Nick Hakim on the Song He Wishes He Wrote
Nick Hakim is most comfortable with an instrument in his hand, playing with other musicians. That kind of creative camaraderie helped the psychedelic soul artist overcome writer’s block while making his new album, WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD, a woozy affair that manages to sound both homespun and exacting. And it’s the thing he misses most in quarantine. To fight against isolation, he’s already planning a collaborative recording session for July. “I miss my friends,” he tells me from his home in Ridgewood, Queens. “I can’t wait to just fucking play music with them.”
When asked to choose a song he wishes he wrote, Hakim selected one that’s representative of the premiums he places on community and human connection: “My Mom,” by the genre-bending NYC singer-songwriter Marc Anthony Thompson—aka Chocolate Genius—from the 1998 album Black Music. Thompson wrote the poignant ballad about his mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s, and how her inability to recognize him redefined his world. For Hakim, the song is not only emotionally devastating, but also a transmission from a collaborative musical era of New York he admires; in the 2000s, Chocolate Genius was rechristened Chocolate Genius, Inc., reflecting the project’s collective nature.
At this point, Hakim is friendly with members of the Chocolate Genius universe, and it’s clear he looks to them as a model of how to be creative in the city. “Sometimes I fantasize about how they all were just working on each other’s records,” he says. “It’s a network of friends all tied into playing together.”
Pitchfork: Why did you choose this song?
Nick Hakim: It’s so sad. Every single time I hear that song, it immediately makes me fucking cry bullets out of my eyes. But also, it’s so beautiful. Just the emotion behind how he performs it, the melody, every little structural part. I can always go back to it. And it’s just so relatable. Everyone has a different relationship with death, but this song really perfectly describes a moment in his life that he felt a really big shift. I know people who have dealt with Alzheimer’s. It’s so hard. My friend’s grandma had it when we were in high school. She didn’t remember anyone.
The music is so gentle. The recording sounds like they’re in a room, like it’s live all the way through, like they’re playing really fucking quiet. But I still react. I’m still moving to it. And you can just hear everything in his voice.
So it’s the lyrics, the narration, the composition, and also the fucking band on that recording. The players are really good musicians with range. Marc Ribot is one of my favorite guitarists; he got really big after playing on Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs, but he’s also worked with John Zorn, who is this fucking weirdo jazz man, and on all this world music too. Bassist Melvin Gibbs played in Henry Rollins’ band. I love that right before the first chorus, Gibbs’ bass hits the first note of the chord early—it’s in the wrong place, but it’s a beautiful mistake.
There’s all these different elements of his community during a specific time in New York. I’m very intrigued by the world that the song came from, and how many people I admire are connected to that community. Weirdly, that web has extended to my own community even now. It’s still alive. It’s a cycle. It’s not linear at all.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
