Header image credit: @tirnothy
Genre(s): Hip-hop, R&B, soul
Location: Raleigh, NC
Links: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
In February 2025, I launched our monthly New Music NC column to gather and spotlight as many local releases as possible. One that immediately stood out when putting together the “Hip-hop/rap, soul, jazz, and funk” section was THE DISAPPEARING ACT by Khalil Nasim. The crisp production across the album pulled me into an inspired genre blend, bouncing from soulful cuts like “HEAVEN (ft. CJ Monét)” and “FACE UP II (ft. Watty Tha Shepherd)” to club-friendly bangers like “MMM MMM (ft. Cloud Envy” and “MOONLIGHT”.
I reached out to Khalil in mid-March and scheduled our interview in what might have been record time. We decided to meet at Wooten Meadow Park in Northwest Raleigh. Khalil said he got there early for his daily walk, which he graciously pushed back from his usual time to chat with me. In hindsight, a warm sunny day in a charming park was the perfect setting to learn more about his career.
Khalil has been upfront in past interviews about struggling with homelessness and working himself up to this point in his life. During our chat, his dedication to the craft and being a role model for the next generation was on full display. He took pride in his musical lineage, collaborating with others, and the friends he’s made while making a name for himself. It was impossible to come away from our conversation uninspired.
What’s something either new or old that you’ve been listening to lately?
Khalil: Musiq Soulchild’s album Soulstar. I rediscovered that album probably three weeks ago. My mom used to play it a lot when I was younger. She went to NC State in the 90s and during that era, they called it Black State, so she was getting a lot of that neo-soul influence and stuff. I think it really connected because we’re just some good small-town country folk and it blends something new and something that you’re familiar with.
Do you remember the first musician you found on your own and obsessed over?
I was just thinking about my first time hearing A Tribe Called Quest this morning. Because I’m from the South, and my mom was a hip-hop head, but the hip-hop that we would listen to was different from what somebody in another region would listen to. I grew up in a household more like soul and gospel, not so much jazz, more blues stuff. So my first time hearing A Tribe Called Quest, I was like 14 years old, and I remember being like, “Oh, shit.” I downloaded Midnight Marauders, The Low End Theory, everything, and I would just listen to it all day long.
Curren$y is an interesting one because I didn’t like his music at all at first. I thought his voice was super annoying. I was a big Wiz Khalifa fan and I found his music, and it was so weird to me that I just delved so deep into it. It ended up with me becoming a super fan. That’s my favorite rapper.
In what ways do you think your music taste has evolved most significantly?
That’s a good question. I think I’ve started to appreciate things for being what they are, rather than setting the standard for them to meet going into it. I know a lot of artists tend to be art kids, and I don’t say that in a derogatory way. You’re really deep into the technicality and execution of it from a skill standpoint and taste. I just like to see people being their true or authentic selves and giving something that’s completely different from what anybody else would give because it’s them.
To go back to Curren$y, I have grown to appreciate him more because I understand more about where he’s from, which is New Orleans, and understanding the things that made him the musician that he is, and all the stuff that he went through. One of the things that I really appreciated about him subconsciously is that he was always just being Curren$y. He wasn’t putting on a commercial front or being so deep into the art side that now an average listener can’t relate.
Coincidentally, you and I both “started performing” by singing at church growing up. At what point did you start performing hip-hop live?
I first performed a rap live at a talent show in eighth grade. Then I did that all the way through high school, performing essentially just a freestyle over somebody else’s beat. It’s funny because I think that sort of expression took root at the time where I started writing. I feel like in hip hop, your writing and performance are so intertwined. Even if you’re not performing for a big group of people, the performance of it, your delivery, and how you give it up is so important.
I was part of a band with me and my friends. I had a friend that played the keyboard, and his brother played the drums. They would play beats behind me, and I’m just freestyling over for like three and a half minutes. After we graduated, it became a different thing because now I had to find out how to continue this performance thing without having my guys behind me. So I started making my own beats.
Since you produce most of the tracks that you put out, what do you find has that initial emotional connection when you’re expressing yourself? Is it a hook or a beat?
It’s always different. The way that I find where I’m going to go with a song is always the chord progression. Playing gospel songs in church taught me that emotion is conveyed from the arrangement of those chords. It gives people that context, you know? Where you play this chord, how long you play it, how long do you linger on it? I still carry that to this day.
I play the chord progression first and I’m like, “Okay, this is how I’m feeling based on the arrangement of the notes and whatnot.” Rapping is probably the last thing I do ever on any song. That’s me putting the cherry on top of the ice cream, you know what I’m saying? I’m fixing it up. The feeling is already there. This is the final piece of presentation: what I have to say about it.
Image credit: michee.png
When you’re writing lyrics, do you find yourself fitting the vibe or expressing in words what you were feeling when you were putting together the instrumental?
It used to be that I’m just writing what I feel. I got out of that because I feel like I can be a lot more creative than that, you know? I want to give my best effort at doing creative writing, rather than just saying what’s on my mind. That’s what my journal is for; I write, journal my feelings, go back and analyze how I’m feeling. Now I can package it and be like, “These are the patterns that I’ve experienced. This is what the beat makes me think about. This is what that concept makes me think about.”
I love that. Everyone could benefit from journaling every day.
That’s a fact. It changed my life, just because I can go back over now and see that I was feeling this way on Monday after I talked to my mom or after I took my walk. Stuff I do every day. If I do something every day and I’m feeling a certain way, it’s probably safe to assume that that thing is causing that feeling. Otherwise you would never know, and if somebody told you, you’d feel like it’s an attack because you just haven’t seen it for yourself.
