sunez
Fumes from dead croissants, the designed charting of the singing pastry as a legend. It’s all these gross, chance gasses that always seem to pummel the nostrils just when the scents of the Real glory the elements. All a refuse of injustice from the falsified charities donating complex lies to leech out cover stories. The legacy of consistent diluting turns a unified time period of culture into fifteen minute bracket coon-chain gangs that never end. Never ending until the life of the Art is choked. But the wheels of the last cassette turning the corners of a download, the hardest verses and breaks crash into the ropes of the industrial hillside. And down coming toppling, headless coon and all. Liner notes mask the hero of it all who wielded 14 forms with Purpose. Let the Skillatrator tell you, it was the God Estee Nack.
The extremely charismatic MC of Tragic Allies Estee Nack debuts with his drum infused text, 14 Forms, The Book of Estee Nack. As a brother with the knowledge of self, repping Lynn, Massachusetts and his Dominican roots, the understanding is profound that notes his score. So as we page through the LP, here are some jewels from my build with Estee Nack…
SUNEZ: Peace to the God! How did you get a knowledge of self as God of the 5% Nation of Gods and Earths?
ESTEE NACK: When someone says they’re a Five Percenter, they’ve always been one. They, to me, always had the idea to do their own thing and ride their own wave. They question the wave. A brother I went to high school here—he was the first born here—he would tell me every time he’d see me, ‘yo, you’re a wise God. You need to activate that knowledge.’ Eventually, I ended up linking up with King Asiatic and he gave me the knowledge around 2008. Around 2010 was when I drew up the name, Now Allah CeeKing because it’s dealing with the present time which is now. Allah which is the God. And of course, dealing with the understanding that Allah had. Since we’re living in Now Allah days, we’re dealing with the present time. So now I’m dealing with Now Allah days and I’m dealing with Now Allah understanding. And this is how I be the King in my kingdom and show forth Allah in Now Allah days.
There was a thing I used to deal with and it was procrastination so to live up to a name like Now Allah there can’t be any procrastination. Everything has to be done right and exact, right now.
Furthermore, if we’re going to go into the mathematical aspect, the 14th letter in the alphabet is N. I told King Asiatic my righteous name is Estee. I was like, ‘how are you gonna tell me to change my name?!’ When I really got the knowledge for a while and traveled to the root a couple of times I really understood the culture. And that was the creative force necessary for me to activate and draw up my own name. I see myself as Now Allah
SUNEZ: That’s real peace, God. Now you’re from Lynn, Massachusetts, from a Dominican background. Now the Dominican paradigm is one of the most uniquely oppressed. How was out there growing up in Lynn as a Dominican getting a knowledge of yourself?
ESTEE NACK: If you see pictures every so often. I don’t like to put too many personal pictures but every so often you’ll see a personal picture from the Gods ciphers and it’s mainly Dominicans.
SUNEZ: Yes!
ESTEE NACK: You don’t really have to speak English out here. Most of the Gods taught out here are mainly Dominican, Boricua. The first born is half-Mexican. As a matter of fact our last rally we had it practically in Spanish. We had a newborn who just did his three day fast and he doesn’t even speak English. [laughs]
SUNEZ: [laughs]
ESTEE NACK: We gotta do rallies in Spanish and that’s a great thing. It’s hard for the Dominican to grasp the reality of their own Blackness. So when a brother adds on it’s a beautiful thing because that’s a challenge for us. Just explaining the mathematics, alphabets and degrees in Spanish has me understanding things differently. I feel like it gives us a better insight for us who are fluent in Spanish.
SUNEZ: The Dominican oppression is very unique, often an extremely well educated display of misinformation. That is, they advocate the wrong history of their oppression, their Haitian neighbors and their alike Blackness and heritage very eloquently. With the Dominican government continuing to pursue the expelling of Haitians that have been Dominican citizens for generations, how do you see building with our Dominican brothers and sisters?
