In fall 2015, Chicago DJ and producer Nasim Williams (or “Na$im,” as he prefers it) played at what turned out out to be the final CMJ Music Marathon, putting an explanation point on his return to music. His work teaching and coaching—and the birth of his twin daughters earlier that year—had made it more difficult for him to find time to make beats. To make matters worse, his laptop had died a few months before, and he’d stopped DJing. Williams says having kids helped motivate him to work on his music, though, and he had help from Randy Ojeda of Tampa talent agency Cigar City Management—he helped Williams book the CMJ gig, a late-night slot sandwiched between Chicago rappers Martin Sky and Roy French at East Village venue Drom. And in August 2016, Ojeda arranged a distribution deal for Williams with independent publishing company Kobalt Music Group.
One track I heard from his main producer, Ly-key on the Beat, I wanted to touch, so I coproduced the record. Then out of nowhere, he had hit me up and let me know Cam’ron was on the joint. I was like, “Man, that’s crazy.” Pretty much an eight-ball verse from Cam’ron. The epicness of the record—it’s big bass, crazy hi-hats, it’s a real Chicago-meets-New York sound. The way Cam’ron flowed on the track, it was just crazy to me.
John Lester was pretty much the guy. He’s from Chicago originally, but grew up in Detroit. John came back after he graduated from college—came back to Chicago, decided that he wanted to work with the youth. The neighborhood where I’m from, we had after-school programs on every corner—every block was an after-school program at the time. He chose the program I was in. I’m from Northwest Towers’ Erie building, but we had a hip-hop club—I’m trying to think of the acronym.
John pretty much taught me how to make that feeling come to life and make it a quality product. It’s almost like training an athlete. It’s kind of hard to describe—once you see me in my work process, you would understand. Without John, I wouldn’t know the elements and the culture of what hip-hop really is and the positive side of it. I would’ve always been looking at it more so as a commercial side, and the vanity of it. I wouldn’t have been looking at it as a life-changing situation.
How did you get more involved from that point, in the broader Chicago hip-hop community and elsewhere?
I love representing the city because it shows people, like, the strong survive. If you’re doing what you need to do, then you don’t have to worry about harm coming to you. I understand Chicago’s a tough city, and I think I’m wearing the cape pretty proudly. And showing people it’s not only Chance the Rapper—I appreciate everything he’s doing, but it’s bigger than him too. We got other musicians really trying to bring change to the city.
