Nomad Carlos
Elmont, New York, United States | Established. Jan 01, 2015 | INDIE
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Nomad Carlos delivers a powerful Sosa powered project featuring cinematic rhymes & a sonic landscape of unrelenting boom bap! Respect the skills & check out “The Nomad Carlos Project” below! The Council don’t play!!! - Insomniac Magazine
JAMAICAN rapper Nomad Carlos is preparing to release his EP Distants on April 28.
The project, which will be available digitally, has songs produced by Sosa and David DaCosta, his partners in Ark House Music.
"Distants is my first project that will be for sale. It is entirely produced by Sosa, alongside my art director, David DaCosta. The three of us worked together to make this project what it is and I can't wait to share it with the world," said Nomad Carlos.
Born in Miami to Jamaican parents, he moved to Jamaica at age five and later attended St George's College. Two years ago he relocated to New York.
"I lived most of my life in Kingston. Jamaica is home to me. I spent all the most important years of my life there. That's where I made friends, where I went to school, where I drove my first car, where I roamed every night like anybody in their late teens, up to no good," Nomad Carlos told this column.
At St George's, he started a rap group called Bullet Proof Army which split up in 2008, after six years.
Nomad Carlos believes Jamaican rappers get little respect at home.
"I think the mindset of the masses in 'yard' is one that is hard to convince. A lot of people don't really know the history behind hip hop music. Some of them don't even know what inspired dancehall music," he said. "I've heard people comment about how they can't deal with the accent. But it's an American art form anyway, so without the accent what would it be? It wouldn't really be hip hop then. Reggae artistes overseas have to sing in a Jamaican accent because they singing reggae music right? But our people don't condemn them for that though."
Nomad Carlos recently released the song, What They Saying. It is the first single from Distants.
-- KJ - Jamaica Observer
Discography
Distants
Release Date: April 28, 2015
You're Most Welcome EP
Release Date: August 19, 2013
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Bio
Nomad Carlos is one of the only hip-hop artistes from Jamaica, creating music fused with the cultures and its urban lifestyle.
Listening, let alone making hip-hop is not the norm in Kingston. At the age of five, when the Miami, Florida-born MC named Damon (“Nomad” spelled backwards) moved back to his parents’ homeland, he absorbed the world around him. Living in the capital city’s Uptown section, and schooled in Downtown Kingston, Nomad Carlos was a student in and out the classroom. Heavily influenced by music not only from his homeland, but also from around the world, writing lyrics became his relief. However, while Jamaican’s own Reggae and Dancehall borrowed their compositions and attitudes from much of the rest of the world, Nomad Carlos took an American artform, and applied it to his very unique surroundings. “We are influenced by a lot of what we see on cable,”he says of the island culture. “There is definitely a worldwide influence on Jamaica as a whole.” Nomad Carlos formed a rap group with some of his peers. Freestyling in high school and writing 16-bar verses about their pastimes, to eventually releasing mixtapes as a group the collective eventually gained some local recognition.
A decade later, Nomad Carlos has proved that his vision was in fact crazy innovative. As one of the only working hip-hop artists from Jamaica, the MC balanced mixtapes (2012’s DJ Ill Will & DJ RockStar-hosted Live From The Yardand Me Against The Grainfollow-up) to fully-produced solo albums, beginning with Fuel To The Fire. The 2008 LP was followed with 2013 EP, You’re Most Welcome. Looking at his latest work, he says, “Prior toYou’re Most Welcome, I wasn’t being produced. I was just hungry and wanting to rap. Those projects, I feel like that’s what they were.” Although he may downplay the early work, songs like Me Against The Grain’s “Murder Music” are compelling grooves that chronicle Jamaica’s danger, political underbelly, and finer offerings at once. Hip-hop in presentation and beat, the song—received well in Kingston and NYC stages—has those trademark Dancehall tinges.
Aside from his musical career, he also had a hand in producing the only recurring stage show in Kingston, Jamaica dedicated to the hip hop movement in Jamaica. Pay Attention, a show started by Nomad and few like-minds friends in 2012, is a Kingston showcase held several times a year. “When I was coming up, nothing like that existed, says the MC, who has also headlined during his releases. “It sounded impossible at the time, but we just made it work.” Funding early shows out of pocket, this dedication was something that the MC knew was paramount.
Since re-connecting with producer Sosa, Nomad Carlos’ music has received greater input, experimentation, and creative strides. “I’ve been in a much better musical situation since I’ve been in New York,” he says of the late 2013 stateside transition, and forming his ArkHouse Music Group team. Nomad Carlos’ first release with ArkHouse is Distants,which was released in April 2015. Distantswas received well by his core fans and spawned two singles “L.P.H”and “What They Saying”, which were talked about in leading publications back in his homeland, Jamaica. He is also part of the Jamaican Hip Hop rap collective called “The Council”. The Council has recently released their group effort titled, Nothing Else Matters, on Septermber 29, 2017. The album has been well received in the hip hop community of Kingston, Jamaica, and has also caught the ears of notable blogs and hip hop radio stations around the world. His most recent album, The Nomad Carlos Project, was released April 2, 2018.
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