Brooklyn Borough Gypsy’s Dual Releases Defy Genre

With two new releases on the docket, New York City vocalist Nomi is set to make a broad splash across the music industry.

Her first album is a collaboration on DJ and producer Andy Butler’s highly anticipated neo-disco project Hercules and Love Affair, released on March 10 in the UK and subsequently in the United States. This project includes a major music video and tour, and is Nomi’s first foray into pure dance music. “[It] reminds me of why I love music and how much I love to perform. I’m there to really entertain people,” she said.

Despite the buzz surrounding this release and the major-label exposure, Nomi is keeping her roots as a hip-hop and pop artist. In this vein, she continues to put the finishing touches on her forthcoming sophomore album, Borough Gypsy.

Nomi, though primarily an R&B artist, defies easy classification. She adds a heavy hip-hop element to her already sultry R&B sound on her new release. “I prefer the word ‘Soul’ over R&B,” she explained. “I’m not sure what R&B is anymore. The difference is whether someone means and feels what they are singing. So much current R&B has no feeling.”

This syncretism came to light during her February New York show at the 205 Club where she displayed her range by interspersing soulful mid-tempo songs and ballads with no-nonsense raps. “I first rapped almost as a joke,” she recalled, “because my rapper couldn’t make it to a certain performance. But people responded really well to it, so I decided to experiment some more and start writing rhymes.” In her rhyming, she aggressively rediscovers her Brooklyn roots. “Part of me is very street,” she explained. “I enjoy how it lets me curse and express pent-up emotions I might not access in my other music.”

This exciting musical career had improbable beginnings amid the high-rises and sparsely-lit belts of Co-Op City in the Bronx and semi-isolation in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. An employee of the Apollo Theater heard her sing at the age of 12 and, with her mother’s permission, took her to a small recording studio in the Bronx. “We never really finished any songs,” she recalled. “We would always skip from one to another, but it taught me a lot about the creative process.” In her first, precocious love songs, Nomi was able to infer the melancholy that pervades emotional life, though she had not yet experienced its full range. “I watched my mother go through a lot and imagined what relationships might be like,” she said.

Though the blogs are buzzing about her diverse projects, Nomi is feeding off the dialectic between them: “Hercules is helping me discover more about putting on a show and entertaining,” she said. “I don’t think it contradicts my solo work—in fact, I think they can enhance each other.” From the Bronx to Brooklyn, Nomi keeps both fans and critics guessing her next move, as she continues to follow her own beat.
Nomi will be performing May 3 at the Highline Ballroom.