What’s your process for collaborating with other artists or producers on songs?
Sometimes it makes me feel bad to think about it because I used to be the type of person where I’m like, “Yeah, I just want to work with everybody.” And I do. I want to work with as many people as I can, because I feel like that’s what we’re called to do. You live in collaboration, you should create a collaboration, too.
That said, I don’t create with people that I don’t know or have a relationship with. I feel like the creation or the process itself sets a precedent that’ll be hard to meet. You can put two great artists in the room and make a great song. But when it comes to the business, the promotion and performance of it, a lot of things could get muddied in the fact that you just don’t know this person.
Business is just one expression of that type of relationship that you have with somebody. When somebody respects you in business, they do business with you as if they respect you. When somebody doesn’t respect you in business, they do business accordingly. As much as music is a craft and an art, at this stage, collaboration can look like a business venture more than anything.
I really like to just meet people and take the business out of it. Talk and get to know each other, become friends. We create stuff. Either we meet each other and like each other and be friends or nothing. You just find somebody else. There’s so many talented people in the world, talk to somebody else, be friends with somebody else.
You’ve mentioned in a previous interview that your latest album, The Disappearing Act, has a bit of a bumpy road. Can you tell me about what happened there?
I made great music and I didn’t treat it as if it was great by properly storing it. I lost it twice to be specific, once in 2021 and once in 2023. And I finally regained the confidence last year to recreate the album and take another shot at it. I didn’t give up on the concept.
What happened was I was storing a lot of my music on my laptop’s internal storage. My shit was running slow, overheating, and I’m like, “What the fuck’s going on?” The computer has no space, so I decide to put my files on cloud storage instead of the physical storage. Worst idea of all time. As I’m transferring it to the cloud, my computer updates in the middle. When I reopened my computer, everything was gone. Couldn’t find it anywhere.
The second time, all of my files got corrupted on a Western Digital hard drive, which is a very low quality brand hard drive. I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody. I couldn’t open up any of my projects, anything. I tried to do the right thing and then I didn’t do it all the way.
Did you try to recreate songs or just start from scratch?
I always just started from scratch. I don’t like to go back and redo. Ironic that I say that though because I actually included a song from each version. I went in and tried to recapture the feeling more so than anything. Like the concept was there, I just had to put myself into the mindset of creating through that lens.
I felt like it got better each time, which is good. That was my process: just go in with that scope and see where’s my life at now? Not where it was before.
Image credit: _shaicity_
How’s the response to the album been?
Oh man, it’s been beautiful. People have said things to me about the album that have shocked me in a good way, always in an amazing way. Things that have made me rethink what my goal is with music. It was always just to get good at music, make good albums. I always wanted to make an album as good as Songs in the Key of Life, Midnight Marauders, and the stuff that I was clinging to growing up.
This was the first time I ever went into the studio and was like, “I don’t care that I can rap. I don’t care that I can play the keyboard. I’m a person, I have emotions and I want to relate to people. I want to use those tools that I’ve developed over these years to give people these expressions.” And people are loving the music, feeling emotionally connected, and listening every day.
What does the rest of 2025 look like for you?
I want to get in front of people a lot, whether it’s a show or just doing things like this, being one-on-one and talking to people. I’m a super extrovert. I love meeting people, getting to know them and their stories. I want to do more of that, talking to folks about what they got going on in their music, their life, my life, my music or whatever it is that they do.
I do want to make another album. I feel like this album was really good. I have some songwriting abilities that I feel like I want to tap into for like a soul project and really just surprise people. Like, “You like that? Watch this.” And they’re like, “Oh, shit, I wasn’t expecting that.” But I want to also give The Disappearing Act the full flesh out that it deserves: the documentary, music videos, everything like that.
Mainly I’m looking forward to what’s next. How do I continue to connect with people, put my career to the next level? Because the goal is not like fame. I was a teacher, man. I had so many students that impacted my life on a fundamental level, just their dreams and goals to see something past Henderson. I’ve been fortunate enough to live a life outside of where I grew up and see things outside of where I grew up. They haven’t. I want to continue to show them what’s possible while also living out my dream.
You’re living by example.
Exactly. I said this in my documentary, but nobody asked to be born. Nobody asked to be here. So while you’re here, do what the fuck you want to do. If you want to do art, do that art. If you want to draw, make stickers for a living. Do what it is that you want to do because as long as you’re not hurting anybody, you’re contributing to a grander thing on this earth called culture. Something that defines the world that we live in in every corner.
What local or North Carolina artists do you want to shout out?
The Deviants, that’s a group of guys that I work with and founded. Myself, MBLoaded, sifi!, Blxnknn (who’s in my car right now), Yahliq, Zone, cardigan, and Cloud Envy. Not only are they amazing artists and producers, they’re just my closest friends. That’s what culture and community is to me: meeting people, building with them on a fundamental level, growing that love, doing the music together. It all feels better because everybody is there and living through the art.
It’s not just we show up and go home. A lot of times people are right at my house, right down the street, and we’re just talking and eating, and we might not even get to do music. But it informs the music: the living, being around each other, loving each other, sharing meals, sharing ideas.
I also think that it’s important to have people like you in the community who care about local artists and their stories, because everybody has a story. If we’re not emphasizing the importance of local art, nobody will.
When people go and travel places, they care about the culture and art of that region, whether it’s music, visual art, architecture, whatever. We define what our world is in so many different ways. To have the people who help to tell that story have their stories told is an important piece of it. So I appreciate you coming out to my little park.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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