An Introduction: Lewis "Nym" Scaife

By Lewis Scaife

My name is Lewis Scaife, but most people know me as Nym.
I am a white-mutt male from reformed hippy heritage. I was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, but grew up on a farm in Falmouth, Virginia. My childhood was spent chasing chickens, feeding goats, picking vegetables and writing stories. Now, I live in San Francisco’s Mission District. Currently, I am working as a computer lab teacher at Misson Dolores School as an AmeriCorps volunteer under my second year of national service.




Ten years ago today, my older sister gave me a birthday present—a mix tape that single-handedly determined the course of the rest of my life. This was 1999. I was 14 years old, an eighth grader who had until then had only a marginal interest in music. This tape contained a whole lot of rap music, songs that live on as old favorites of mine today—Outkast (“Skew it on the Bar-B”), Goodie Mob (“Greeny Green”), the Roots (“Adrenaline”), Method Man (“Method Man”), A Tribe Called Quest (“Like it Like That”).

I am now 24 years old. Somewhere early in between, I inadvertently was thrust into the actual creation of hip hop music when some kids down the road started rapping poorly. Ungracefully, I joined them and started making beats on my computer using their copy of Acid Music 2.0. I released two bad rap CDs in high school of overly emotional unrhymed rap over slinky, rigid beats and sold them for $5 apiece. Terrible.

Now, I’ve made a small name for myself beta testing third party operating systems for the AKAI MPC1000 series, a sampler model descendent of those made famous by Dr. Dre, DJ Shadow, DJ Premier and many others. I build MIDI controllers and have started programming microprocessors (Arduino) and creating circuits for future MIDI instruments. I make contemporary hip hop instrumentals and throw down the occasional rap lyric.

In the grand scheme of hip hop, 1999 wasn’t that long ago. I got pushed onto hip hop tracks long after the train left the station. As such, with as grudging of good humor as I can muster, I endure increasingly infrequent criticisms of being too wet behind the ears to “understand,” or to “truly appreciate” hip hop music. Was it not for my age, it would be my race. Was it not my race, it would be my hometown. Was it not my hometown, it would be my haircut—the divisions go on.

However, these last ten years have been important and revolutionary as music distribution is concerned. Due to the advent of peer2peer software, I had any album available at the click of a button. I zoomed over a hundred subgenres of hip hop, from the predictable, reliable Jurassic5 to the questionable AntiPop Consortium.
Whether or not hip hop is “mine,” I have taken it. Whatever I become in life, it will have been because of hip hop music. It is foremost among my hobbies. It is behind my interest in electronics. It is at the root of my knowledge of computers. It is responsible for virtually every single employable talent that I possess other than cooking.

I am a hip hop instrumentalist inventor. I write these reviews as an active producer of hip hop music, as someone who is as likely to beatbox as to whistle. It is my duty to criticize the genre and find the most beautiful beats, the illest lyrics, and the most skillful musicians. It is also my duty to shine light on others’ mistakes or shortcuts.

I have a lot to write about.