Yonny, 24, is probably the hottest Seattle hip-hop artist you’ve never heard of.
Take it from Seattle musicians: Gaining commercial traction isn’t just hard work but a statistical improbability. Success can feel lucky, even if it’s not. And the ensuing perks can feel too good to be true, even if they’ve been earned. These philosophical questions are just dawning on emerging hip-hop artist Yonny, who happens to be eating a hamburger off the trunk of his sedan in the parking lot of the Lake City Dick’s Drive-In. “Without a doubt,” he says, “‘City in Motion’ changed my life.”
“City in Motion,” the first single off Yonny’s breakout album, dropped in February 2024. After a year it’s been streamed on Spotify close to 2 million times. These days, Yonny’s life is changing faster than ever.
Yonny, 24, is probably the hottest Seattle hip-hop artist you’ve never heard of. Born Yonatan Daniel, he lives unassumingly with his mother and older sister in Lynnwood. He graduated from Edmonds-Woodway High School in 2019 and, with college “not in the cards,” got to work as a COVID-era camp counselor, a self-described “Yard Guy” at Dunn Lumber in Everett, and most recently as a busser and server assistant at BeachHouse Bar & Grill in Kirkland, where he still works.
Yonny’s Everywhere, But Always swerves catchily between classic and neo vibes.
Then there’s Yonny’s other life. The new one. In this world Yonny is a rising star with more than a hundred thousand monthly listeners. He’s the lyrical mastermind behind this September’s excellent Everywhere, But Always, a nine-track LP swerving catchily between classic and neo vibes, tied together with remarkably mature delivery and flow. He also features in a number of music videos from said project, including “Summertime Madness”—shot on California’s Mount Tamalpais and Whidbey Island’s Fort Ebey—and the Seattle-centric “City in Motion,” which has already racked up 125,000 views.
It’s all quite impressive for a 24-year-old. But Yonny’s an old soul. He’s not coasting, and he’s not content with the label of being a “local” artist, either. “The thing I’ve learned,” he says of his early years on the Seattle scene, “is that people all want to claim they’re from here, and that they’ve been here forever. I think what people fail to realize is that the only way we can go big, the way we can put Seattle’s stamp on hip-hop culture, is people have to get out. There’s so many artists here, but none of us are able to break through that wall. It’s super important to me to bring Seattle everywhere else. And to do that, you gotta go.”
Yonny’s Top 5 Local Albums
Yonny: “It’s gonna be a really wonky-ass list, but here we go. Let’s see…I can’t put mine up there.”
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Nevermind by Nirvana
“On there for sure.” -
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace by the Foo Fighters
“I listened to ‘The Pretender’ nonstop for a long time.” -
LINDENAVE! by Oblé Reed
“That’s just a great album.” -
All in One Night (and singles) by Lazā
“One of my favorites.” -
The whole catalog from Travis Thompson
“I really love Travis Thompson. He’s my friend, too.”
Yonny’s musical journey began at home. His mother immigrated to the Pacific Northwest from Ethiopia in 1995 after winning a green card lottery, and became an R&B fan as she was learning English. She would always have the radio on while raising Yonny and his older sister. “Michael Jackson,” Yonny remembers. “Ne-Yo.” The three of them would be “singing all the time,” adding Ethiopian songs to the mix when radio got stale. Outside the house, a craze was sweeping through Cedar Valley Elementary having to do with the Chris Brown track “Look at Me Now,” featuring Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. “Everyone was trying to learn the verse that Busta Rhymes did,” says Yonny. “The super-fast one.”
“Cause I’m feelin’ like I’m runnin’ and I’m feelin’ like I gotta get away, get away, get away.…”
It’s classic Busta, condensed triplets and cross-meter theatrics, half serious, half silly, all chops. Yonny and his friends admired the physicality of the verse and agreed: “If you could learn how to do that, you’re the coolest person in here.” Yonny did just that, to the point where kids were requesting it in the hall.
