By this point, hip-hop heads all over the world are familiar with Joey Bada$$ and Pro Era. But the Brooklyn crew has more than one quality MC in its ranks, and 21-year-old rapper Nyck Caution is out to let the people know. Growing up in Brooklyn’s Mill Basin neighborhood, Caution picked up hip-hop as a hobby, with Eminem and 8 Mile in particular a main influence. But as a teenager at Edward R. Murrow High School, he met a group of kids who would turn that hobby into something much bigger.
“When I was younger I was always just like rapping and shit, not seriously but just to fuck around,” he says. “And then when I went to Murrow, I met Joey and everyone and everything just started falling into place.”
Caution began recording at a local studio in Mill Basin when a chance performance at a friend’s show at the Knitting Factory put him on the radar of Capital STEEZ, a local MC who Caution had met in their geometry class as...
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By this point, hip-hop heads all over the world are familiar with Joey Bada$$ and Pro Era. But the Brooklyn crew has more than one quality MC in its ranks, and 21-year-old rapper Nyck Caution is out to let the people know. Growing up in Brooklyn’s Mill Basin neighborhood, Caution picked up hip-hop as a hobby, with Eminem and 8 Mile in particular a main influence. But as a teenager at Edward R. Murrow High School, he met a group of kids who would turn that hobby into something much bigger.
“When I was younger I was always just like rapping and shit, not seriously but just to fuck around,” he says. “And then when I went to Murrow, I met Joey and everyone and everything just started falling into place.”
Caution began recording at a local studio in Mill Basin when a chance performance at a friend’s show at the Knitting Factory put him on the radar of Capital STEEZ, a local MC who Caution had met in their geometry class as a freshman in high school. The two began working together as juniors and, after STEEZ and Joey put together Pro Era the following year, Nyck Caution signed on with the buzzing crew. As Joey’s breakout mixtape 1999 began to take off, Caution re-evaluated what he was doing, dropped out of Brooklyn College and devoted his time to hip-hop.
“At that time I was like the newest member, so I felt like I had something to prove and I had to really step up to the plate,” he says about the time when Pro Era began popping. “I didn’t want to just be overlooked because I was the newer dude. And at that time I just started really going hard with it.”
STEEZ’s death at the end of 2012 was a blow to the crew, but they regrouped with a pair of collective projects, helping to establish more members as solo talents and individual artists in their own right. As Pro Era’s only white member, Caution knew that he stood out, but he didn’t want his race to define him. “I think that’s automatically like, ‘Oh shit, who’s that white dude?'” Caution says about what sets him apart. “That’s a visual thing that people pick up. Then it comes down to, I feel like a lot of white rappers have a corny edge to them. That shit doesn’t go further than college. I don’t have a gimmick or anything like that, I just think that people feel what I say. I’m really sayin’ shit that’s coming from my heart. I’m not just saying bullshit.”
And as Pro Era continues expanding, Caution is looking to drop his first full project since a mixtape in late 2011, scheduled for the summer, as well as videos and visuals in the coming months. And his music is evolving by the day. “I used to just rap on the song, do everything I could do and then the song was over,” he says. “[Now] I can really express myself in different ways other than rapping. And then it’s just growing and experiencing different things.”
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