Abhi the Nomad

One Liner:  Indian rapper with some R&B hooks over low key beats

Wikipedia Genre:  No Wikipedia - hip hop, rap, and R&B
Home: Austin

Poster Position: 22

Weekend Two Only.

Thoughts: Kind of a weird vibe - this is rap, but the beats aren't straight-forward rap beats, more like those horn-fueled, live-drum jazzy things that Chance the Rapper uses.  Sometimes ends up sounding like a normal band where the singer decides to spit a rap verse in the midst of his otherwise normal singing song.  For example, "Marbled" is like that.  Like truly indie rap.  Or one where the song starts out sounding like Mac Demarco making a little ditty over very basic guitar, and then you realize that he's actually rapping.  Odd stuff.

Texas Monthly wrote a feature about the dude when he was playing SXSW in 2018.  Sadly, I'm not allowed to read the damn thing because Texas Monthly has now put their articles behind a paywall like jerkfaces.  But what I can see if that the dude is actually from India and he is hoping to get to stay in the US.  He also came by his artist name honestly, as he moved repeatedly when he was young, bouncing all over the world (India, China, France, US) before he was able to make it back to the States on a student visa.  In one interview I read he calls India "super hood" after experiencing Hong Kong for a while.  Made me laugh.

Two albums, 2015's Where Are My Friends and 2018's Marbled.  The top track from that first album is "Floors," with 4.6 million streams.

I think I'm comparing too many things to AJR, but this feels like that pop rock with rapped lyrics type stuff that I think of when I think of them.  Or like, Milky Chance?  I don't care for it, either way.  Oh, or even LCD Soundsystem, sort of?

His biggest hit is from the new album - "Sex n' Drugs" has just over 11 million streams.

Lyrically, I like it pretty well, the beat is different and kind of interesting, but it still bugs.  "Mama Bling" has great lyrics in the rap verses, but the singing in the hook loses me.  i think I like the fact that he is trying to make something different than just everybody else is making, but it still misses the mark for me, personally.