Dev09 Writes Songs To Deal With Her Bipolar Disorder

Each week, we're bringing you a new video by one of 300 Entertainment's best up-and-coming artists, as part of the BRKRS series. Each musician was placed in the same 10x10 room, with the assignment to make the space their own and tell their audience who they really are. They're the next big names in the music industry, we're just letting you know first.

DISCLAIMER: This article speaks about drug use and mental illness. If you or someone you know is struggling with either, you can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Helpline at 1-800-622-4357.

Dev09 got her start by talking shit on Twitter. No, really. She tweeted a callout to music site Pigeons and Planes, who ended up premiering her song "You Made Me"—which wasn't even her original goal.

"I think I said, 'You guys need to be posting more quality over quantity,' and they said something sassy back," she told Shanté Cosme. "I was like, 'Well, now that you're here, check out my music,' and so they checked out the song and they were like, 'Oh okay, this is actually good.'"

That one premiere served as a jump-start to her career, she said, and "got [her] foot into the music industry door and allowed [her] to start doing sessions in L.A. to create more music."

The music video created in the BRKRS room is a visual for her latest single, "Oh Shit." The song's lyrics focus on the singer's struggle with addiction and her bipolar disorder. She told Cosme that she wrote this song, and some of the others on her EP Bored, when she was still struggling with drug addiction and mental illness, before she went to rehab. "Oh Shit" talks about dissociation and the anxieties of overdosing or causing harm to others while on drugs. "It gets very real," she said.

Throughout her music, Dev09 takes her bipolar disorder into account, and uses it to shine light on how, when you're in a manic state, "the reality [of a situation] and how you are perceiving it are not always in line with each other." So, she says, "I like to write from my manic perspective and really highlight how crazy it is." This not only helps her deal with her experiences with drug abuse and mental illness, but it also helps others realize how she's feeling when she's in those situations.

Even though she's reached a certain level of success at such a young age, Dev09 doesn't ever want to think that she has peaked, or mastered her craft. "I would like for my whole career to be a work in progress," she said. "I always want to keep constantly developing my sound, making as good of music as I can possibly make." And to do that, she says, she doesn't want to get comfortable with her place in the industry: "I think a big part of that is challenging myself."

Watch the video for "Oh Shit," above.