Wellington hip hop fans especially will likely know him as rapper Just. D, perhaps as one half of rap duo Donbizzy and the UnderWelly Records label, but after a few years away from performing Donell Anae returns as the soulful hip hop artist donell, and a father. Within his self-questioning EP, ‘divine timing’, he wonders out loud about the confusion of faith and life hereafter, offering snapshots of his life growing up as a Samoan-Pakeha male, with the very Kiwi intersection of church, family and rugby.

Though it’s not included among the six tracks of donell’s ‘divine timing’ EP, the video for afterlife, which was the EP’s lead-in single, makes a good place to start. His rap is constant across the reflective track’s two and a half minutes, with uplifting angelic slivers of female bvs throughout. ‘Before I sleep pray my soul to keep, I still fear the unknown where the faith gon’ lead, I’ve got limited time before I reach my demise…’

While many of the rhymes are reflections of a man approaching 30 and questioning his own achievements to date, the video’s churchyard setting frames the importance of, but uncertainty around religion and death, as overarching themes.

“I guess it’s something that I know is familiar and relatable to people that grew up in similar situations to me, where, I wouldn’t say church was forced, but it was that you had to go. And when you’re a kid you just go, because that’s what your parents do. But as you become a teenager and you’re kind of finding your place in the world, those are the questions that kind of arise, and those are the feelings that I’m discussing.

“I was taught never to question this, but it’s only natural to question, what does happen? Where are we going? Why, you know? Just why?’ I know there’s a lot of people that probably have the same thoughts, same questions.”

While the single fits sonically with ‘divine timing’ Donell wanted it to be separate, because of his own preferences as a music fan.

“I was very conscious that if I was going to release singles I didn’t want them all to be a part of the EP, so that when people listen to the EP there will be a lot more new and refreshing music. But I felt afterlife still kind of hits the same notes and themes. So I thought I’d just do it standalone, and with a video just to get the ball rolling, to come back with.”

Formerly better known as the Pōneke rapper Just. D, Donell Anae is coming back to music after a period that included the birth of his two children, and he’s returned in 2025 as the vulnerably honest, soulful hip hop artist donell. The artistic name change is far from cosmetic, he’s long struggled with identity and the misuse of his name.  

“Growing up, my name was never really spelt right or pronounced right a lot of times, and that kind of wore away at me slowly. Like not wanting to tell people my name if they’d say it wrong, and just going with Darnell for today, or Donald… thinking, ‘I’ll just leave it.’ So that was a big thing for me. To kind of own that and step into it was important, especially coming into this new era of my music.

“I want it to be a lot more personal, and kind of reflective of my life, so I felt like it was important, and it made sense to just go by my name and own that. Step into that properly, and wear it with pride as the name that my parents chose for me, not hide from it. It’s been a long time coming…”

He’s laughing when he tells the background story to his still more familiar rapper name. It goes back almost a decade and the early days of Donbizzy, a groove-rich rap duo with his former Wellington College best mate Shae Simmonds, aka Shaebaby, a collaboration that also fostered development of the UnderWelly Records brand.

“Just. D was never a name I chose for myself. One of our first shows we did was at Caroline, which was like a kind of rite of passage venue for everyone in Wellington. I’m pretty sure it’s closed now, but anyway we had a Caroline show maybe in 2018, and the promoter wanted our names for a poster or something. Shae was going by Shaebaby, and I was just, you know, me! It was something I was gonna do, but nothing was sticking.

“All my mates just shortened my name and called me D. This guy was asking Shae, ‘What should I put?’, and Shae said, ‘…just D’, and then the promoter took it literally! So Shae sent me the poster and I was like, ‘Who the heck is Just. D? Oh, well, that’s pretty good, it’ll work for now.’ But the plan was always to change, and I only officially did it before this EP roll out. It’s a lot more intimate.”

First single, live on traverses similar ground to afterlife, donell making direct connection with listeners in a rapped run through his life from being a ‘tender little child’, through the fun times of youth, ‘that’s the type of innocence I never thought would leave’, to parenthood, ‘more laps around the sun, more life to those we love, more time to get it done, live on’.

Elsewhere there’s a variety of delivery, switching flows and eloquently expressed imagery backed with a mostly soul-inflected synth soundtrack, with credits to various producers and engineer/producer Justin Cederholm. The instrumentation was care of James Illingworth (keys), Hayden Nickel (violin), Jamin Furlong on guitar, and bassist Harry Schools. Having started on the project in April 2022, donell says he initially wanted to release ‘divine timing’ in summer 2023, but found a lot of things delaying progress. The EP’s title only came mid-last year.

“Long story short, there were a few instances where I was like, ’Okay, I want to release it at that date.’ Then literally, like, a week or a month later, a huge positive thing happened that made it so I kind of realised, ‘Oh, this isn’t right trying to make this on my timing. What do I know?’

