Nam

"nothing can stop the million voices, not till this land and these people rise and conquer the loneliness together." - Carlos Bulosan



Over 30 years after the fall of Saigon, emcee Nam rises with a mission to give a long-overdue voice to his people's remarkable survival and endurance. Born and bred in Seattle's south end to parents who fled wartorn Vietnam in the 1980s, Nam is a storyteller survivor by blood and experience, transforming trauma into tracks that don't easily fit into neat little boxes.
Underground, mainstream, conscious, street - whatever you call it, there's no denying that it's honest music. And that honesty can come with a smile or a stomp, depending on his mood. With a distinct voice textured with urgency and wisdom beyond his 23 years, no bars are wasted when Nam spits. Onstage, he's a beast with a commanding presence mixed with a humble stride.
In a rap game run by entertainment profiteers who romanticize hood life, Nam arrives not to reject, but to inject reality where those fantasies dominate. Raised in the shadow of the West Coast (Cali) renaissance of the early-mid 90s, he's seen and heard it all - the gangbanging, the police brutality, domestic violence, the hustle - and is not impressed with your copycat swagger or hipster novelty.
Nam has always been a storyteller, trading his middle-school attempts at comic-books and graf-writing for the pen and the pad as a student at Franklin High School. In 2007, he began work on what would eventually become his debut album, Exhale - a fourteen-track coming-of-age biography.
Balancing joy, pain, sunshine and rain, he gets introspective on songs like "Balance," then delivers a solid party anthem with "Get Live." In one breath, he'll spit that heat ("Feelin Fresh" feat. Khingz) then directly address his folks with tracks like "Beats, Rhymes and Rice" (featuring Geologic of Blue Scholars) and a sincere letter to the sistas ("Sing Along" feat. Jill Laxamana). His ear for production also shines, as he draws the best work out of relatively new and up-and-coming producers (MTK, Agent CB). In a relatively short time since first hitting the studio and the stage, Nam has rocked alongside local movers and shakers such as Blue Scholars, Common Market, D. Black and The Physics as well as nationally-recognized acts such as Cali Agents, Rob Swift, Bambu, formally The Native Guns, One Be Lo aka One Man Army, Slaughterhouse (Crooked-I, Joe Budden, Royce da 5'9, Joel Ortiz), Supernatural, Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek and Slum Village.
Sadly, with so many emcees clogging the airwaves and internet with stereotypes and fiction, it's rare to find an artist willing to carry a community on his back instead of chasing what's momentarily hot. Armed with a voice and many lifetimes worth of untold stories, Nam is that dude who's always prepared to do battle.



Bio provided by Prometheus Brown | bluescholars.com