14 Forms is the diversity of a man’s life all capsuled in a moment. There is the storytelling of the day that wraps the LP from its scenery (“Lazy Day Chillin’ (The Setting)”), the interactions with the wisdoms (“Brown Fly (Amor De Pendejo),” “Sex or Chess”), the indulged stimulation (“When I Get High”) and captured scenes (“Love N’ Lust”). It immediately highlights ill battle tracks (“Allies Are Navy Seals,” “Golden Guillotines”) that exemplify his Hip Hop ethos through verbal dexterity, increasing rhyme speeds and dynamic flows. Yet the core that really makes this album essential are these tools and real life content propelling exceptional insight and deeper socio-cultural and spiritually scientific commentary. There is the summative acumen supreme to espouse on the institutions that oppress and their interconnections on “Churches, Music & Politics.” With verses battling through, the track takes the awareness of oppression into an anthem of resistance. “Incriminating Thoughts” goes further with “religions be filling our brains with fantasy/they keep us guessing instead of giving our minds food /trying to tell us what’s happening in the afterlife when they actually know as little as I do/law enforcement threatening my life daily/could it be that they’re threatened by my Blackness…” with a deliberately slower, enunciated articulation that equals the pensive mood of the track. With songs fluctuating from the ill introspection of “T.I.M.E.” to the yayo script of “Snowcap Mountains” the everyday brother of extreme stylist proportions is solidified. The zenith of the builds is on the knowledge of self on “Who Am I (The Closing),” a dynamic break from the mystery into the Original Man as God and “The Science of the Universe” a quantum verse that is amazing…
ESTEE NACK: One of the things, God, that allowed me to gravitate towards the culture of I-God, Allah’s message that was given to me by King Asiatic.
I was pretty well schooled on the history of the island and it would piss me the fuck off. Before I came into the knowledge of what the 5 Percent were or the Nation of Gods and Earths were, I was mentally sparked listening to Reggae music, Sizzla, to be exact. I grabbed a record from him and hear him talking about Ethiopia, Marcus Garvey and even children of Israel. I’m like, ‘but Jews are those light skinned motherfuckers! What are you talking about Ethiopia?! You’re Jamaican!’ I was still caught up in the man-made boundaries. So there doing the research starting coming in. Now, Haiti was a united country. When the Spanish was first ousted, the people who ousted them called it Haiti. What you see with the Dominican Republic is of Dominic. Who is this Dominic? It’s of the Catholic Church which the Spaniards brought. The Haitians that consider themselves Haitian today had originally made the move once they got independence to get rid of all of that unalike shit and restore the natural order. This is why they wanted to call it Haiti which is the original indigenous name. Where Dominicans got the Quisqueya name I’m still searching for that answer. I feel like that’s some bullshit. Along with the Taino name ‘cause that means peace.
So now it was up to them to be the owners and restore the natural order. What happens? You get 14 French warships stationed outside the country. The Spanish had united with the Creole speaking side and the seat was in Santo Domingo. Those 14 warships came with la mensaja (the message) that if they didn’t pay reparations or the country would be invaded with international European support. It was going to be justified for the French to go tear shit up if they didn’t pay the reparations. Haiti can be their own country as long as they pay these reparations. They begin paying this shit, a very crippling tax on the economy as they were newly trying to piece things together. At the root we, Boricuas, Dominicans, Trinidadians, Jamaicans, are all the same people there still are many subtle differences. Those differences became exploited. When times get rough, the people you always was cool with, sometimes you ain’t so much anymore.
Now I won’t say the whole Spanish side but those elite restore a semblance of order on their side. And all this other shit comes with it like the self-hatred. I don’t think anyone hates themselves more than the Dominican. The best relaxer in the United States of America is going to be from the Dominican salon. All this separation comes from that root. There was a cattle relationship on the Dominican side before the Europeans got ousted. If you’re a slave there you get to ride a horse while on the Haitian side, ta picando cana (they’re cutting cane) in the fields getting cut, sunburn. Their psychological caste system had 16 shades.
