Three years ago no one had ever heard of Nic D. But in a rapid transformation, the hip-hop Christian singer has gone from being a TikTok influencer to a major artist on Spotify.
But what’s the story behind his rise to fame? And what is his net worth?
Who is Nic D?
Nic D, whose real name is Nicolas Donovan, was born on September 17, 1991 in Culpeper, Virginia.
While his career blew up during the Covid pandemic, it was in 2012 at the age of 21 that Nic D first shared one of his songs online.
On Christmas Day he uploaded his premiere music video to YouTube called “Echo”.
Originally just a hobby, Donovan has spoken of how never anticipated music being a full-time job.
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“I had never really treated music as something I could do for a living or a career until January of 2019,” he explained in an interview.
“It began from scratch. I had zero Spotify streams and around 1,000 Instagram followers who were just probably a bunch of friends from High School.”
At the start of 2020, as TikTok saw a surge in popularity and most of the world locked down in a bid to stop the spread of coronavirus, Nic D’s music started to get attention.
A series of videos he made featuring his music went viral, giving his songs exposure to a new audience.
“TikTok is its own animal; the community knows whether it’s created for the app or repurposed.
“I figured out how to have an identity on TikTok, and once I did, it was rewarding. It boils down to being genuine,” he said while explaining how he tailored his content to suit the social media platform.
“I love trick shots and hand-eye coordination. For one video, I was singing my song [about my wife], ‘Fine Apple,’ and I threw fruit behind my head without looking.
“It turned out to be one of my most viral TikTok videos, with 5.2 million views. I had initially released the song in January 2021. It’s my best-performing song from the get-go, but I stopped promoting it because it didn’t sound like a winter song.
“I waited until it got warmer in the spring and started promoting it again, and it took off.”
His success on TikTok allowed him to release a 16-track album later in the year called “This Can’t Be It”.
Since then, Nic D has released two more albums and now has more than five million monthly listens on Spotify.
A debut Christian, many of Donovan’s songs are about religion, as well as his love for his wife and children.
He said in an interview: “Typically there’s three things I write about. Glorifying my wife.
“All my love songs are about my wife – I want to make that cool. I want to make loving your wife cool. I want to make being a good father cool. I want to make being a Christian cool.
“I write about how I view people with a platform who don’t put good things into the world with their platform. And if I don’t write about those things then I was in my feelings about something.
“More often than not it’s just an instrumental that sets a feeling, and I go off of that.”
Nic D’s wife and son
Nic D has been with his wife since they were 16 years old. Together they share a young son.
Despite a number of his songs being about his family, very little is known about Donovan’s family. Neither his wife of child appear in any of his music videos.
He says that he wants to keep their lives private and that they should not be forced to live in the public eye just because of his job.
What is Nic D’s net worth?
Nic D is thought to have a net worth of up to $5 million. His fortune all stems from his music career.
As well as gaining an income from the music itself, he also receives money from selling merchandise.
On Spotify in 2022, Nic D’s music was streamed a total of 163 million times. Based on Spotify’s payment ratio, it means that from Spotify alone last year, Donovan made $652,000.