The chance of constructing progressive and prescient artwork is that you could be be unappreciated in your lifetime. However N8NOFACE by no means cared. Music has been his therapeutic outlet since his teenagers — a way of dealing with drug-fueled dangers whereas sharing grim tales of family and friends who promote and succumb to narcotics in his hometown of Tucson, AZ.
After years of accretive however minor recognition, the 46-year-old’s aggressive, anarchic, thugged-out, sometimes depressive and generally romantic amalgams of synth-driven punk, rap, minimal wave and rock have spiked in recognition. Each monitor from Don’t Dial 911, N8’s 2020 Eyedress-produced EP, has lots of of hundreds of performs. He’s sponsored by Joker Model, the clothes firm of esteemed LA photographer Estevan Oriol, touring with punk/rap teams half his age like Metropolis Morgue and Ho99o9, and can carry out at Psycho Las Vegas on the identical invoice as Suicidal Tendencies and several other members of Wu-Tang Clan.
“Folks need power proper now, so I feel that’s part of [why my music’s taking off]… I get DMs from individuals saying ‘I don’t like punk, however I like N8NOFACE,’” N8 explains. Sporting a black Joker Model t-shirt and hoodie, he speaks whereas seated at a sun-drenched picnic bench in Lengthy Seashore’s Bixby Park (Cherry Park, amongst locals) on an April afternoon. This night, he’ll rehearse for his presently ongoing tour with Ho99o9, the place attendees can watch him bash his head with the mic and storm the stage along with his SP-404. “I don’t know why they didn’t get it 10 years in the past, in order that’s why I’m like, ‘It’s not me that modified. Perhaps it’s the world.’ And now I’m becoming in with the occasions.”
Murder (out now through Blackhouse Information), N8’s new album and fifth in as a few years, distills the futuristic and post-apocalyptic sound he’s refined over the past decade — one which sonically encapsulates our more and more dystopian current. Like a lot of his catalog, these 17 songs exist someplace between the cyberpunk universe of William Gibson and Cormac McCarthy’s lawless, ruthless deserts. They’re adrenaline photographs that clock in round one minute. N8 bolsters partitions of buzzing, ominous synths with blistering drums he’s sampled from previous punk data, chopping them for minimal components and most filth. It’s the scuzzy, distorted, levels-in-the-red musical equal of watching a mark get clocked with a MicroKORG earlier than they’re jacked for his or her chain, cocaine and robotic prosthetic.
Alternating between a serrated scream, snarling raps and a gothic Robert Smith-like croon, N8 espouses a kill-your-idols dogma (“Burn this MF”) and narrates DEA dwelling invasions (“Poor Dom”). Maniacal minimal wave love ballads (“On My Aspect”) coexist with bursts of self-loathing (“Hate Me After I’m Excessive”) and prayers for associates caught in probably lethal turf wars and junkies in comas (“I Was Aye Aye Aye”). No topic is simply too taboo, no style sacred or barred from fusing with one other. It’s anti-genre music that’s extra distinctive, seamless and weak than something from Scorching-Subject-wearing Soundcloud rappers screaming they’re rockstars.
“I attempt to incorporate each style into one music. The beat could also be goth-y however the subject material is what you would possibly discover in a narcocorrido or a rap music. I’m sampling [punk] drums the best way hip-hop producers do. I’m doing it completely different,” N8 says. Although he found proto synth-punk band The Screamers later in life, they’re now his chief affect when he creates a brand new entry in his forward-gazing discography. “I wish to make music that avenue punks in 2077 will take heed to. Each futuristic film is all the time heavy techno and shit, and I’m like, ‘No, there’s going to be some child choosing pockets performing some bizarre new drug. He’s the road rat, and what’s he listening to?’ It’s going to be some dirty punk shit.”
Bixby Park has faint traces of grime, but it surely’s Edenic in comparison with seventh Avenue. One among Lengthy Seashore’s principal drags, seventh Avenue is the place you would possibly discover addicts shuffling on trash-strewn corners or staggering to bug-infested motels. There aren’t almost as many indigent and uncared for souls as there have been when N8 moved there within the early 2010s, however he spent numerous weekends getting excessive on these corners and inside these darkish motel rooms. Whereas he hasn’t touched narcotics for a yr, his barely nasal voice nonetheless fires with methamphetamine-addled velocity behind his Serpico-sized mustache. Rocketing sentences ricochet off of each other like pinballs between bumpers. Although his bodily proximity to his current previous doesn’t gradual his speech, it weighs on him.