The Dominican government is so adamant about having Haitians come in. I’m not going to say there aren’t Haitians that want to restore the natural order. Now the elite in Haiti are corrupt today but ever since that embargo, there’s been two invasions on the Dominican Republic and countless ones on the Haitian side. There really hasn’t been an extended time of stability in either country since that brief four year period where they got their independence. All this ties in to today. They won’t look at the Russian, German, British, Canadian, American multinational corporation in there getting stupid paid. They instead say, ‘your ancestry is on this island but you have no right to claim benefit from that.’ I’m from the campo. I grew up seeing red lights in the distance every night. There’s not many lights in the campo so you can see every fucking star that’s in the sky. I’d say what the fuck are those red lights? And they’d tell me Farcun Bree. It turns out it’s Falcon Bridge, a multinational mining corporation exploiting one of the largest natural resources in our mountainous valley. They own the entire land. They’ll hire some Dominicans, put some trash bins around it, add a new basketball court and the people will yell they’re great. In the meantime, they exploit the resources and no one benefits over time. No complaint about that or others that buy public beaches, blocking them off even though you bathed in there for generations all because some extranjero came and took it. But we gotta get the Haitians out. They’re the problem.
“When I walk through the world that’s designed all is divine/the essence of Blackness/infinite Sun/I’m a shine/now witness the manifest the physical from the mind/the seed planted inside my ol’ Earth/surpass time to start soon/no beginning nor end/from the womb to the tomb/ the Son of Man’s history simply renews/subatomic particles joining to form an atom/atoms become molecules/compounds come through/the periodic tables used to tell of civilization/body’s powered to energize, ready for combination/elements combine and form cells that all perform in system/ they work and manifest the organisms/such as man, trees and fungus/energies properly giving amongst us/trees be giving off oxygen/humans exhale carbon dioxide and live their lives civilized/watching the Earth from the outside/witness it breathes/Man to the Earth/plant seeds and form trees/building homes for self/physical death fertilize the Earth/due process for the immortal birth/the cycle of life’s circle/manifestation of proper thoughts/intelligent design, rhyming I brought/science of life/ Adam to Genesis to genes/Exodus to unknown beings that’s unseen/your naked eye is now clothed/five senses like a crown of Gold/or a touch of Yeshua ben-Yosef/what was once a thought is now a fully populated globe with the Son of Man sitting at the throne/made in his image, skin is like mud/Bronze elements, Pharoahs are thugs/ knowledge to the distributors of drugs/the manifested will of the artist/supreme architect, Allah, manifesting the greatest story never told/breath of life translated and so often heard and seen as a whole/religion fulfilling a need to control/seldom addresses the truth, science of life/ from atoms to galaxies/star systems with living proof/it all came from Blackness, poof/but now their sticking pins in the heads of the Original youth /subatomic particles, the Estee Nack and the Tragic Allies making knowledge born in the booth/ Big Bang Theory/seven day creation stories/Nephila making wives of ancient shorties/primordial blobs of energy/perhaps I manifested myself to the physical so you remember me/so you’d exist and acknowledge me/I gave you five senses so you won’t have to follow me/just follow your own will and drive/similar to a kid that’s five who has no belief or religious vibe/just self-realization and observation and activation/proper preparation based off of situation/the babies is the stars/by watching their lives we get a better picture on how to live ours/Understand that/ that mystery they teach like Santa Claus/and that ain’t no good for the babies/I don’t believe in them rituals of bullshit they giving you/this is real shit, this ain’t lyrical/it’s something you should listen to/maybe when you’ve lost hope, pulling on a fif feeling miserable/and I aint talking bullshit/I’m talking bout you/I’m giving you this universal visual…”
– “The Science Of The Universe”
SUNEZ: A double standard of hypocrisy indeed. Now let’s go into the origins of Tragic Allies and your MC roots.
ESTEE NACK: I grew up with my grandparents and I liked to dance. I thought rapping was ill too. All I knew at the time was Bachata and Merengue so the rapping was real interesting to me. My mother was a travel agent at an agency that was right by a record store. I used to hang out with the record store owner’s son. I used to be there all the time trying to bust my rhymes. In Junior High school I really started digging, copping albums every Tuesday when they came out. I’d borrow my brothers joints for an eternity. [laughs]
SUNEZ: [laughs]
ESTEE NACK: We used to pass our raps around in school, in class, the hallways. Pass a motherfucker a battle rap then he’ll go in class and write one back. That’s how we got sharp like that. Then I met Purpose. Purpose is one of my cousin’s physicals (brothers). We had a battle for about two hours kicking verses on the phone the first time we talked. I knew he made beats at the time and we just started to make a lot of music. The rest is fucking history.
