Nelson Down

With an authentic sound that comes from deeper root’s than people may think, Nelson Down really proves the saying, that you can come from “nothing to something”. Born in a small African country called Malawi, where Nelson was raised for the first 5 years of his life, created a whole different mind set for him than most children have here in North America. Being raised with his two brother’s and sister by his mother, a single women, he definitely showed a drive to succeed once they moved to Canada to start a new life. Amazingly, being the talented lyrical artist he is, Nelson did not know a single word in english when he touched down in the cold. After many years of english school’s, Nelson picked up how to speak english in no time. One of his aunt’s actually recalls him telling her, when she insisted him to go play with all the new kids. “No aunty, I ‘ll play with them when I can communicate with them”. This coming from a young Nelson, his aunt was really impressed by his understanding of communication. Through out Nelson’s upbringing, life was very up and down for him. Losing his mother in 1995 and a mix of other trials and tribulations forced Nelson to get into a lot of bad situation’s and as well grow up faster than most children. Never knowing his father is another expierence that shaped Nelson’s life drastically, most of the time he refuses to talk about it. But after his mother passed away his uncle took custody of him and his sibling’s. In 1996 Nelson and his family moved to a neighbourhood in the west of Ottawa. Here, Nelson’s older brother started to record covers of big artist’ such as Redman, Method Man and the Notorious BIG. That same year Nelson met another young boy who had just as much interest in music as he did, and they became friend’s. One day Nelson’s older brother took both of them and decided to record some songs on the karaoke machine. At the time when Puff Daddy and Mase were on top of the charts, they first started to write and rap on those instrumentals. Eventually Nelson and his long time friend created a rap group named Deuce-Deuce, coming from the tennis term, meaning tied score (Deuce). They would go on to generate a buzz across the city of Ottawa and beyond the province, as a certified rap group. With countless amounts of shows, EP’s and Mixtapes they took the city let alone the country by storm. Now as a solo artist Nelson is headed down that same path. With his recently released solo debut “The Plan & The Message”, which he collaborates with the same producer for the entire project. Nelson expresses the same hunger to create good music with a more personal approach. It seems like the sky’s the limit.