A few minutes into my interview with Nice Major, I got the impression that the Cali-bred Fort Worth-based MC/producer/entrepreneur doesn’t sit still for too long. Besides running his lifestyle brand VctryCrcle and indie label Elete Records, he still finds time to make a lot of dope music.
On April 30, Nice released Nice Major Presents: “Refresher,” Vol. 1, an eight-song collection of smooth, instrumental jazz-funk, heavy on throwback West Coast vibes. Two weeks later, he dropped “Be EAZY,” a woozy slab of smoky G-funk featuring MC Eiht of gangsta rap legends Compton’s Most Wanted. That single was a teaser for 15 Minute High.3, the six-track EP he put out on May 30. Taken together, Nice Major’s new releases are hard evidence that he’s an artist with a lot of forward momentum, even when traveling at the speed of a nostalgic G-funk-era cruise.
“I’m here to motivate and give conclusions / I’m provin’ / N*ggas like you better when you movin’,” Nice raps on 15 Minute’s lead-off track, and in a lot of ways, that theme of forward motion informs everything he does — the laid-back grooves and sunny funk of his production style make his EP and Refresher album feel like two parts of the same scenic journey across a Los Angeles locked in the golden hour, never mind having an actual West Coast OG drop some bars on it.
“Just, you know, growing up watching [MC Eiht] and listening to his music when he was in the classic battle with DJ Quik,” Nice Major said, “and being in iconic movies and being on Kendrick [Lamar’s] projects and [Ryder’s voice in] Grand Theft Auto and things like that — to actually getting this guy on a record and being from the West Coast, man, that was like, ‘You can’t beat that,’ you know what I’m saying?”
Nice Major said local rap impresario Smooth Vega helped him set up the deal with MC Eiht, and that idea, of helping your homies get a win, is VctryCrcle’s foundation.
“Even when you lose, you learn something,” Nice Major said, “and that’s not a loss. Everybody winning, not just you — it’s a circle. It’s really all about achieving your goals and, you know, even if it’s a small win, you still celebrate that. I think sometimes, man, we go through life, and we go through things and not celebrate the small steps that we took to get us to the big one … and sometimes, you know, people, they go through certain things, and they just need that person to tell them, ‘Hey, just win today, OK?’ So, that’s what VctryCrcle is all about.”
Of course, Nice Major has had a lot of pretty big wins — VctryCrcle is itself an outgrowth of selling out of merch at his shows to the point that he had to turn his merch into its own brand — and over the course of his career (which started in the early 2000s), he’s shared the stage with greats like Warren G., Dave East, and Lupe Fiasco. Nice Major attributes his successes to his positive hustle outlook and devotion to his craft.
“I’m a good storyteller,” he said. “I like to paint pictures. If it’s not my picture, it’s somebody else who couldn’t tell the story their way, so I told the story. I’m an entrepreneur, so I understand making $20,000 one week and then you’re at $300 the next … I understand grinding it out, you know, being at a place where you’re like, ‘OK, how do I figure this out?’ You find your niche, and you go with it, and you look back, and you’re like, ‘Man, I’ve come so far.’ That’s what some of the music is about. It’s about hustling, like, ‘Ready to make something happen?’ Because life is short. I love what I do so much that there is just not enough time in the day.”
Nice Major, in other words, is trying to make the best use of his time, cramming his days with creative endeavors and trying to open doors for other artists with his music, his brand, and his label. “I’m trying to bring people to the other side of the bridge, to get down with cool, urban, gangsta rap, with old-school rap lifestyle rap. That’s what I’ve been bringing. That’s what I’ve been paving.”