Granted, Yonny was just a kid when this happened. But in some regards his journey had begun. He’d also been wading into the autodidactic ocean that is YouTube, latching onto classic acts like Eminem, Tupac, Biggie, and Wu-Tang Clan. “A lot of Eminem,” he specifies. “Yeah. Eminem was dope.”
For Yonny it all started with a Busta Rhymes impression in his school hallways.
The rapping took a backseat for a while in middle school—how could it not?—but in freshman year of high school Yonny became obsessed with Dr. Dre’s 2001 and “learned every lyric to every song.” He transferred high schools for sophomore year and reconnected with old friends who were similarly into hip-hop. “We would just sit in the car and freestyle, in my friend Dom’s old Camry.” After a while, Yonny’s peers took note of what they were hearing. “I didn’t think about it in that sense,” he says. “But they were like, you know, you should start taking this seriously.”
A friend linked Yonny to the producer Evan George in 2021. George was on the lookout for a deep voice to add to his tracks. “That’s the first time a producer ever hit me up,” says Yonny. “I was like, oh my God.” George kept a small studio in the back of the Kennelly Keys Music store in Lynnwood. Yonny visited “multiple times a week.” Beyond that, “[George] was taking me to places, introducing me to people. We worked really well together. And it felt like we were growing with one another.”
Yonnny passed hours and hours freestyling in his buddy’s Camry in high school.
Yonny turned 21 that year. He could finally go to club shows, get out on the scene. He and George poured their talents and time into an EP called Ghetto Sunset, releasing it toward the end of 2022. They’d planned to run full steam ahead after that, but Yonny sensed that something was off. “I was forcing stuff.” So they canceled all further releases toward the start of 2023 and went back to the drawing board, enlisting the production help of Jake Crocker, whom Yonny had met through a mutual friend. “They’re like my big brothers,” says Yonny of Crocker and George.
The new three-man team spent a while “formulating a sound,” which for Yonny meant listening to other projects and keeping an open mind. At lunch breaks in Everett, he’d sit in his car out in the lumberyard and record demos on his phone. “There are a lot of days where I’m just sitting there thinking, like, man, what am I doing?”
Yonny’s Top 5 Hip-Hop Albums
- DAMN. by Kendrick Lamar
- 2001 by Dr. Dre
- The Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem
- Tha Carter III by Lil Wayne
- Blackout! by Method Man & Redman
That question would answer itself in about a year’s time, forming the opening lyrics on Yonny’s new release.
Since a youth I always had a way with speaking, Tryna get these verses off inside the Camry every weekend / Now I’m reaching—Stop! Reaching high like drowning in the deep end, Matter fact, matter fact boy I been thinkin’ / What’s my part in this, What’s the reason for all of this, Labels abusing artists for viewership, music marketing, tell me your target audience.…
A huge break arrived in 2022 when Yonny linked up with local videographers Nash Pearson and Finn Baker, both 21 years old. Working separately and as a duo, their punchy, viral-worthy music videos added a degree of shine to Yonny’s already polished product, putting the Everywhere, But Always experience over the top. “They’re willing to listen to my crazy-ass ideas and actually make it happen,” says Yonny.
Yonny is staying humble and enjoying the ride—but he’s ready for big things.
Yonny’s most recent crazy-ass idea? That would probably be this Dick’s Drive-In parking lot, which he personally selected for our November interview and photo shoot. Thankfully the rain’s holding off, and the photographer’s just arrived with a rented convertible. (Top down, natch.) Remember: Yonny’s hit single dropped in February, his hit album in September. It’s not like he’s used to any of this. Not yet. But he’s staying humble and enjoying the ride. In a week he’ll head to New York for a one-off gig, his first time ever in the Big Apple. Yonny’s clearly excited for it. But he’s also trying to take things one step at a time. It’s just like he says in “City in Motion.”
Hold on, ain’t nobody skip the process / We been in it for the progress.
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