YBWN: Rapper, tech entrepreneur, Google Executive, soul-searcher

Nash and I meet on a sweltering summer day in New Orleans. I meet him at his rental in the Bywater area. He splits his time between San Francisco and New Orleans (his birthplace.) When I arrive, I’m greeted by his girlfriend. “Hey, Nash is on a call. He’ll be out in a few minutes.” 15 minutes later Nash comes out into the lounge area, and he immediately puts some beats on and starts rapping.

“Prior to 16 months ago, I’m a very different person. Some of my friends call me ‘New Nash.’ Before I rejoined Google, I had a few months off and lived the island life in Ko Pha Ngan (island in Thailand.) This is what gave me the confidence to put something out there. I can actually be a rapper. I am a rapper and I should put some shit out there.”

His first album, Game Theory, gives the listener a look into the life and struggles of a 34-year-old Google Executive who has had his fair share of victories and defeats, has lived all around the world, gone through a broken heart and career changes. What’s stuck with him throughout all this is his love for poetry and music.

Nash was born and raised in New Orleans and attended Bonnabel High School. He double majored in Economics and Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University in New York City. Immediately after graduating in 2007, he got a job at Google and moved to San Francisco. He joins a startup called AdMob. In 2009, Admob was bought by Google for $750 Million, so Nash once again is working for Google at a more senior position. Nash was 24 when this buyout happens, what he calls a “super-lucky career event.” “It’s a good recipe to waste a lot of money. Which happens later on,” he laughs.

Once he rejoined Google, he is placed at the head of a team responsible for in-app advertising. He works a few years in Singapore, but experiences burnout. He quits Google, and from 2012-2017, Nash starts a few tech businesses and gives a TED talk. He’s always been interested in humanitarian work. One memorable assignment is his app-building for a public health project in Botswana. Explaining his work, he and his business partner went to “super remote tribal places, and really interesting health issues as a consequence. HIV rates are extremely high because of this. So we built survey apps while taking into account that a lot of places in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have cell-service. As well as a user experience for people who aren’t very tech-savvy.” This is one of the many businesses / projects he got into in the 5 year span. A few succeed, a few fail. 2017 was a bit of a breaking point: “I made impossible targets to hit which disappointed a lot of people in the business. I’m travelling all the time for work, and I get divorced in this time. I’m really just not happy. I really don’t know who I was, or where I belonged.

During this period of turbulence is when he undergoes some self-transformation. He first started debuting his writing at poetry nights in Singapore. At one of these readings, he decided out of the blue to throw a beat on and rap over it. “People were super feeling that,” he says. Before rejoining Google in 2019, he takes some time off and lives in Ko Pha Ngan. “Every sunset there’s an organic drum circle that forms. One day I realized I could rap to this. I just went off, and everyone was feeling it. I’d just rap for an hour. I did that for 40-50 nights. In December 2019, I come back to New Orleans and a friend shows me how to use ableton. I bought some beats and learned to record.” The rest is history. This all leads up to the release of his first album, Game Theory.

Ybwn covers a lot of ground sonically on his album Game Theory. The album starts with the arcade-like sound of “Tryin’ my Best” which, Nash says, is strategic. “This is my first song, on my first album. I’m just trying my best, and that’s good enough. It’s about getting better. It’s about me doing the best art I can possibly do.” It’s evident his travels across the world have influenced his style / beat choice. Tracks such as “Nuthin to a G” and “Let it pound” take influence from west coast gangsta rap. He taps into the typical hip-hop brags about money, women, and weed.

Highlights of the album, for me, are the deeply personal songs “Mantra” and “Red.” Each of these return to the familiar chant: “Looking at the yantra (Indian spiritual wheel), whats your mantra” (“Mantra”) and “Where have I been lead, who did I follow?” (“Red”)

His time living the island life on Ko Pha Ngan shines through with the beat choice for “Mantra”. It starts with a dreamy, sad guitar loop, with a seagull in the background. A xylophone comes in and out, , and he delivers moving, personal reflections on life: “the plans never written in the palm of your hand … How we bleed how we hurt / Can we see past the dirt / Can we outlast the earth / Die fast and seek rebirth / My task now is the search / I rap cause it hurts.”

“Red” was originally a poem. “I got some weird reactions to this. I posted the poem on Facebook and a lot of people reached out to me asking ‘are you ok?’ My mom called me crying.” The chorus is a moody chant “where have I been l lead, who did I follow?” In between the chorus, he fills us in on what’s going on in his head. “Reflect on myself … All the money lost, All the friends gained, all the blind times, was I blind while times changed?” “No I cant relax, No I can’t relapse, No I cant know that, No I cant go back”

Overall, I’d say Nash is a very talented musician. His spoken-word-poetry like enunciation interacts with the beats in a way that creates a mood – nostalgia (laugh like a child), happiness, sadness, content (Tryin my best), among many more. He took time choosing his beats, and the time spent paid off.

Game Theory is available on all major streaming platforms: https://lnk.to/ybwn-gametheory Follow him on instagram to keep up with events, new music, etc.

Photos and article by Matt Valerio. Follow me on instagram and check out my other article here.