Nate Good

Nate spent his earliest years in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago. Like most kids, Nate was a captive audience to anything his parents listened to, which was essentially everything: from Vivaldi to The Beatles, Carole King to Madonna, James Taylor to Boys II Men, Miles Davis to Bob Marley. But it was the Motown sound—especially the Temptations and the incomparable David Ruffin—that Nate embraced on a deeper level, in love with the voice and the soul. When Nate moved to Western Loudoun County VA at age eight, his playlist expanded to Hip-Hop: Nelly, Eminem, Kanye, TI, and Ludacris, to name a few. “My ear has been influenced by so many artists and genres,” he explains. “And I know that these influences come through in my own music.”

In high school, Nate played guitar and sang covers for local events. He also began pursuing a private passion as well—composing lyrics on his phone. Hundreds of lyrics that he rapped over beats. By senior year, everyone knew he could sing and play guitar, but only those closest to Nate knew he could rap. It was then that Nate realized it had to be music. Music was and would remain his passion and his purpose.

But there was no plan. Not yet knowing how to make music into a career, Nate followed a more typical post-secondary script, matriculating into the University of Tennessee in fall 2010. This was where Nate’s musical drive and academic obligation collided: Nate jokes that probably half of his time as a freshman was spent rapping on Knoxville’s “Strip” for all who would listen. In June 2011, after just two semesters, Nate withdrew from UT and returned to VA to pursue a recording career full-time.

Back in LoCo, Nate refined his songwriting and rapping and started to grow his fan base, opening at several NOVA venues. In early 2012, Nate became the youngest artist of War Lab Records, co-owned by VA-native and real estate entrepreneur Sam Chapman. During 2012-2013, Nate helped to co-found and launch Purcellville’s first and only recording studio—O Street. Located in a nondescript warehouse in the oldest part of town, O Street became Nate’s musical h(e)aven, allowing him 24x7 access to his own booth and space for unlimited musical exploration.

In 2013, Nate turned his attention to his first full-length project, appropriately titled The Jump, which was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Zechariah Wise at Depth Charge Studios in Alexandria, VA. This album revealed Nate’s comfort with rhythmically sophisticated beats and more melodic, half-singing flows, especially in songs like “Sugar Water” and “Illa." That Nate both raps and sings gives him a lot of range—hooks and verses are all part of the flow. He possesses the rare ability to walk from the heavy production environment of the studio to the street corner where, in person, he still sounds very much like Nate Good.

Before the release of The Jump, Nate hit it off with Texas-based producer Scotty Muzik (aka Dillon Hernandez) who supplies Nate with a heavy dose of beats that evoke the Big Band and Jazz-eras: subtle brass, killer piano riffs, antiquated vocal samples from old movies. When reviewing “Sugar Water” (#1 on DJBooth Indie Chart September 2013), one DJBooth contributor wrote: “After checking [it] out, I think [Nate] was really born in 1920s New York.” Nate’s collaboration with Scotty Muzik has continued with Nate’s singles “Cup of Joe” and “You and I,” both of which took #1 song-spots on Good Music All Day. “Cup of Joe” was selected by DJBlaze for his January 2014 Blazing Cuts Mixtape, and “You and I” was described by the site as “an intoxicating, hip-hopified banger.”

In March 2014, Nate opened for Hip-Hop artist Yonas at Tally Ho Theatre in Leesburg, VA, then won an online contest to perform with Yonas two weeks later at Voltage Lounge in Philly. Nate has performed at a variety of venues, including college campuses, in Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

This August marked the release of two more projects: in July, Nate released an unannounced 13-track mix-tape, The Remedy, which jumped quickly to #1 on Good Music All Day and pushed Nate’s SoundCloud page to over 110K unique listens. In August, Nate released Black Trucks, another album to take over GMAD's top ten list and receive more praise from DJBooth ("Drunk Tears" made Booth's Top 20 R&B and Pop list in the first week in September). 

Nate will tour this fall--stay tuned for tour dates.