Nac One

The Veteran

The first time Nac-One smiled during our interview was when he started talking about his daughter. With a gleam in his eyes, he described how Mystique (her MC title) verbally defeated a high school competitor during a rap battle. "Every line she spit was raw," he said proudly.

Nac-One sports a crisp B-boy style -- felt hat, nice sneakers and a clean look that speaks of deadly seriousness. In his home studio, graffiti art surrounds you and you feel that hip hop is in his soul.

His roots run deep in the Bay Area graffiti and hip hop scenes, a fact made clear by the fact that his early albums are on cassette tapes . Along with DJ Gigster, Nac founded the famed FSC graffiti crew and also found a comrade in musical invention. Nac-One has been creating music with Gigster, independently and on Bomb Hip Hop Records, a label well known for making break records.

With a giant catalog of music to showcase, he points to the 2001 FSC Oneness mixtape , a collection of funky samples and complex positive rhymes that's a good example of his sound. 2004's Natural Reaction showcases the evolution of his rhyme skills and a booming presence that you will remember if you've seen Nac open up a show.

"It sucks when you tell people you are a hip hop artist and you see the sour milk look on their face," says Nac-One, explaining that the images of rappers on television doesn't quite match up with his life of being a good dad for his kids, waking up early to clean the house, making beats in the middle of the night and practicing for days before shows.

He complains that "the new generation has no connection with the underground," explaining that when working people "have to get jobs and shit" it limits their ability to make music. "It's not like just being in the house studio with your boys," he says.

But struggling to make music has tempered his sound, making it more intense, and these days Nac-One makes music that is particularly grown-up. "I'm sticking to my guns with my style," he says. Rocking conscious, complex hip hop, he has his hands in a couple of nice projects. Most exciting is the New Mutants , a soon-to-be-released mixtape collection of Humboldt underground stars including Franco, Ink, Zack Funk and the Fantastic Fam, a crew formed right at home.

Recognizing that his children were raised with hip hop all around them, it was only natural for Nac to create the Fantastic Fam, a crew of MCs comprised of Mystique and Mischief Mike, Nac's son, both dead serious MCs getting hardcore with their time on the microphone, showcasing tightly entwined rhymes and a roughneck family style.

Including your children in your music is one version of Humboldt musical values. Rocking his old-school aesthetic and rolling with the punches, Nac-One comes across as an earnest, nice guy -- almost too nice. In hip hop that can be a liability. Nac-One, like many artists in Humboldt, could perhaps make more money if he were a bit more cutthroat with his lyrical content or mercenary in his business practices. Instead, he has chosen the higher path, to make music that his grandchildren can be proud of. - North Coast Journal sept. 13th, 2007