dvsn released their debut album Sept. 5th on March 27, 2016 through OVO Sound, first as an Apple Music and iTunes exclusive before a wider release on April 1, 2016. The Toronto duo, singer Daniel Daley and producer Nineteen85, arrived with no faces and no biography attached, and the dvsn Sept 5th story still starts with that mystery.
This is a catalogue record, framed as catalogue. Nothing on Sept. 5th is new, and it does not need to be. Ten tracks, 46 minutes and 40 seconds, three gold singles and a sound built on patience: ten years on, the album remains the clearest statement of what Toronto R&B sounded like when it slowed down and sang at full volume.
dvsn Sept 5th Began As A Mystery On Radio
The date in the title is the origin story. On September 5, 2015, dvsn released two songs, “The Line” and “With Me,” and “With Me” was played on Apple’s Beats 1 during an OVO Sound Radio show, credited to a name nobody could attach to a person. A third song, “Too Deep,” followed on December 2, 2015, and a fourth, “Hallucinations,” arrived in March 2016. On February 29, 2016, dvsn were announced as signed to Drake’s OVO Sound, and on March 11 the album’s release date was set.
The anonymity worked because the music carried its own credits for anyone listening closely. Nineteen85, born Paul Jefferies, was already known in Toronto as the producer behind Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and “Hold On, We’re Going Home.” Daley was the unknown half, a singer who treated every note like a testimony. Where the rest of the OVO orbit kept its singing cool and distant in 2015, Daley belted, and that contrast is the first thing Sept. 5th puts on record.
The Ten Tracks, In The Order They Play
The album opens and closes with its two longest songs, and the sequencing is the argument. “With Me” runs 6 minutes and 59 seconds of slow, insistent build. “Too Deep,” the official video above, directed by Rohan Blair-Mangat, folds a choir behind Daley and builds on a submerged interpolation of Ginuwine’s “So Anxious,” treating a slow jam with the gravity of a hymn. Between those poles sit “Try / Effortless,” “Do It Well,” “In + Out,” the title track “Sept. 5th,” “Hallucinations,” “Another One” and “Angela,” which samples Elliott Smith’s “Angeles” and carries additional vocals from James Vincent McMorrow.
The closing track is the one reviewers kept returning to. The Tufts Daily heard the whole arc in the bookends:
“From the first beat in ‘With Me’ to the melancholy, moody closing of ‘The Line,’ audiences are taken on a seductive, emotional and passionate ride.”
“The Line” runs 7 minutes and 11 seconds, built on a repeating piano figure and a single repeated promise, and it closes the album the way the duo began, with a song first heard on September 5, 2015. Renowned for Sound called it “a masterpiece of smouldering R&B,” and a decade of slow jams since has not dated the description.
Three Gold Singles And A Views Cameo
The commercial receipts arrived quietly, the way the album itself did. “With Me,” “Too Deep” and “Hallucinations” were each certified gold by the RIAA. Spin placed Sept. 5th at No. 34 on its list of the 50 best albums of 2016. Weeks after the album landed, dvsn appeared on Drake’s Views on “Faithful,” a placement that put Daley’s voice inside the biggest Toronto album of that year and confirmed the signing was a working relationship, not a logo.
The catalogue after it widened the frame without replacing the foundation. Morning After followed on October 13, 2017, A Muse In Her Feelings on April 17, 2020, the Ty Dolla $ign collaboration Cheers to the Best Memories on August 20, 2021, and Working on My Karma on October 22, 2022. Each one adds tempo, guests or confession, and each one sends listeners back to the debut to hear where the grammar was written.
Play It In Order, At Night
The honest way to revisit Sept. 5th is the way it was sequenced: front to back, no shuffle, volume up for the choir on “Too Deep” and the long fade of “The Line.” Among Toronto rappers and singers alike, few debuts from 2016 still sound this deliberate. dvsn built a career on control, and Sept. 5th, released March 27, 2016, is where that control first became a signature.
