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Nick Andree doesn't do filler songs. Every tape is intentional, every track serves a purpose, and the whole catalog is treated like a curated art piece. The Houston, Texas artist has been taking his music serious since 2022. A homie challenged him to show who Nick Andree is. DEATHROW is what came out of that. He's got a producer who calls him when the beat is too good to miss, a Travis Scott-inspired approach to world-building, and zero interest in dropping anything that doesn't add to the vision.
Q: You work with a lot of producers. How'd you link with August?
A: August hit me up right after my first tape. He just found me on Spotify and DM'd me on Instagram. Ever since that day we've talked every day, bro. That's my brother. He'll spam FaceTime me and be like, "Yo, you gotta get on this beat." He produced Russian Cream, Don't Tell, Save You, he's on almost half the tape off Memento Mei.
Q: Have you ever tried producing yourself?
A: I've tried, but I can't lie, I just don't know how FL works. I'll give August an idea and he'll go off of it. People like August, luc1d, Halloween, Valenteen, those are my go-tos. They just get it.
Q: What separates DEATHROW from your earlier work?
A: With every tape, I want to show progress in quality. You'll never hear a song with mixing like I did in my last project. Every time I want to give something different, I'm building a world. DEATHROW has everything against you, the self-titled song, then you got Still Awake which is somber and uneasy. Then Give Me Grace where you're hopeful. It's different emotions, different feelings. I always try to give that.
Q: You said you don't do filler songs. Why not?
A: I'm not in the position where I can have a bad song. I can't make a bad song because I'd take it up with myself and be like, "Bro, you could do so much better than that." I prefer not to drop a tape at all if it's not right. When I drop a tape, it's not like I'm dropping music, I'm dropping a moment. The world stops. Yesterday when it dropped, I heard nothing else. I didn't look at my phone. We just played that shit as if we were brand new listeners.
Q: Travis Scott's been a big influence for you, right?
A: Yeah, bro. Travis has always been my main inspiration for the music structure. Each era, like Rodeo, Days Before Rodeo, it's all different.
Q: You mentioned wanting your whole Spotify profile to look like a piece of art. What does that mean?
A: I want it all to look clean. Every tape is a whole different vibe, a whole different feeling. There's no bad songs, every song on there has its own purpose. I'll never be the type to go and add a filler song just because I need it to be longer. If it was up to me, I'd prefer not to drop a tape if it's not right. I want to be seen as an artist, not just a rapper. Who knows what kind of music I'll be making next? Last tape I was experimenting with a glitch effect on the outro for DEATHROW. The tone's always changing.
Q: What's the underground scene look like to you right now?
A: Underground's kind of weird now. I saw a chart on Twitter with the biggest underground artists by monthly listeners, they had Nine Vicious on there, and everyone in the comments was like, "That's not even underground at that point." I feel like people are taking underground as a sub-genre now. It used to be different. The lifespan of a rapper is like four years unless you're in front of everybody's face all the time. Once the sponsors and brands come in, you got like four years. But you got people like OsamaSon who already broke out of that, he has his core fanbase, so he can't really fall off.
Q: You mentioned Casket earlier. What's that relationship like?
A: Me and Casket are cool as fuck. Sometimes we'll get on the game and play Arc Raiders. We're cool outside of music. He's always been my motivator in a way because I see him still doing his thing and still popping. I found him back when he was still only dropping on SoundCloud. We made Bring Your Friends together, which was a mega hit. That song has 240k on Spotify. It boosted us to a whole different level. We have that friendly competitiveness, he's the one that keeps me going. We drop around the same time because we have the same kind of fanbase, so we're just feeding them music.
