Video: Abhi The Nomad feat. Khary – Long Nights

Today, Austin rapper Abhi The Nomad has released “Long Nights” featuring Khary, the first track from his new project ‘Abhi vs. The Universe’ that will be dropping this coming fall. In the album’s teaser video, fans saw Abhi transported into a video game challenge that he can only escape by streaming on Twitch, engaging the fans, and most importantly releasing new tracks.

“Musically, the song wrote itself, it has a pop-rock and emo feel and speaks to a genre of music I listened to quite a lot growing up: Green Day, Sum 41 and Blink 182” explains Abhi. “The song is about a girl not calling you back and feeling like you’re not worth any love, which is a feeling I’ve felt many times (‘til recently).”

Abhi has been lauded by many major media outlets including Texas blog Ovrld who named Abhi’s ‘Marbledtheir’ #1 album of the decade. For “Long Nights”, he teamed up with Brooklyn-based rapper Khary, who’s been praised by Vibe who said “Khary keeps his flow infectious and effortless, while also spitting that truth tea when it comes to life’s struggles as a young adult.”

The son of a teacher and a diplomat, Abhi was born in southern India, but he spent his formative years crisscrossing the globe, calling Beijing, Hong Kong, New Delhi, and the Fiji Islands home at various points during his itinerant childhood. A perpetual outsider, he turned to music in hopes of fitting in, consuming a steady diet of whatever mainstream pop and punk his classmates told him was cool until his teenage years, when he got his first taste of hip-hop.

At 18, Abhi moved to California, where he recorded his debut EP, ‘Where Are My Friends’. Released independently, the collection caught fire online, landing in a series of prominent playlists and racking up millions of streams without any traditional label or radio support behind it. Just as his career began taking off, though, Abhi’s student visa expired, and he abruptly found himself forced to leave the country.

Unsure of his next move, he headed back to India, then to France, where he devoted the better part of the next year to completing work on his full-length debut, ‘Marbled’. Drawing comparisons to Beck and N.E.R.D., the album was a critical and commercial smash, amassing more than 40 million streams on Spotify alone and prompting an avalanche of rave reviews. NPR hailed the record’s “hybrid…of rap and melodic pop musings,” while Consequence of Sound called it “the sound of an artist determined to make his mark,” and Mass Appeal described Abhi as a “multi-instrumentalist force of nature.” In 2019, he returned with his sophomore effort, ‘Modern Trash’, an apocalyptic, environmentally conscious concept record that garnered even more acclaim and led to sell-out headline dates around the country along with festival slots everywhere from ACL to Hangout.

Now, Abhi is finally planting roots. After spending much of the last few decades in constant motion, the Indian-born rapper and singer finds himself in uncharted territory, settling down, getting married, and carving out a permanent home for the first time in his life. For a restless soul like Abhi, you might expect the walls to start closing in any minute, but the truth of the matter is he’s never felt freer.

“I’m doing things now that I never would have imagined,” Abhi reflects. “I spent my whole life moving around, just waiting for whatever was coming next, and now that I can finally sit still and be at peace for a minute, I feel more comfortable than ever pushing myself and breaking new ground as an artist.”