Nick Prosper comes out of New York like a guy who’s spent years riding different trains at once, switching cars mid-tunnel just to see what kind of noise the wheels make on the next stretch of track. He tells you straight where the fuse was lit: “Nick Prosper officially started in 2015, but I was releasing random beats on Soundcloud for a few years before that.” That’s the résumé line, sure, but it also reads like a survival note taped to the inside of a locker: proof of life, proof of work…proof that the algorithm didn’t raise him.
The geography matters because he wears it like a second skin. Brooklyn brashness, Staten Island sideways glare, the whole city’s nervous system threaded through a set of headphones. Then there’s the prehistory, the part that explains his appetite. “Before this, I was heavily involved in the deathcore/hardcore community, and was the frontman of a band called Plan To Prosper…I grew up listening to so many different genres, which is probably why I try so many different sounds in my music, growing up my mother played a lot of 70s and 80s music, my older sister was always blasting rap music in her room, and any time I’d go to my aunt’s house my cousin would show me indie rock from the early 2000s. That combination made me obsessed with wanting to be an artist one day.” Family, decades, rooms, speakers, bloodline – all turned the kid into a collector of impulses.
OUTMYBODY starts as a street-level instinct, chosen on foot, the way real decisions get made when you’re walking on a day that keeps sassing back. The track feels like that gut feeling given muscle: anxious motion with a hook that won’t sit still, a mind trying to outrun its own chatter without pretending the chatter isn’t there. He doesn’t polish the moment, but he hands you the raw admission.
“When I record, I usually don’t write any lyrics down, and that day I was dealing with a lot of anxiety about the future, so the first words that came out when I plugged in the microphone were I’m jumping out my body, and it just felt fitting to the jittery anxiousness I was going through,” he admits. “After it was finished and I listened back, I realized the song is about escaping – sometimes we just want to get away from ourselves, sometimes we just want the chatter in our brain to quiet down for a moment.”
Even the gear story reads like city folklore: five bucks, thrift-store fate, an old Yamaha from the ’80s dragged into the studio like a lucky charm with dents. Then the video, co-directed by Prosper, Bryce Wallace and Arias: bathroom mirror, confrontation, fashion in a dingy building, influences bleeding through in bright bruises.
“I feel since we all have an interest in film and high fashion, I can see so many influences bleeding through. Especially with Bryce’s edit, its gives 90s cult classic – the lighting in the bathroom reminds me of The Crow; the trippy editing reminds me of Requiem For A Dream, and the way I was dressed felt very Tyler Durden in Fight Club.” That’s the whole point: a mixtape brain, a restless body, a spirit trying to stay “authentic, and spiritually abundant,” even while it’s arguing with the mirror.
Watch OUTMYBODY below:
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The post NYC’s Nick Prosper Stares Down His Reflection in Video for Angst-driven Post-Punk Single “OUTMYBODY” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