You know what’s funny. The name of my first rap group was actually The Godz. We had a symbol with three circles and a dot on the outside. Me and Purpose took it serious so we’re still rhyming
SUNEZ: Now your name Estee Nack, what does it mean and how’d you come up with that?
ESTEE NACK: When I first started my name was MC Soul but then I started calling myself MC Soul Theoretic because I thought Soul was too basic. And I used to double it up like Soul Theoretic So Theoretic. After that I thought that Soul Theoretic was forced. I felt I was on some backpack shit so I gotta get something simple. I just combined it. Instead of making it S.T. I just spelled it out. When someone asks me what it means I just say Estee. It just is. I never used to explain what it meant.
SUNEZ: And the Nack now fits Now Allah See King, your righteous name.
ESTEE NACK: Indeed.
SUNEZ: Now the debut LP
ESTEE NACK: Every time you’ve heard me on a song chanting, doing patois and shit, I just be bugging and bust it out. Niggas will be in the studio and say, ‘lay it down.’ I’ll be in the booth fucking around and that’s how I lay it down. Finding some production for a single, I’ve never done that. The production kind of just does it. It just happens in a short period of time a lot of that [diversity] was given. My next album, it may be six albums with chanty choruses but that has to happen by the production, what I’m going through, do I feel it that way and how it comes out.
Estee Nack is an MC who has all the requirements to be part of the lyricist squad that is Tragic Allies. His verses roll syllables all in melodic smoothness, the rapidity stays intense on the most toughest tracks while clarity stays mighty. While Estee sets himself apart with some of the most catchiest choruses and chanted bars in Spanish, Spanglish and/or rude bwoy patois 14 Forms is so overdue it is an addictive overload of his ideas, a first book of many books.
SUNEZ: How long did it take to make this debut?
ESTEE NACK: It took about two and a half years. I gotta song that says “2013.” I said, “2013, we’re still dealing with racism.
SUNEZ: Now on a skit on “When I Get High” you said that you are loose and comfortable because you got this knowledge of self.
ESTEE NACK: That came out and the meaning is a bit misconstrued. I’m not saying it’s because I got the knowledge of myself. I already had it. What I’m saying is that it’s because I have knowledge of myself. I’m knowledging my knowledge. I got knowledge of myself so I just gotta spit my shit. Get myself right and just do things accordingly. I can’t be sitting here procrastinating.
SUNEZ: How does having the knowledge of self make you feel comfortable enough to create freely?
ESTEE NACK: I’m here in the physical presence and we are all an artful expression. To be is to born into existence. Being myself, I just have to knowledge my knowledge and born my reality into existence. I know who I am. If you don’t know who you are you’ll just ask, well, who am I?, what do I write about? If you listen to my album, I tell people it’s like having a conversation with me. Some things there you may be able to correct me on. I say some things on there that years later, I may say I don’t agree with that on there. That’s the 14 forms that are occurring now that I’m giving to you now. This is how I feel right now.
SUNEZ: Most LPs start with the high pressure yet you start with the smooth, “Lazy Day Chillin’ (The Setting)” which is a totally unorthodox way to start such a rugged and driving album.
ESTEE NACK: I kind of thought that when I placed it there and that’s why I also called it “The Setting.” This joint ties into being Dominican and having a knowledge of myself. It gives a setting of any given day of the week of your average cat out here. It’s just through my particular experience.
SUNEZ: “Incriminating Thoughts”
ESTEE NACK: I wrote that song while driving. It just came out and it hit me in the head. Eventually I had to pull over. I wrote a lot of the album traveling.
SUNEZ: Police brutality is an issue you hit on many tracks. It’s a personal issue as your brother returned by their hands. What do you say to young brothers and sisters on how to deal with the police?