“And then it felt like divine intervention, you know? And this idea of the divine timing for me is kind of the idea of the ever-present now, so that the only moment that exists is the one that we’re currently in. The future doesn’t exist, because it’s always a couple seconds ahead. So it’s kind of a paradox. Now is the right moment, because it’s the only one that exists, in my opinion.”

He mentions an Aston Rd training course as being of particularly help.
“I was given an opportunity to go on Cushla Aston’s masterclass course, over like five or six weeks. That helped unlock so many things, and gave me all these new tools and connections that were going to make the project better.”

The passage of time is referenced throughout the EP, hints that climax at the end of mother’s child with the single chime of a clock. For donell it’s a reference to those ancient cities and towns with clock towers, where the bell chime would signify that something is happening, or about to happen. Written before his son was born, and only a few years after his own mother passed away, it became the foundation to build his EP on.

“I wrote that song thinking it could be a letter to my unborn child, yeah, and then later decided it would be a perfect way to close out a project, talking about my life and kind of ending it there. So everything before this song would be about experiences and lessons learned, and then closing it out with that. Sometimes I play it for him in the car and ask him, ‘Do you like this?’ ‘Nah.’ ‘Ahh, okay I’ll put the Wiggles back on!’”

Born to a Samoan father and Pakeha mother, the oldest of several siblings, he has held apprehensions around death for as long as he can remember.

“Always a sort of fascination, fear, sometimes the same. I vividly remember as a kid, about four years old, asking my mum about it and she would kind of just reply with faith-based answers. I don’t know if they soothed me because I had those other questions as well. Then losing her kind woke it up in a sense, it reminded me of how I used to feel as a kid. And now having my own children, it seems like these big moments keep bringing it back up. So it felt like I had to address it.”

The piano-led don juan triumphant is a soulful love song to his partner, while the following track world is mine moves quickly from an enchanting RnB intro into a rap that explores the role of sport, rugby in his case, in providing an alternative future to the more grim reality of young lives. A chilling spoken interlude leads on to a tale of young friends travelling to the other side of the world, visiting countries like Turkey and France, revealing how eye-opening and beneficial that experience was in his life.

Having grown up among cousins and friends in Naenae, Donell says he cried when his father told him he was going Wellington College. He recalls the culture shock and being scared about not knowing anyone in a school of 1700-odd, mainly Pakeha and Asian students. That corner was quickly turned and he thoroughly enjoyed his secondary school years.

“I’d loved it! On the first day my dad picked me up after school and I said, ‘I think you got this right, I’m going to have a really good time here.’ And I did have the best time, my three closest friends to this day are people I met in Year nine.

“I got to go to Europe on a history trip and see things I never would have seen otherwise (world is mine), which is kind of one of those things that comes out, you know, like, ‘Okay, your dad does know something!’ I guess he kind of had this vision.”

His father’s motive was the opportunity of a rugby career, and Donell did play for the first 15 and continued with rugby post school, though it was hip hop that really held his attention. He took music for the first three years, then was kindly told that for a best shot at credits he shouldn’t take it in Year 12.

“I just wasn’t grasping the concepts well enough and probably not taking it seriously enough to where I was going to do well in it! The rap side of it kind of came from me and Shae just freestyling. We used to have access to the music rooms where there were guitars, and just in the hallway, we’d kind of jam and knock around a lot, and joke about among the four of us, you know, like, ‘We’ll be the artists you sing, we’ll rap and the you can manage.’ It was just a lot of fun.”

Pretend battle raps on the weekends led to them freestyling at parties and getting positive encouragement, but Donell says he was more focused on pursuing rugby at the time. Ben Gregory was a big factor to them developing a recording style, including buying Shae a Rode microphone, just to hurry things up.

“I think it was probably about like 10 months after Shae got that mic, he was trying to get me involved and I was kind of, ‘Yeah, okay,’ but I never really, took him up on it. And then he released a few songs back in 2017, songs that I still think sound amazing, and then I said I’d come along. It was literally his persistence.”

UnderWelly Records became a thing in 2019, more brand than an actual record label, with Shae and Donell sharing big ideas of what it could become, and both wanting to do stuff on their own, as well as their rap duo. Another school friend designed the two-dice logo. Notably Donbizzy released a series of four seasonal mixtapes with ‘You Can’t Beat Underwelly on a Good Day’ branding in 2021. The following year two singles, Hall of Fame and Fatal Attraction, introduced Just. D / donell as a solo artist.

“We wanted to make it identifiable, and we had big plans for it, but at some stage we kind of realised that we were limited in our capabilities of where we could take it. It’s definitely not what we hoped it would be by now, but I don’t think it’s gone away. We’ve got drafts and plans that are five years old, that when, if and when, we come across an opportunity can still happen. If we have some people around us that that are invested or interested, you know, then, I don’t think it’s the last of it, that’s for sure.”

Ben White’s review of ‘divine timing’ for NZM.