Image via Na-Kel Smith’s Facebook
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Only ten days after his friend Earl Sweatshirt’s Sick! came out, Na-Kel Smith quietly dropped his own short project. Skullface Bonehead is a 14-minute demonstration of Na-Kel’s advanced musical evolution. His sound has settled down from its spastic origins into something slower, more abstract, experimental, and moody. The culmination of an ongoing progression that’s been playing out in front of skateboarding and Odd Future fans, in real time.
Na-Kel grew up in South Central, exposed to skating at a young age through his uncle, the greatest character in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater history, Kareem Campbell. After honing his craft and building hype through videos, Na-Kel entered the world of professional skating so quickly that he didn’t even need to attend high school. Supreme sponsored him, and he fell in naturally with the assorted skaters and artists who lingered on Fairfax in the mid-aughts. As Odd Future exploded, his friendship and close association with Earl, Tyler, Frank Ocean, and others led to him becoming one of the “non-musician” members of the loose collective.
In 2013, Na-Kel was just a professional skater in the studio with Tyler, The Creator, who happened to enlist a slew of non-rapping friends like Jasper, Lee Spielman, and Lucas Vercetti to hop on “Trashwang.” The verse wasn’t a byproduct of serious ambition. Just another energetic addition to a posse cut. A fun and funny encapsulation of a chaotic studio hang. A couple of years later, Na-Kel showed up with a powerful, emotional verse on Earl Sweatshirt’s “DNA.” The story of that recording became instant musical legend, akin to George Clinton telling Eddie Hazel to “play guitar like you just found out your mother died” for the solo on “Maggot Brain.” Ten minutes after taking a tab of acid, Na-Kel found out his friend who was in the hospital had passed away. Earl wisely turned to him and said, “write about it.”
A few more years passed, and skating remained the priority. “Trashwang” and “DNA” were anomalies. If you hang out with DIY rappers long enough, they’re bound to hand you the mic. Then, Na-Kel decided to give music a real shot. From spending time around Odd Future affiliates, as well as the other eclectic assortment of artists and producers who circulate in and out of Dro Fe’s Narco House recording space, he learned how to be an all-encompassing independent artist. Over the years, through steady practice in late night and early morning sessions surrounding long days traveling and skating, Na-Kel taught himself how to record, engineer, and make beats.
The transformation in his sound from his debut project Twothousand Nakteen to Skullface Bonehead is extraordinary. You can hear the bumps and bruises he suffered along the way to perfecting the perfect trick. Whereas he started his serious solo career screaming lyrics and making loud, fast songs that mirrored his skater background, Skullface Bonehead is calmer and more nuanced. He only raps in his own voice on the opening song, and the rest contains the textured layering of effect-heavy voices and sounds. He still considers himself an “amateur musician,” but that’s because he’s committed to perpetual growth and expansion.
The evolution was natural. Without too much thought, Na-Kel is capable of casually transforming the sounds of the past that influenced him into the sound of a new, off-kilter future. The beat for album opener “Prayer” has a stuttering kick drum pattern reminiscent of Kanye’s “Black Skinhead,” which Na-Kel references atop them. Although he admitted he’s not too familiar with Madlib, who his friends all adore, he raps in a pitched-up vocal effect that is, through multiple generations of influence, indebted to Lord Quas. His reason for using that effect? Because the higher voice makes him happier. Simple. There’s a lightness about Na-Kel’s attitude and personality that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to an aggressive sound. A fan of the more upbeat tone of Sick!, Na-Kel claims he wants his beats to sound like a “new age, dumbed down version” of Earl Sweatshirt’s production.
More than any previous project, Skullface Bonehead fits in with the experimental lo-fi scene that artists like Earl spearhead. It does so without compromising the carefree, positive attitude that distinguishes him from the friends who’ve helped give him this platform. The project is unique and true to him because, for the first time, he did it all himself. –Will Hagle
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