral parts of her core. Her yearly Mardi Gras participation, and the ensembles she wears for it, express her NOLA roots in an authentic manner, in keeping with her family’s lineage.  “The Mardi Gras tribe I mask with is Washitaw Nation,” Richard says. “I’ve masked with them for four years. I’ve created a suit for every year—and a special one for the 20th anniversary of Katrina.”

Richard’s current fashion choices, which she describes as leaning into Afrofuturism, are often edgy. The use of feathers and jewelry or face makeup, she notes, are odes to her family’s history and the culture in New Orleans. “I choose to play between two-spirited, both male and female gender—a lot of androgyny—where I wear a lot of feminine-sexy but also a lot of heavily masculine clothes,” she explains. “I’m tapping into African and indigenous cultures that were rooted in New Orleans long before colonization.”

Adds Gerrick Kennedy, an author and cultural critic who has known Richard for 15 years, “Dawn is an independent visionary whose idiosyncratic approach to R&B and electronic, and innovative use of technology, helped redefine how we see and think about Black women in pop music. Where others followed maps, she created territories, proving that true disruption rarely comes from within established systems but from those bold enough to color outside of the lines.”

What’s next for Richard? “I want to evolve as an artist,” she says simply. “I want to push myself to be the best I can be, and I also want to push myself to explore things that haven’t been touched. Every era for me is about evolution.”

Hair: Nadia Mays using Hair By Priss.
Makeup: Michelle Cardoza using Danessa Myricks Beauty.
Nails: Victoria Nguyen.
Photography Assistant: Chipo Kandake.
Fashion Assistant: Iman Eli.
Production: The Morrison Group.
Production Assistants: Gabbie Barabino and Amari Stewart.
Location: Hotel Peter & Paul, an Ash Hotel.