Don Louis Is Able to Battle for Nation Music Stardom (Unique)

Don Louis by no means appeared destined to be a rustic music star. 

“I met a woman, bought a woman pregnant, ended up dropping out of faculty, went to work at a sawmill after which began working constructing trailer properties,” recollects Louis, 27, throughout an interview with PEOPLE. “However that wasn’t my calling. I knew I wasn’t supposed to simply be on the market constructing trailer homes.”

As an alternative, on the time, Louis believed his true calling was to play soccer, which he proceeded to do as a celebrity defensive finish each at Ouachita Baptist College and Southern Arkansas College. “I used to be doing actual good,” he remembers. “I used to be in form. I used to be a bodily specimen. I saved getting invitations to professional camps, however then I ended up getting a knee damage actual unhealthy.”

It is that knee damage that led Louis to the place he finds himself proper now: an achieved singer/songwriter at the moment laying the bricks right down to type a agency basis in a style he has cherished since he was somewhat child. 

“I come from a 12-acre farm that is simply mud throughout us,” Louis says of his East Texas upbringing that had him listening to Waylon Jennings, George Jones and Toby Keith simply as a lot as he listened to Michael Jackson, The Weeknd and Kanye West.

Loopy sufficient, Louis began taking part in the guitar only a handful of years in the past. “I assumed loads of mediocre stuff was getting celebrated in America, and I assumed I might determine it out,” says Louis, who went viral on TikTok courtesy of his 2023 single “Neon You.” “I attempted to put in writing music that I needed to listen to that wasn’t getting performed, and now I bought youngsters out right here that need to pull the pants up and sing nation. So, it is a blessing.”

So too is the prospect to tour the nation, bringing his model of music to an viewers that appears to be craving it. 

“I am additionally going to have the ability to do hip-hop,” says Louis, who shares the music video for his newest single “Lengthy Time Comin’” on PEOPLE. “I am additionally going to have the ability to do R&B and nation and rock, and ain’t no person going to have the ability to cease me. I’ve simply been taking on. Simply bought a kick in my shoulder for all of the people who doubted me.”

Extra importantly, Louis has a slew of well-known supporters rooting him on.

“I left my city and went to Nashville and began making believers out of celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal and Jimmy Butler,” says Louis, who has additionally acquired the seal of approval from nation music titan Jelly Roll and Beyoncé‘s very personal mom Tina Knowles. “It simply feels superb to see individuals who even have a reputation beneath them displaying any sort of love in the direction of what you are doing.”

Granted, Louis is the primary one to confess that it has been a climb to get right here, and that climb is way from reaching its completion. 

“There was a time once I was like, ‘I do not need to be cocky or immodest, however I really feel like I am placing the identical quantity of labor on the identical stage as all these folks and I am not getting any sort of recognition,'” Louis remembers. “I used to be actually upset there for a bit, however I ended up simply specializing in my music. I stayed disciplined.”

It is this self-discipline that has led him right here, asserting the Aug. 23 launch of his album Liquor Talkin’. “I am actually bringing a brand new wave of nation that I simply could not discover,” he says. “No one’s executed half of what I’ve executed, and I am not even midway began.”

Definitely, these could possibly be thought of preventing phrases. However Louis is aware of that he’s worthy of this battle for nation music stardom.

“I do not like pulling the race card, however it will get pulled on me,” he says. “Being a Black and white man, I’ve by no means fairly match into wherever, and I’ve all the time needed to develop somewhat stronger or be somewhat smarter, so that they did not attempt to hold my ass with simply nonsense. I’ve all the time needed to have this battle as a result of I’ve by no means been given something.”

Even worse, folks have began calling him fortunate.

“I did the identical three issues day by day,” he says. “You did not discover it since you do not ever concentrate. You do not see sport day and you do not see the observe in between day by day that you simply go on the market and do the identical factor.” He pauses. “It is all the time been a battle for me. I’ve to have my head within the battle, however I bought God on my facet.”

He lets out amusing earlier than admitting, “And I need to be well-known, and I don’t know why.”