In a perfect world, your favorite underrated emcees of all-time would be prime time. Though the world isn’t close to perfect, there’s hope for those who’ve got their ear to the ground and know of Nickelus F, the Richmond, VA native who kicked off his career at the tender age of 17 after placing at number two in a regional Source Unsigned Hype Emcee Battle and continued on to become the champion of BET’s 106 & Park Freestyle Fridays competition in 2007.
Since his first release in ‘02, the emcee, who went by Nick Fury up until ‘04, has almost entirely carried Richmond on his back. With a gang of mixtapes and albums under his belt, Nickelus has consistently pushed his music beyond rap’s limits, releasing his seminal Portishead-sampling album R.A.R.E. (Reliving A Real Experience) last year.
With the blogosphere on his side, Nickelus F recently dropped his newest album Season Premiere, packed with crackling soul-peppered beats and bustling rhymes ripped straight from his daily life. Here, Nickelus speaks with YRB about his love of death metal, his relationship with Drake, how much of Season Premiere was freestyled, his upcoming album with Silverust and what else you can expect from him in the near future.
YRB: Your most recent release is Season Premiere, and it’s pretty soulful, as has your work in the past. Are you a big fan of soul?
Nickelus F: I am. It's just really, what it is, I pick beats and music that draws emotion out of me. Not saying that I'm an emotional guy, but when I write, musically, I need something that draws emotion. A lot of times, soulful music is what's going to pull that out of me. I try and do a lot of everything, but that's just what draws the things out of me.
YRB: You’re clearly a fan of music other than hip-hop, you did a project inspired by Portishead. What are you feeling most at the moment outside of rap?
Nickelus F: Let's see. I listen to a lot of stuff. I listen to a lot of oldies, for real. I've got a big vinyl collection, and I pull a lot of that old stuff off. A lot of old Curtis Mayfield. I like, for real, if you want to talk about outside of hip-hop and soul music in general, the whole other side of me is that I like – and this is so crazy – death metal. I love death metal. But I like everything, for real. Lots of R&B and death metal. I like System of a Down a whole lot. I don't consider them death metal, that's just like hard rock. I listen to that when I'm working out. That's the perfect workout music. And that lead singer, his voice is just unbelievable. And I like the Black Keys. I think they're amazing. You heard their album? Gosh. It's crazy.
YRB: One thing about Season Premiere is that you don't have any guests on it, which there have been on a couple of previous releases. It's unusual for a rapper these days not to have guests, so why decide to go dolo on this one?
Nickelus F: I wanted to show people what I could do artistically. Like, in the past, a lot of the stuff has been conceptual projects or exhibition, showing that I can rap and I can do all different types of things lyrically. But I wanted to prove that I could make good songs. So I stand on my own, and if I have a story to tell, that album is different snapshots of me last year. Things that were going on, things that I was thinking, things that I was going through over the winter of 2009. I just felt like it was necessary. I feel like I'm still showing people who I am and I still have a lot to prove. And plus, I get so excited about things that I'm kind of a mic hog. It's hard for me to make space on the record once I start it. But once I lay it out, it's hard for me to take something off.
YRB: The first track, “Fueled Up,” there are a lot of references to eyes and seeing. Is this the album where you're trying to get the world to see from your perspective, more so than others?
Nickelus F: Yeah, definitely. I want people to see and feel the same hope that I feel. For a while, for years, I had done an interview last year and the person asked me where I saw myself in five years. And I couldn't answer that question, because in my city, Richmond, there's not a whole lot of options for me. We don't bump into stars, there's no famous sports team, there aren't any celebs there. So it's not like I'm going to bump into anybody that's going to change my life. So a lot of people out there don't see that way and don't know how we're going to get there and over the past year, I just got kind of like a wind and I've been very optimistic. It's kind of like just getting people to see things how I see things. Like, if you've got a dream out there, you can get it. It's going to take some focus, it's going to take lots of persistence. Lots of persistence. If it's something worth it to you, if it means enough to you, then it's worth it. And I'm dedicated. There's no Plan B for me. Plan B is like you don't have faith in your Plan A.
YRB: You name-check Reese Witherspoon and Mark Wahlberg on “Credit,” which is clearly a reference to the movie Fear. Why did you make a song that incorporates that movie into it?
Nickelus F: Just because it rhymed with “Season Premiere.” [Laughs] For real, “screaming in fear” rhymes with it, so I was just freestyling in the truck. I was driving, freestyling, and I said “You don't want to miss my season premiere / Got 'em screaming in fear,” and then I saw Fear, the movie. Then I remembered Mark Wahlberg acted in it, so I was like, OK, “I got 'em screaming in fear, Mark Wahlberg.” It was definitely because it rhymes well. And I figured that if I name the song “Reese Witherspoon,” people are going to have a preconceived notion on what it might be or what it might be about. Then, when you put it on, it's straight hip-hop, you know what I mean? It's kind of like a surprise. I named it that and then I give you something different from what you thought it would have been.