“I’ll stroll alongside seventh Avenue and see individuals I smoked with,” he says. “I’ll clench my nails deep into my palms as a result of I’ll get a reminiscence of… I imply, I used to be in some darkish locations, bro.”
N8’s Tucson childhood was a lot brighter. He and his older brother, who makes cholo-approved trendy funk as Zackey Power Funk, shot BB weapons and acted out TV exhibits whereas roaming the desert. For a time, they took bicoastal flights from their Mexican mom’s dwelling to go to their Jewish father, who lived in a number of East Coast cities. Although Zackey was a pure athlete who excelled in boxing, N8 was a “weirdo artistic” from the start, drawing comics and writing brief tales.
All was okay till N8 and Zackey’s father died out of the blue throughout their early teenagers. That traumatic occasion — coupled with the truth that they lived in a cartel-affiliated metropolis with easy accessibility to massive portions of cocaine — maybe made their respective involvement with medicine inevitable. By the point they have been in highschool collectively, Zackey was shifting weight and N8 had taken his first bumps.
N8’s first hits coincided along with his first foray into music. A lifelong rap fan, he recorded rhymes on a karaoke machine earlier than buying an SP-1200 from the again of The Supply journal and constructing an in-home studio with cash his household and associates made hustling. With no in-person instruction or YouTube tutorials, he taught himself as a lot as he may by means of trial and error, a course of he’s by no means deserted.
“I nonetheless have skilled engineers coming to my spot going, ‘Dude, you’re recording like this? The way in which you’re saving your shit is all unsuitable,’” he says. “Thirty years later, I nonetheless don’t know what I’m doing. It’s all about, ‘How do I file, man?’ That’s all I must do. I simply must get this emotion out.”
Suicidal Tendencies’ genre-mashing thrash turned N8 on to punk in highschool, however he didn’t make something prefer it till assembly producer and tech wizard Tony Nicoletta, higher generally known as Scumbag Tony, within the late 2000s. Between and through coke binges, they created as CRIMEKILLZ, Tony soundtracking N8’s earliest screams, raps and croons with beats made utilizing Nintendo Sport Boys. Their “8-bit punk” was a hybrid of a glitching online game, punk repetition, and the sooner beats popping out of the Los Angeles beat scene. After Zackey put CRIMEKILLZ songs on his Myspace web page, LA label Hit+Run started releasing each Zackey and N8’s music.
CRIMEKILLZ songs achieved some mainstream success once they appeared on the TV present Workaholics, however N8’s no-sleep weekends fueled by meth, crack and coke wreaked havoc on the group and his physique. After a number of hospitalizations, he received a job alongside Zackey fixing the interiors of airplanes for an aviation firm that employed quite a few felons. He labored arduous and realized his commerce nicely, however he misplaced the job after one too many failed drug exams. Across the time that CRIMEKILLZ disbanded, associates gave him a brick of cocaine to promote in LA. N8 left Arizona with a blanket, a pillow, and his laptop computer. The burden met him in South Central.
The subsequent a number of years have been a blur. He lived in South Central and offered heroin for a buddy who allowed him to stay rent-free till gangs ran him out of the neighborhood. Via some mixture of scammer ingenuity and hard-earned means, he wound up engaged on personal planes for Gulfstream Aerospace. Weekend binges endured, however his girlfriend, Valerie, caught by his facet, pushed him to proceed recording within the closet of their studio house, and tried to assist him get clear.
“She’s an angel if I’ve ever seen one,” N8 says. “I lastly discovered somebody who actually desires me to win and succeed and helps me with my artwork. She’s all the time asking ‘How can we do that higher? What can I allow you to with?’ She’s simply my savior.”
N8 misplaced his job at Gulfstream in the course of the pandemic, however the blow coincided along with his largest increase in notoriety. Because the launch of Don’t Dial 911, he’s turn into a full-time musician. Whereas Valerie runs his merch tables, books lodge rooms and extra, N8 works at his sobriety and continues to file albums like Murder at a prolific clip. He’s additionally reconnected along with his 30-year-old daughter, who proudly posts about her dad’s music on social media. Although N8 frightened that sobriety would negatively influence his creativity, he’s gladly realized the other is true.
“I believed ‘If I’m not depressed due to a three-day binge I simply went on, how can I write?’” he admits. “Now, I notice that in the event you’re clear-headed, you possibly can faucet into any emotion. It may be a homie venting or telling me in regards to the first time he kissed this lady, and I’ll take their story and write it from my perspective. Both I put myself in his sneakers, her sneakers, or somebody watching it. There’s inspiration in all places.”
