“Succeed Never Fail,” is the motto this Bay Area artist eats, breaths and lives by. Since beginning his music career at the young age of 14, Nio Tha Gift has proven that he’s here to stay. The lyricist’s (calling him a rapper would be an understatement) career has grown rapidly within the last few years. His highly anticipated album H.I.P. H.O.P. (Here I present a Hero of Poverty) released in 2009, has attracted over 40,000 viewers and downloads. With his hit singles “Grateful” and “Angels & Demons,” this lyricist has a profound way of speaking that would make anyone have an emotional connection to his music. The first single, “Never Gon’ Change,” off his upcoming project, Super Hero, lets you know, “don’t play that Hollywood card with me, I am not that dude, I don’t play that shit!” For the people who haven’t heard of you yet, what would you want them to know about you as an artist? That every one of my lines are real and that I’m living every single bar. Not too long ago you showed your fans a different side to your musical talent – Nio tha Gift the Sang-er. How have most of your fans reacted to this? Have other artists asked you to sing on their tracks? It’s kinda just a mixture of both, a lot of people try to get me to do a verse and a hook on their songs. My fans haven’t all the way caught on to the fact that I’m singing the records ’cause it’s not like auto tune or anything like that. When they see me they don’t see the typical R&B guy, they don’t expect this soulful type of voice to come out of me. I think they just don’t know, a lot of people just don’t know but everybody has their time to find out. I’ve read a lot of reviews from people who listened to your music, and even in my own personal opinion, you’re style isn’t comparable to other Bay area artists. What would you say sets you aside from other artists on the West Coast? Well, I just feel like God makes everybody special in their own way. Everything I do is God driven. I like to pride myself on just being me, being different. I don’t really like to get into the whole West coast artist or Bay artist. I just try to make sure I’m able to compete with the rest of the talent in the world. I feel like wherever the bar is, that’s were I’m trying to exceed. A lot of people fall into that shell of just trying to
be superior in the Bay and I think you should strive bigger than that. Rather if you’re from the South, from the Bay, from NY, I feel like you should try to be the biggest in each market, not just your market. I feel like if people just stick to their guns rather than just trying to do what works, if people just continue to stick to what makes them, then people will succeed a lot faster. I think that’s what I do, I just took the job of giving the people me. I don’t hide anything, I don’t sugar coat anything. This is me in its rawest uncut form, I just dress it up so it’s presentable. Over 40,000 viewers got a chance to see a glimpse into your life when your video for “Grateful” was released. What kind of impact has that video and single had on your career so far? The funny thing about that record is, I actually wrote that in January 2009, this was right after the Oscar Grant situation and I was in LA. I was sitting in the hotel with my cousin and stumbled across this beat I had in my email from one of my producers JL. I had the email for three years and I never opened the email or heard the beat before in my life, until that day. When I first heard the beat, the hook instantly popped into my head, as soon as I found the melody the words just popped into my head. I actually wrote “Grateful” in about fifteen minutes. I was out in LA with my boy Taj [who directed the video], and I met up with him later on that day and we were at a video shoot in and he had walked over to one of his buddies and he came back to me and said, “you wanna shoot a video?” and I said, “Hell yeah I wanna shoot a video!” So he asked me, “well what you got,” [and] I told him about “Grateful” and said, “its not recorded yet, I just wrote it like three hours ago,” so I spit a little of it for him. When I got back to the Bay I recorded the song and I was back in LA a week later with a finished product. He was asking me did I want to switch the song and I was like naw, I can’t switch the song cause God wants me to put out this song. Ever since the day that I wrote that record I knew that it was gonna be one of those ones ’cause that day my pen was moving faster than usual, and it was kind of like I knew it needed to be said from me. After releasing a career changing album like H.I.P. H.O.P (Here I Present a Hero of Poverty), do you feel that pressure is on you for your next album to be just as great or greater? Naw, I don’t really believe in pressure... To read the rest of this interview, log on to www.ozonemag.com OZONE MAG // 43