Iann Dior “You Will Never See the Ending”
Some people aren’t destined for civilian life, instead driven to chase a dream. It’s a deep-seated urge that can harden into something like a pathology. For Iann Dior, born Michael Ian Olmo, that dream was music, and he chased it by any means necessary. That meant tattooing his hands before he was even legal to drink in his home state of Texas, an extreme act of rebellion to avoid serving in the Navy.
After a spell of unemployment, his veteran father suggested he enlist. After all, it was that career path that had lifted Dior Sr. and his family out of homelessness. Inked up and unemployed, the then-teenage rapper was kicked out of the house after refusing to enlist.
Six months later, he was in Los Angeles, swatting away record label offers. It sounds like a fable, The Boy With the Hand Tattoos, which would tell of a rebellious child striking gold as a lesson to never stifle your creativity. Several hits (like the quadruple-platinum “Mood”), nearly 10 million monthly Spotify listeners and billions of streams later, Dior has come to terms with the surreal, lonesome nature of his success off the heels of his latest EP, Nothings Ever Good Enough II. “You’re just the narrator,” he tells me over the phone, speaking in the quiet lull of his Los Angeles home.
“If you stop telling the story, you’ll never see the ending.”
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