YRB: You mention you came up with that concept while you're freestyling. You're a renowned freestyler. How much of Season Premiere was freestyle versus written?
Nickelus F: The thing is, I don't write a lot of my lyrics down. I do write. I'm not going to be one of those people who's like, nah, because I'm not that impressed by people who don't write lyrics on paper. Where I'm from, that's how everybody raps. Well, not everybody, but a lot of my close friends, we all rap like that. We don't use the pen much. The majority of the album was never written down. I get beats and live life to my instrumentals. I don't listen to a lot of other people's tapes and stuff when I'm creating mine, because I have the beats playing, I put my headphones in, I let it spin all day and I live life to the instrumental and just come up with it as I go. At the end of the day, I record what I have. It may not be a whole song, it may be a verse and a half. I'll just lay it down, bounce it out, put it on my phone and listen to that reference for the whole next day and just keep listening to it, spitting, rapping along to it and then add another verse. It's real free, a free writing process. I don't like to make it straight. I don't like to force anything. If I feel like I'm forcing it, I'm just going to stop. I'll either stop that or I won't rap on that beat or I'll put it away. There were some songs that I did that it took me two months to do because I recorded like a verse and a hook and then a month later, after I was working on everything else, I may come back up and start finishing that record when I'm in that mood again. But I try to keep it real natural. I want everything to be natural. Nothing forced.
YRB: You planned on re-releasing the album at the end of the month. Do you have any plans to release it in retail?
Nickelus F: Yeah, well we're going to be releasing it to all the boutiques and the sneaker shops in hard copy. We're also going to throw it up on iTunes and we're looking for other outlets to get hard copies in. We're going to work it, we have options on the table but I don't necessarily want to say what we're going to do just yet. We're still kind of feeling it out.
YRB: In the past, you've worked with Drake, who just earned the highest-selling debut this year with Thank Me Later. What do you make of his recent success? Have you spoken with him?
Nickelus F: Yeah, I'm so proud of him. I hit him up all the time just to let him know that “I see what you're doing, I'm very proud of you.” He hits me back sometimes, he's too busy to get back, but most of the time, he hits me back. I'm very proud of him, and very happy for him.
YRB: Did you have any involvement in the recording of his album?
Nickelus F: Nah, nothing.
YRB: What do you make of his growth? Because it sounds like his next step, almost as if he's been building towards this album for so long. Did you see him heading in that direction?
Nickelus F: Yeah, I mean, I kind of saw it going there. Way back, when he did the “Replacement Girl” record, he wrote that hook for Trey to sing, and we was kicking it – and this was before we recorded the record – we was kicking it and he was playing me the beat, and he played me the hook and he sang it to me himself. I was like, “Yo, you sound good doing it! Just saying, yo!” He was like, “Nah. It's not really me.” But he worked with it and evolved. He got a lot better at it. Naturally, he has a great voice, for music and for singing. The texture of his voice is very good for it. So it's only right.
YRB: You've released a slew of releases over almost the last decade, at this point. Is a major label situation something that you're interested in pursuing anytime soon?
Nickelus F: Yeah. We're talking to a few. A lot of people want to see how we work the product that we have. It's gotten a really good response, and now it's just about seeing what we can do with it. The thing about labels, they put their money behind well-oiled machines nowadays. It's not like back in '94 when they may pick an artist up that was rough around the edges and then they work with them, develop them, put 'em in the studio with people and build this artist up. Nowadays, it's more business. It's like, OK, that's a movement that they're working. We can put money behind it and make it bigger. So I've been talking to a few A&Rs and there's a label that has had a few talks with us, but they just want to see what we're going to do with it. We're about to put out the next single and videos and the road is next. So we're just going to work it throughout the year, so we'll see what materializes.
YRB: What's up next for you on the musical tip?
Nickelus F: The crazy thing is, there's a whole other side of me. Everybody knows me as this lyrical serious type rapper, but there's a whole other side to me. The people in Virginia know well that I have a band that I'm a part of called The Silverust and it's all up-tempo, fun, live music. And it's a special thing. It's a whole different side of me that a lot of people haven't gotten to see yet, and that's where we're going next. We're going to go with the live sound and we're going to take it up a whole lot of notches. The thing is, I recorded this album last year, but I felt it was premature to put it out. I didn't want people to not understand it and I felt like it needed time to be nurtured and to be worked, but I have the whole album with the 24 smash records, in my opinion, that's completely different. Live music, the craziest of musicians. Very talented musicians. So we're doing that next. We're going to surprise everybody with that next. But for right now, we're going to work Season Premiere. I wanted to put out a Charlotte hip-hop album, straight songs beginning to end that people could grab and get to know me, and then just when they think they know me well, I'm going to show them the other side. And it's to the stars from there.
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