My discography
This was my first album titled “About Time”. It was a big milestone for me going through the process of making this project. There was a lot to improve but it was a good stepping stone which I learned a lot from.
This is my shortest work but one of my favorites. I made improvements on the song quality and added more style. It’s a good, short ride with tight rhymes. It was produced entirely by Phil Tyler.
This project came together when I was back home after a few years abroad and started attending weekly open mics held in Manayunk, Pennsylvania. I decided to write a new verses over some of my favorite, classic hip hop beats and perform them each week along with another written track. It was a challenge that made me continuously improve throughout the process and that which I completed. You can watch a full video spanning those two and a half months on YouTube here.
This is my most recent project which went out on August 30th. All the beats are produced by Homage and the album is one hour and three minutes long. I put a lot into this project from feelings to wordplay to stories to pure effort. I believe it is a significant feat of lyricism and showcases a unique skill for verbal, spoken poetry.
My story - The beginning
This is me when I was around 15 years old. It’s funny to look back on yourself in the past and it’s a trip to think that by the time this picture was taken, I had already started writing. It’s hard to articulate why the interest in writing came to me but it definitely had something to do with Datpiff and the mild exposure I had to hip hop through skateboarding. In the days where iTunes ruled and Limewire was forbidden on the family computer, Datpiff mixtapes were the unbeatable way of getting fresh music. There were gigabytes of music filling up my old iPod Touch so it’s reasonable to assume the seed was planted then. And the misplacement of that iPod Touch years later is something like my fire in the Library of Alexandria.
Anyway, I began picking up the pen and trying to freestyle (poorly) to the one friend who would listen. I was your normal middle and high school teenager but jotted rhymes filled the margins of my notebooks. Soon, I began to fill one up in the evenings at home, too. Writing made me feel good. I felt the pressures of being a teenager lift when I wrote down rhymes. They weren’t good but they slowly got better. I couldn’t stop.
college
After high school, I went to college to search for a path into the business world. While studying, I never stopped writing and I continued to fill up the margins of my notebooks even there. I also filled up my first notebook completely with rhymes and songs. I met a handful of people who also liked to freestyle and over time we got better. Then, towards the end of my time at Shippensburg University there was this. My friend on the keyboard liked to duck over to the music center center to use the pianos and I had tagged along a few times to hang out and freestyle. When another friend started a vlog and was looking for things to film, we invited him over to film this video of me freestyling and solving a rubik’s cube while my friend played his keyboard. I’ve always been content with this hidden gem, a rare feat buried in the middle of a vlog.
This image comes from that end of that university era. It shows a bit of my set up, some books and my skateboard in the background. I tried my hand at recording music for the first time and uploaded it to Soundcloud. For the time being, you can still listen to a few of those raw recordings.
china and the first open mics
We need to fast forward over the next two years or so as I embarked on a lot of traveling and also undertook a corporate job for one of those years. But, my passion for writing never faded and I continued to fill up a large notebook I had gotten back in college. I grew tired of the corporate job and followed my second passion, traveling, which took me to work as an English teacher in China. Things got interesting as I learned the city and got over the first wave of – a certain virus – there in early 2020. However, things started up a bit that summer with monthly open mics put together and hosted by a good friend.
This photo was from the first Speak Life event and it became the cover of the flyer for the second. It captures the first time I had ever performed my songs in front of anyone. I rehearsed well but my presence was awful. I was nervous but a fire was soon lit. I knew I had a long way to go but I couldn’t wait for the next one and the one that would be after that. Over time, I got better. The cover photo of my second project, Timelapse, was taken at one of these Speak Life events.
first show
But that’s skipping ahead.
After doing several open mics, I met the wonderful: Mr. Boz. A hip-hop head if I had ever met one. He had been listening to the genre since it really picked up in the 80’s. Together, Mr. Boz and I put on, probably Ningbo, China’s first, hip-hop night along with DJ Tone.
Stars aligned that evening with a number of people deciding to celebrate their birthdays at JJs Sports Bar for the occasion…
It was a better turnout than we had expected and you can see clips of that night (along with plenty of others from that period) in this video on my YouTube Channel.
