Behind 7001: A Conversation With N.C. Palma

A few weeks ago, I sat down in one of Allen Hall’s classrooms and dialed Nick Palma, also known as N. C. Palma, in the hopes of getting to know more about him and his latest EP 7001. Although he doesn’t believe in the rigid sub-genres of hip hop, he does describe himself as someone who makes hip hop music and says some of his biggest influences are artists like Kanye West, Bas, and Saba.N. C. Palma has been making music since his senior year of high school and laid out the story for me about how it all started. “There was an app called Rapchat that became really popular at the time when I was in high school and people would send freestyles to each other, and a lot of people particularly liked mine, and I was encouraged to write a full song. The early music wasn’t really that good but over time we improved.” He no longer has it saved but said his first song was one really long verse on a pretty hard boom bap beat called “Volcano Verse”.With the N. C. Palma origin story unlocked, I followed up with a question about the evolution of his sound since high school and how his music has changed over the years. After some thought he answered, “I would say just in actually making content we get better[...] I obviously had a really really great deal of assistance from the people that were around me— you know the engineers that we worked with and the producers that we worked with [...] all are able to teach a lot of really important things about the process.”He also explained that when he says “we”, he’s referring to everyone involved in the process. “That includes people who are listening to the music, that includes people who reach out to me and say, ‘Hey, I really like whatever song.’ Anybody that’s involved in the kind of interaction and the kind of dialogue that the music is, is having an effect on it. And sometimes that’s really direct like an engineer saying, ‘Hey, let’s maybe rewrite this verse,’ but you know anybody at any stage in the process from feedback to that actual content creation is what I mean when I say we.”Although N. C. Palma has been making music for a few years and has uploaded tracks on Soundcloud before, the five tracks thatmake up the 7001 EP are the only songs available on his Spotify and Apple Music pages. When I asked about whether this was some kind of fresh start he replied, “This was the first project that I felt like was conceptually strong enough, mixed and mastered well enough, and overall just worth putting out on all platforms.” He mentioned that it also happened to be around that time when his writing started to noticeably improve.“Things really fell into place,” he said when asked about the process of creating 7001, an EP with a kind of narrative thread weaving each track into the next. “I tried to really focus on one piece at a time, although you know after you make one or two you start to see where you could go potentially at the conceptual level. And for as much artistry and creativity that goes into things I do definitely still consider myself a writer and we’re trying to do bigger things than just make music that sounds good.”Currently, N. C. Palma has fans in the area and a dedicated team of engineers and producers helping him make music, but he’s got plans for the future too. He sees his music as a serious endeavor and expects to work on making music full-time once he graduates. I asked about the possibility of a collaboration with any local artists and he laughed. “That’s funny... I’m curious! There’s definitely a lot of conversations going on with artists. I don’t know if it’s my place to say you know who or what will be on the next project but there’s a person I’m trying to get on the next project that reached out to me, and I think it’ll be a really good experience.”If you’re interested in following N. C. Palma’s upcoming projects, you can find him on the following sites:Twitter: @iAmNickPalmaInstagram: @iAmNickPalmaSpotify: N. C. Palma + 7001 EPApple Music: N. C. Palma+7001 EP