Since his first mixtape “Blood Money Gang,” Black Zheep DZ has evolved his style to tell his life story as a young, black man growing up in Baltimore. Now, the budding artist has become one of the most recognizable faces not only in his hometown, but in the sphere of underground rap period.

One of Zheep’s many passions has always been fashion. In middle school, Zheep began to lose interest in music. He gained acceptance into a number of fashion schools following high school, however he declined the offers. With the growing question of what to do after school, Zheep decided to revisit his old friend, music.

At the age of 18, Zheep moved to Los Angeles where he learned the ropes of recording. After a month, however, Zheep realized he wasn’t ready quite yet; “I went over there thinking things was about to be easy. I wasn’t my ‘full me ‘yet, I didn’t know who I was.” He quickly learned that being an artist was part making the music, but being the complete package outside of the studio as well. “Being from Baltimore, we not used to communicating, talking to people you never met before and I wasn’t used to that,” he said.

After returning back home to Baltimore, he dropped his “Platinum ’93” mixtape in 2012 which spring-boarded him into a limelight. Zheep says the buzz that “Platinum ’93” received was unexpected, saying “I was just making that off the fun tip.”

Staying consistent, Zheep followed up with his next project, the self-titled “Zheep.” The “Zheep” project was a reinvention of himself, attempting to not create the same sound its predecessor “Platinum ’93.” After the release of “Platinum ’93,” 2016 XXL Freshman Denzel Curry reached out to Zheep expressing his fandom of the project, especially a song off the project titled “Vintage.” “He was like I fuck with that shit heavy,” said Zheep “and from there we just been rocking.” The two would collaborate for one of the songs from the “Zheep” project titled “4.1.0.”

Zheep would go on to release the video for “What You Saying” and later sign to New York-based record label Mishka NYC in 2014. Following his success with singles like “Ice Hot” in 2015, Zheep released his album “Mirror Mirror,” which Zheep says his favorite song by himself titled “The Other Side” is from.

“I’m not about to try to fit in now when all this time I been the different nigga,” he said; “Sky is the limit, I’m tryna take this shit everywhere, like globally.”

Zheep’s music has progressed by him being his own biggest critic, he says; “I listen to me enough to critique myself to be like what could be better.” Since his time in Los Angeles when he said he was not ready as his full self, he’s improved his delivery, vocal control, ear for beats, and those crucial networking abilities his younger self was not capable of possessing.

Facing road blocks led Zheep to get to where is at today. “I was just dropping stuff from MediaFire…people was listening to it, but I was tryna send it to blogs because I thought they were the biggest thing, but they wasn’t picking it up,” said Zheep. It wasn’t until he started gaining a steady, organic fan base that sites like 2DopeBoyz, Elevator, Noisey, and a list of other platforms that up-and-coming artists hold in high regard to this day, began to spotlight Zheep more often. “The music was good, but it wasn’t ready,” said Zheep.

Now that the music is ready, Zheep has been able to open for the likes of Xavier Wolf and Top Dawg Entertainment artists ScHoolboy Q and Jay Rock. He’s also recently performed in New York, Philadelphia, Virginia, and D.C. Zheep did a show with Chicago’s own Lucki, where Zheep says the two were already familiar with eachother’s music. “Being on tour, it’s hard work,” said Zheep, “It ain’t easy. I can tell you that it’s fun performing, but it ain’t a piece of cake especially starting at the position we at now.”

This summer, Zheep has released songs like “Jammin’,” “Like Glue” and “Mr. Clean” to build anticipation for his upcoming “20/20” project set to release during the fourth quarter of 2016.

You can follow Zheep on Soundcloud, Twitter, Instagram as well as find some of his older projects on Bandcamp.