For several years, Danny Foster had used the persona and stage name Woodro to carve out a rap music career that landed him on Tucson’s top stages and festivals.
But this summer, in a move that you can call an epiphany born of the chaos of 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, Foster dropped Woodro and reintroduced himself under what he calls his “government” name.
“I felt like I wanted to make stuff that deserved my real name and not hide behind a character I created at 15 in Tucson,” said the 20-year-old, who started his performance career in the eighth grade and has been writing rap music since sixth grade. “At a certain point I don’t need to live in this thing anymore. I just wanted to be entirely authentic with everything I was making. I didn’t want to hide behind the alias anymore.”
On Dec. 10, Foster, who has released a half-dozen mix tapes as Woodro, released his eponymous debut album under his own D4L imprint. “Daniel” opens with the soul-searching “What is Life” — “I trusted people with my vision and they broke that ... When I was thinking of giving up, I punch myself and I’m waking up” — and through a dozen songs penned in a guest room at his grandmother’s Tucson home in October, he shows a more mature and authentic focus.
“I felt the music I was making deserved my government name to represent it,” he said.
Foster stretches his vocal chops on “Goodbye,” set to brassy jazz rhythms, and experiments with inventive rhythms on several songs including the jazz piano backdrop to “My Life” and the pure pop of “Lose My Temper.” The beats are infectious — the percussive pulse of “2003” will have you involuntarily head-bopping — and his raps tell his story, from his professional ambitions to his personal relationships in a way he never felt comfortable doing hiding behind the Woodro persona.
Foster grew up in Tucson and had built a solid reputation and strong fan base, sharing the stage at the Rialto Theatre, 191 Toole and Club Congress with big name rappers including Warren G., Michael Christmas, Token and Vince Staples.
“I would go to the mall and people started recognizing me from the shows I did,” he recalled.
But as he was cementing a music reputation, his family moved to Nashville, Tennessee, 2½ years ago, just before Foster was to start his senior year at Sahuaro High School. Suddenly he found himself the new kid in school in a town that valued country music over all other genres.
It took him months to find the courage to express himself musically. In the final months of high school, he dropped a mix tape, “Son of Son,” and soon word got out among his peers that he was an artist. Strangers suddenly wanted to become his friend. “Foster Song” from the project garnered 20,000 streams in a week.
“That showed me the power I have musically,” he said, recalling how he went from being the kid sitting alone at lunch every day to the kid everyone wanted to talk to about his music. “I like to think that Nashville has had a cool impact on my life.”
And now Foster hopes to have an impact on Nashville, whose rap scene is often overshadowed by country music.
“I’m trying to spearhead a movement here” toward rap, he said. “It’s happening in Memphis it’s happening in Chattanooga. It’s happening all over the state.”
Foster said he is hoping to do that by building a fan base in his adopted Nashville, where his father John is an in-demand restaurant designer. (The senior Foster designed a number of Tucson restaurants including the long-closed Mr. K’s BBQ near the Tucson Mall and May’s Counter Chicken & Waffles near the UA, and he’s the designer and a partner in Fat Noodle ramen house near the Tucson Mall.)
“Every fan I make right now is crucial because they found me when I was smaller,” Foster said. “The focus is the grassroots fan base.”
He is hoping “Daniel,” which is available on most major download platforms through tucne.ws/dannyfoster, will help him achieve that.
“Listening to the album, I think the flow of it is much more genuine than if I just made 12 cool songs,” he said. “I tried to have everything flow in a very linear fashion. It was fun to do and I’m very excited. I waited a long time to make this.”
