Iann Dior Used To Have A Different Stage Name Before He Hit It Big With "Mood"
24KGoldn’s “Mood” featuring Iann Dior became the No. 1 song on Spotify’s global chart on Sept. 20, and has been topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart since Oct. 19. The catchy tune scored 24KGoldn and Dior a coveted performance spot during the 2020 American Music Awards on Nov. 22, and as the track — and the singers — continue to gain notoriety, fans are left asking one very important question: Who is Iann Dior? The low-profile rapper has a pretty unique back story that will have fans eager to learn more.
Dior's rise to fame came with the release of his collab with 24KGoldn in July 2020, but he was making music way before that. More on that later, but first, here's a quote about how thankful Dior is for how far he's come in the past year.
"I feel accomplished. I’m very hard on myself," Dior told NME in a November 2020 interview. "I’ve been in the studio every single night, even after all this 'Number One' stuff happened. I’m not leaving the studio until another one. I’m only 21 and I’m doing things that take people years to do, so I’m definitely very excited about the future. But in the back of my mind this is nothing new. We want another one."
Here's a few key things to know about the rising star.
He Used To Go By A Different Name
Dior, born Michael Ian Olmo, kickstarted his music career in 2017 going by the mononym, Olmo. He credits changing his stage name for helping his career take off.
"The whole reason for me changing my name was that I was on my first flight to LA and I hated who I was before," he told NME. "I wanted to be something new so I put my middle name with my favorite brand that I could never afford. And it just worked. Now we get a bunch of it. We love dior, you know, it’s part of the brand. I worried about what other people thought, holding onto things that didn’t matter. I feel like everybody goes through phases in their life, where they deal with those kinds of things. But at that particular time in my life, I was really over it and I wanted to make it happen. I wanted to make sure that Olmo didn’t get in the way of what iann dior was coming to do."
He's Already Collabed With Some Big Names
Dior released his debut album, Industry Plant, on Nov. 8, 2019, and his record was best known for the singles "Emotions" and "Gone Girl." The success of Dior's debut album led him to team up with Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker to release "Sick and Tired" which dropped in April 2020. The following month, Dior and Lil Baby dropped their collab "Prospect."
He Embraces His Latino Culture
The 21-year-old artist was born in Puerto Rico, but moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, when he was just a child. Because of his Puerto Rican roots, Dior's first language was Spanish, and he plans to drop some Spanish music soon. "I have songs in Spanish, but I never knew when the right time to drop it was," he told NME. "I think very soon is definitely the time to do that now that the fan base is growing."
He's Got Big Dreams
Dior is hoping to expand his career into the world of acting. "I’m such a spontaneous person so I want to venture out," he told NME. "I like to do new things, so I’m definitely gonna get into acting. I want to do some voiceovers on cartoons. I think that’d be fire. I love art. Whenever I can’t explain my words, I put it into a painting and I think it’s really cool."
His Social Media Presence Is Low Key
With very little content on his Instagram page — minus a few plugs for his music — it seems Dior prefers to keep a low profile despite having one of the biggest song's of the year in 2020 and 1.3 million followers eagerly awaiting his next post.
