In one of those prewar apartment complexes on the border of Chinatown and the Lower East Side, the ones with ghosts whispering through the chipped radiators, Gabe ’Nandez is in his bedroom looking for an outfit. None of his laundry is done, though; he just got back home from rocking his best album yet, the medieval boom-bap of Sortilège (entirely produced by Preservation), as an opener on the GOLLIWOG tour of billy woods, his new mentor and Backwoodz Studioz label boss. Tonight’s homecoming show at the Knockdown Center in Queens will be one of Gabe’s biggest sets in more than a decade of rapping.
I’m killing time snooping around in his kitchen, which doubles as a living room, waiting for him to change. In the far corner is a mini office area where he works his overnight job as a customer service representative for a bank. On the floor are a bunch of philosophy books marked up like the first draft of a college paper. His walls are basically an artistic moodboard: Manga panels from the mythological fantasy Berserk; biblical symbols; Wu-Tang posters, Ka records, and DMX memorabilia; flags and knickknacks from across the globe (a nod to his nomadic upbringing, where he spent time in Haiti, Jerusalem, and Tanzania when he wasn’t in his homebase of New Rochelle); a collection of swords, knives, and Eastern instruments, including the bağlama he played on “Harmattan,” the intro to Sortilège.
When he comes out of his room, he’s wearing a pair of fitted Levi’s and a Darth Vader tee underneath a bomber jacket. “What do you think?” he asks, spraying himself with the amount of cologne you might before a big first date. “Do I look like a real rapper now or what?”
That might have been a self-deprecating joke, but in reality, that must be part of the pressure of getting your Backwoodz chain (there doesn’t seem to be an actual chain, but let’s pretend). The stamp of the vaunted independent hip-hop label—which has built a reputation among its community of fanatical diehards and like-minded rap geeks for its lyric-forward, anti-commercial approach—can bring new eyes to a rapper overnight. That’s the shift Gabe, who regularly tears up stages on random Wednesday evenings in the city, has been going through. He’s a Professional Rapper now. “It was the perfect storm of woods and Pres really believing in me with my fundamental skill just stepping up,” he says of his moment. “But I feel like Guts from Berserk; I was a mercenary outside fighting all the battles for so long that I earned this shit.”