ESTEE NACK: Police brutality didn’t just start happening but the social media shows it all the time now. Some catch on, some don’t. We need to get educated and always keep things in their proper perspective. To demand your rights doesn’t always mean to go huffing and puffing. That’s exactly what they do that pisses us off. They think they have the right to do that. We say the same thing. Now if you’re going to open your mouth you’ve got to be wise with your words. Or keep your mouth shut. Keep shut or say something very wise because it won’t work out in your favor unless you got Johnny Cochran money. If you feel they’re going to roll up, get your phones in record mode. Get the whole joint. Record them approaching you. Be respectful. These motherfuckers are going to fuck you up and get away with it. I got beat the fuck up by the police in the police station. They had a little party, dancing and shit. It was crazy. Dealing with the cops is tough. Knowledge is infinite. They’re very us against them. So they’re trying to do the knowledge too and study the perps and such. I asked a cop, “pardon me, do you suspect me as a criminal?” They’ll just ignore and bypass that. Once I was pulled over coming from a show and I got pulled over coming from a show. They had dogs and everything. Out there for over an hour which is a violation. He said he did suspect me as a criminal and that I have two counts of trafficking of my record. That was a fucking lie. The canine cop and some other guy were there so he may have been trying to put that thought. So they’ll just lie or bisect saying things like, ‘Oh, you’re a lawyer?!” and they will fuck you up. You have to determine whether you’re the type of person to get fucked up for no reason or getting fucked up is going to be worth it. Cops are a motherfucker.
Purpose, as a producer, churns purist material as if 1995 is a university, DJ Premier and Pete Rock are his professors and this is his thesis. Purpose produces to accentuate and draw out the best of an MC. That despite the diversity Estee comes with there is a cohesiveness to the work yet 14 distinct changes in excitement. The booming bass of “Sex or Chess,” the rugged beat plodding of “Love N’ Lust,” the tinkling keys and sandy high hats of “Snowcap Mountains,” the upper mid-tempo, bass drowned snare pops driving “Churches, Music & Politics,” the soul’d organ smashes and corner brothers’ doo wop wail on “Lazy Day Chillin’” or the piano bass keys that conclude with each of Estee’s grim sights on “Incriminating Thoughts.” A unity of toughness with an array of subtle distinctions that make an ideal thinking man’s Boom Bap album.
SUNEZ & ESTEE NACK, 2013
SUNEZ: “Churches, Music & Politics” seems to capture all the categories our hells can trace back to.
ESTEE NACK: In my experience, I was mastered through the church. My grandmother is a direct descendant of El Riqio who was the son of a cacique, the second head of the island of Domincian Republic. But my grandmother is one of the most Christian people ever. Granted, it works for her but she is one of the most right and exact. Maybe the shit she’s kicking isn’t but the way she lives her life is. She deals with losses like nothing. It works for her but not everybody. Didn’t work for me like that, a lot of people in my family and a lot of people in general. That was one of the ways they killed our whole lineage. Then I got into this music. I never thought of catching a victim of my own until I listened to certain tracks and became indoctrinated. I don’t think it’s the track itself that does the damage but the constant thoughts put into your head. Being taught how to eat the wrong foods. You become that. When we become that then the politics comes in. The politics is what makes you being alive illegal. You being a living, sovereign being is illegal.
SUNEZ: On “The Science of the Universe” you had a line in the chorus saying, “This is real not lyrical.” What’d you mean by that?
ESTEE NACK: If you notice I’m not going to hard at the technical aspects of rhyming. It was more so cadence and content so my flow is rhythmic and it can be understood. Because of the sciences that I’m dealing with brothers would dismiss that. Again, I’m talking to people in the hood. They’ll dismiss it as ‘I’m on that lyrical shit.’ So I say I’m just talking about you, reality, right now, as simple as I can put it and give details.
Seven of the MCs were the children in the history that Estee Nack wrote in advance. 14 Forms, a man split so well into ideas into concepts of illness that there is a little future tomorrow’s little rappers can verse on through. 7 on techniques and skill, 7 on the insights and moments of life that merit fossilizing. Now that’s 21 penned ideas all from this brother’s mind. Now all can see the king’s forms…