Gizmo is a 31-year-old nerdcore hip-hop rapper from the Caribbean who migrated to the United States before moving to Japan. His most recent album, The Rise of Negatron, tells the story of the rise of the supervillian Negatron and the perks of being a supervillian. BGN recently spoke to Gizmo about the project and his music career so far.
BGN: How long have you been rapping and how did you get into nerdcore hip-hop?
Gizmo: Well, I’ve never been a stranger to rhyming. As far as seriously rapping and making music, I’ve been doing that for about 4 years now. Nerdcore came about naturally.. You know.. Being a nerd and all (lol). A lot of my concepts, similes and analogies are based on video games, comics, anime and Sci-fi in general. All of which I was crazy about growing up and all of which I still love to this day!
BGN: What are the major influences for your most recent album, The Rise of Negatron?
Gizmo: There’s a lot of influences to the project as a whole so I’ll just name the main ones. Star Wars, Thanos, Darkseid and Star Fox. I can see you all being like “wth?! How does that even mesh?!” Lol.
BGN: The Rise of Negatron is unique because it is told from the point of view of supervillians. Why did you decide to tell a story from a supervillain’s point of view rather than a superhero?
Gizmo: I may catch some flack for this butttttt superheroes bore me. There.. I said it. Not all of them though, but most of them do. It’s pretty straight forward with most heroes. “I’m the good guy, I stand up for those weaker, yadda yadda yadda justice.” The villains however, always have some outlandish creative way to attain power, financial gain or whatever they desire. “I’ll use a antigravity device to pull a meteor into a populated city!” That’s a bit old school, but it still seems more interesting to me. Villains can be complex psychologically and completely delusional in believing what they are doing is the “right thing.” They can become good guys for personal interest and revert back to their agenda later. They just seem more dynamic and diverse to me. That’s why I chose to write from that perspective.
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