Biography
Nick Hakim surfaced amid the mid-2010s with a hazy fusion of folk and soul whose psychedelic cast stemmed from his pronounced taste for reverberation. Following his first recordings he landed a contract with ATO, which issued his opening full-length Green Twins in 2017. Later solo sets included Will This Make Me Good in 2020 and Cometa in 2022, while the intervening Small Things arose from a partnership with saxophonist and poet Roy Nathanson.
A Washington, D.C. native now living in Brooklyn, Hakim contributed to Gizmo’s Red Balloon alongside Gwen Bunn and Casey Benjamin before wider attention arrived. Two well-received EPs appeared in 2014: the largely acoustic Where Will We Go, Pt. 1 and Where Will We Go, Pt. 2, begun during his Berklee College of Music enrollment and placed in a restrained, singularly close register between Jeff Buckley and Anthony Hamilton. Steady touring, among them opening dates for Maxwell and King, helped assemble an audience even as he spent three years shaping the debut album that reached stores via ATO in May 2017.
In 2018 Hakim joined Onyx Collective—fellow New Yorkers already featured on the Green Twins cut “Those Days”—for a collaborative 12-inch issued for Record Store Day; the Hakim-fronted side “Vincent Tyler” added strings and background vocals from Kadhja Bonet.
Entering the 2020s he reunited with Onyx Collective for their reading of the Rodgers & Hart standard “My Funny Valentine.” Will This Make Me Good, released that May, proved more hallucinatory and unsettled than its predecessor. Further joint work produced the compact Small Things with Jazz Passengers leader Roy Nathanson, which appeared on Onyx Collective’s NYXO label in April 2021. October 2022 brought the romantic third solo album Cometa, sections of which Hakim produced independently, although the euphoric advance single “M1” was shaped with longtime colleague Andrew Sarlo and DJ Dahi.
A Washington, D.C. native now living in Brooklyn, Hakim contributed to Gizmo’s Red Balloon alongside Gwen Bunn and Casey Benjamin before wider attention arrived. Two well-received EPs appeared in 2014: the largely acoustic Where Will We Go, Pt. 1 and Where Will We Go, Pt. 2, begun during his Berklee College of Music enrollment and placed in a restrained, singularly close register between Jeff Buckley and Anthony Hamilton. Steady touring, among them opening dates for Maxwell and King, helped assemble an audience even as he spent three years shaping the debut album that reached stores via ATO in May 2017.
In 2018 Hakim joined Onyx Collective—fellow New Yorkers already featured on the Green Twins cut “Those Days”—for a collaborative 12-inch issued for Record Store Day; the Hakim-fronted side “Vincent Tyler” added strings and background vocals from Kadhja Bonet.
Entering the 2020s he reunited with Onyx Collective for their reading of the Rodgers & Hart standard “My Funny Valentine.” Will This Make Me Good, released that May, proved more hallucinatory and unsettled than its predecessor. Further joint work produced the compact Small Things with Jazz Passengers leader Roy Nathanson, which appeared on Onyx Collective’s NYXO label in April 2021. October 2022 brought the romantic third solo album Cometa, sections of which Hakim produced independently, although the euphoric advance single “M1” was shaped with longtime colleague Andrew Sarlo and DJ Dahi.
Albums
Real Here Now / Water
2026
Small Things
2021
Green Twins
2017
Where Will We Go, Pt. 2
2014
Where Will We Go, Pt. 1
2014
Singles
