INTERVIEW | NASTY P (@NASTYPBEATS) DISCUSSES NEW ALBUM ‘RICH MUNDI’

Since drop­ping his album “Rich Mundi”, Nasty P has immersed him­self in a busy dj sched­ule sup­port­ing none oth­er than Bey­once & Jay Z at their request.  As well as sup­port­ing the Carter’s on their OTRii tour, Nasty P has been on a solo European tour, play­ing across the UK and as far as Copen­ha­gen and Frank­furt!  The latest single “Dia­mond Life” taken from his album Rich Mundi, show­cases Nasty P’s alter ego Rich Mundi’s grit­ti­er elec­tron­ic­ally driv­en indus­tri­al sound that could be at home at any EDM fest­iv­al. We catch up with him to find out more.

Who is Rich Mundi?
Rich Mundi is my alter ego, a character/alias that cre­ates more futur­ist­ic sound­scape music ran­ging from hip hop and elec­tron­ic to future bass. I like the idea of cre­at­ing songs without the need of a feature.

What made you want to express this latest pro­ject through an alter ego?
The idea behind it is to enable my cur­rent fans to grow with me and make myself stand out to a new genre of fan. With my alter ego it allows me to be diverse, I can slowly intro­duce my new sound whilst enabling people to hear my head nod style that I’m known for.
On my last pro­ject I had straight hip hop boom bap with Ed Og and Terman­o­logy etc but this was also along­side tracks with a ³⁄₄ Waltz melody with crazy vocal pitches and scream­ing disco vocals.

The latest album is much more exper­i­ment­al than your pre­vi­ous, more pur­ist hip hop pro­jects. What brought about the change?
It is really to open up more col­our, com­pos­i­tion, irreg­u­lar but work­ing struc­tures, push bound­ar­ies a little but not just use any sounds, a meth­od to the mad­ness. There is a bit of a glass ceil­ing with the pur­ist hip hop approach and I have done too much work to be pigeonholed.

We can hear a range of ambi­ent sounds with­in Rich Mundi, what was the pro­cess like to work with new styles and techniques?
There are for­mu­las that I run through insert­ing new sounds through them but my ear is the gate­keep­er to what gets through. I have pre-set algorithms that main­tain the sens­ib­il­it­ies of hip hop so when I cre­ate, it doesn’t devi­ate too much.
For example, I may think what would a Kate Bush, Pete Rock and Kaytranada track sound like, keep that in mind and work that around my ori­gin­al for­mula and see what hap­pens. Some­times it works and some­times it doesn’t, but you can always take some­thing pos­it­ive away from the pro­cess. There may be an excit­ing ele­ment you can use. This whole train of thought stops the music being stag­nant to me.

You have worked with some of the biggest vet­er­ans in the game, who has been the most inter­est­ing per­son to work with?
Being one of Ed Og’s biggest fans and get­ting to work with him was great! He was so laid back. We had a great rap­port and this made the pro­cess run even smooth­er. He just got it, we both knew what each oth­er meant without hav­ing to artic­u­late too much, we still chat now and again. That’s just a vibe from exper­i­ence and his speed in get­ting it done (as well as Akrobatik Reks and Terman­o­logy), all very professional.
Actu­ally one of the most inter­est­ing to work with was Skinny­man, but not neces­sar­ily in a good way haha, I had to kind of work along­side whatever his time to do stuff was, very errat­ic and at times scatty, me not know­ing when what where! but that is what helps make his whole per­sona and char­ac­ter and totally comes out in the track! So, no complaints.

What have you learnt dur­ing your jour­ney while work­ing with some of the most cre­at­ive names?
I’ve learned that nobody gets any­where without time, patience and also stand­ing firm with­in that pro­cess, sounds corny but real recog­nise real.
it’s a remind­er that had I not acted in that way from the start and real­ise the tal­ent I had to offer then I maybe wouldn’t of had the con­fid­ence to approach them in the first place.

There has been some­what of a renais­sance of Brit­ish hip hop in the last few years. How does it feel to be part of this and what dir­ec­tion do you see it going in?
Per­son­ally I think the words Brit­ish hip hop sound more tra­di­tion­al… for example, I think 4 owls, Task Force, Roots Manuva etc but grime is Brit­ish and has hip hop ele­ments.  The young rap­pers today are real­ising they no longer have to ride the coat­tails of Amer­ic­ans anymore.
I really dig the pro­du­cer Mura Masa who is bring­ing some cool ideas to the table with new U.K. artists

Is there any­one you’d like to work with from this new era?
Def­in­itely!  I’d like to work with people like Roots Manuva, Cyhi The Prince, Fran­cis and the lights, Feist, Rustie, Royce 5 9, Bön iver, Stormzy, Mura Masa,Joey Badass,Schoolboy Q .…actu­ally too many to men­tion haha!

What can we expect in your next project?
My next pro­ject is an EP by my alter ego Rich Mundi, Ive got four songs down and excited for its release.
If I had to com­pare this EPs style I would say it’s like that of Hud­son Mohawke, Flume but more with a hip hop boom bap 808 style run­ning through it.

Grab your copy of the album today here — http://www.richmundi.com

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