All in all, one hundred and fifty people went through the doors and spilled out into the street in Ningbo, China. One of JJs biggest nights and a hell of a good time. Mr. Boz and I worked out a pretty good rotation for that first event where we would alternate and do some solo tracks with others performed together over the course of four different sets throughout the night. We did a good bit of freestyling in the beginning and worked some old school beats before building it up to some of my, still unreleased, tracks for bars. We even had a request for an encore later in the night than we had expected but we were happy to accept.
Over the course of the next year, I did tons of small events with Mr. Boz all over Ningbo, China. There were parties, barbecues, charity events and even an international festival with overnight camping on the outskirts of the city which was a huge success.
In the meantime, while all the events were going on, I finally put together my first album. For the first time, the stars sort of aligned. I had always been an avid writer but I never really had the time, money or space to record. But, somehow, in my apartment in Ningbo, China I recorded my first album. I had my morning routine dialed in and I set about twenty minutes every morning between 6:50am and 7:10am to record and work on the project. Practically all of the album was recorded in these quick sessions that went on for two months or so. That’s why the clock reads 7 o’clock on the album cover.
the brunch of rhymes
In the spring of 2022 I organized perhaps raps first “Brunch of Rhymes”. While doing the random parties across the city, I realized that much of the music I created was not very suitable for a bar or club. I didn’t want these songs to go unheard and the best thing I could think of was to change the environment from the bar on a Friday night at 11pm to a nice rooftop bar and restaurant for brunch on a Saturday morning at 11am. A good friend helped locate the venue and they negotiated well with the owner for a two hour all you could eat buffet with free flow red and sparkling wine. There was a good turnout and it turned out to be a great day.
reaching the end of an era
I finished the Timelapse EP, with the cover being a throwback to the old open mics, not too long after The Brunch of Rhymes. It was released after I did a long backpacking trip all over China that summer. It was an interesting trip that took me to both Wudang Mountain and the Shaolin Temple, road tripping to Qingdao, a train to Tibet and even a hike into the mountains with Mr. Boz. That trip also marked the end of my desire to continue working in China and by the time this EP was released I had already booked my flight ticket home for two months later.
coming home
I arrived home in the middle of November 2022 after being away for two years and eleven months. It wasn’t part of the plan to be away for that long but things happened. After a good chunk of time spent with family and another spent in South Africa with some good friends, I started to tag along with an old friend to the weekly open mics held at the once great Grape Room in Manayunk, Pennsylvania. It was there that I got an idea for a new project. I had been writing heavily for Mitch Nick Raps but I wanted to bring something fresh, something challenging to the table. I had had the idea of an old school beats mixtape before, but now I figured I’d challenge myself and use the extra time I had at home, to write one new song over some of my favorite old school beats and perform them each week (along with another previously written track) at The Grape Room every week. Ten songs, ten weeks. It slowly evolved into a video project which is part of the reason why the video documenting this project gets better around week three. It was certainly a challenge but I stuck it out to the end. When the project was finished, I started to go to Rotation Records in Norristown for the first time to record the songs for the tape.
The story behind the project also explains why the mic is literally open because all the songs were written each week to be performed at the open mic.
After Operation: Open the Mic was completed, sessions at Rotation Records were immediately used to begin working on my most recent project – Mitch Nick Raps. Some life moves happened over this period, too. I decided to continue my international teaching career in Vietnam so the sessions at Rotation Records concluded in the summer of 2023 but resumed over Christmas break that year and later online in the spring of 2024.
Mitch nick raps
This is my most recent album and my biggest undertaking so far. Chet Baker Sings is my go-to headphone play when I get on a plane so I drew inspiration to title this album Mitch Nick Raps. In my opinion, I did exactly that. It is the album that I have wanted to make since I began writing. One rapper, one producer, one engineer and one hour long. I believe there is a lot of depth within the writing on this album which is conveyed with a relentlessly smooth flow. It goes from long format stream of thought rhymes to catchy hooks to deep personal expression and more. There is a lot to unpack if you’re a fan of hip hop that puts importance on wordplay and word choice. I hope you can check it out soon.
You can also check out a review of this album here.