The Dayton Family didn’t just put Flint on the map in the 1990s rap and hip hop scene. The sound they helped create defined Midwest music and, more than 30 years after their debut, is still only describable as uniquely and distinctively “Flint.”
For evidence, look no further than their new single, ‘One Family,’ which is available on Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube beginning on July 14.
“I can’t even really put it in words,” said Ira ‘Bootleg’ Dorsey, a founding member of the iconic group. “It’s been upwards of 15 years since we released any new Dayton Family music together. We’ve done solo stuff, but we haven’t joined forces in a long time, so it feels amazing to get back with my brother, Raheen Peterson, and to create this new project that we’ve been working on for over a year now.”
The Dayton Family, named after the street they grew up on in Flint, formed when Dorsey and Peterson (‘Shoestring’) met through their brothers, and were soon joined by Matt ‘Backstabba’ Hinkle. Their music has always featured powerful, truthful stories and lyrics based on their own life experiences growing up in Flint, and ‘One Family’ stays true to that legacy.
“They (people listening) are just in store for the Dayton Family experience, a powerful delivery and strong lyrical content,” Dorsey said. “We believe in giving our fans the music the way we’ve been giving it to them since we started. That’s why we’ve had so much success and longevity in the game, because we’ve always stayed true to our Flint roots and the Flint sound. We’ve never tried to switch up or cater or follow trends or ride waves. We’ve always just stayed consistent with the Dayton Family inner-city of Flint sound.”
That sound was not only instrumental in sharing the city’s truths in the 1990s – particularly on 1995’s ‘Flint Town,’ still an anthem in the city to this day – it also provided a path to better lives for all of the members of the group. Dorsey said that, in many ways, music saved them.
“It gave me and my group members direction,” Dorsey said. “We were young, we were teenagers when we started, and without a lot of male influence in our lives. We turned to music, and it gave us an outlet, a voice, a way to express ourselves, a way to vent. Music, at the end of the day, saved all our lives, you know? Even when the record labels closed and stopped pushing the music, we decided, for our fans, that we would do it ourselves. It would’ve been easy to walk away because music ain’t really paying no bills like it did back in the ’90s in the new digital age. But we decided we were gonna give our fans a last hurrah.”
That last hurrah includes more than just their new single. Dorsey said the group has recorded more than 50 new songs, they have new videos coming out, and they plan on debuting new music over the coming weeks and months. The inspiration to get back together in the studio was a simple one: their fans wanted it.
“Our fans played the primary role,” Dorsey said. “They were inboxing us over the years just saying they miss good, genuine music, real down-to-earth, solid music. They wanted that original Dayton Family feel, and only we could bring it to them, can’t nobody do the Dayton Family better than the Dayton Family. We decided to put all the small things aside, take money out the equation, and just give the fans what they wanted. They deserve it. They carried us for over 35 years in the music industry.”
In addition to new music, the Dayton Family also plans a busy performance schedule to connect with fans. They performed at Pure Pro Wrestling’s RetroSlam event in the spring in Flint and were recently announced as the headliners at Carriage Town’s annual Porchfest from 5-10 p.m. on July 17.
Porchfest, entering its seventh year, converts six blocks of the city’s historic Carriage Town neighborhood into stages that feature musicians, performers, and artists from a wide range of genres for a free, family-friendly event that draws thousands of people to the heart of Flint. Other performers this year include Jontae Kemp and Canja De Boa.
This year’s event also includes a collaboration with rappers, chefs, street artists, and fashion designers from Jacksonville, Florida, at the historic Nash House at 307 Mason Street. The porch will host sets by Jacksonville’s DJ Larry Love, Intricate the Almighty, Kale James, and Flash the Samurai with more inside the home.
For Dorsey, the opportunity to share the stage and scene with up-and-coming Flint artists while performing in his hometown is a responsibility he doesn’t take lightly.
“I love handing the baton off in a sense and to see young artists come up and the new things they’re doing and the new creative methods they have of promoting and marketing their music,” Dorsey said. “When we started, there wasn’t any social media, so we had to do it from the trunk, hand to hand combat, if you will. Seeing new artists and the inventive ways, they are so creative and there’s so much talent in Flint, it is just overflowing. If Flint was the size of New York, it would be thousands of major artists coming out of Flint, you know? And it’s so much harder coming from a smaller city to get on in the music industry, so you have to respect it even more. That’s why our career was just God-sent, because coming from Flint, Michigan, to go worldwide, platinum albums, you know, it was just a beautiful experience, because we did it from nothing, from zero.”
Flint’s reputation in the rap and hip hop ecosystem now spans multiple decades, with MC Breed and the Dayton Family putting the city on the map in the 1990s. The city has also had three artists make the cover of influential rap magazine XXL Magazine’s annual ‘freshman class’ list. That list began in 2007 and includes 10-12 new artists to watch each year. In its history, it has included names like Lupe Fiasco, Plies, Wale, Kid Cudi, J. Cole, Nipsey Hussle, Big Sean, Wiz Khalifa, 21 Savage, Jack Harlow, and many more people who later became major stars.
In 2013, Flint native Dizzy Wright made the list. Flint’s Jon Connor made it in 2014. This year, Flint’s Babyfxce E made it.
Jeff Skigh, a Flint rapper, artist, and organizer who books acts for events around the city including Porchfest, has said it is an intentional choice to connect newer artists with icons from Flint’s music roots. Last year, Connor headlined Porchfest. Another influential 1990s act, Brady Gozza of the Artfull Dodgers, just headlined Buckham Alley Fest on July 11 downtown Flint. Skigh said during an interview after Carriage Town Live in June that it is vital for young acts to connect with the city’s rich music history.
“Especially with rap music, sometimes there’s a disconnect between younger and older artists where they feel like they don’t relate or they can’t come to the same spaces,” Skigh said. “I just kind of wanna eliminate that. I don’t think that should exist.”
Dorsey said he’d “like to salute” Skigh for creating environments for multiple generations of artists to connect.
“We love Flint, we always want to make Flint happy and give them something productive to do and see,” Dorsey said. “Jeff Skigh and his whole team, inviting us and paying homage to the artists from the 90s and letting us get in front of a younger crowd, younger artists, and expose them to the sound of Flint that originated it all is an honor and a pleasure. It’s always an honor and pleasure to perform in Flint, it’s hometown love. The new music is so incredible, we ain’t missed a beat. We linked up with a lot of younger producers and it just turned out beautiful music.”
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