The week I meet Nashville-based rapper Nathan John Feuerstein, AKA NF, at his Tennessee home in April, his latest record – Hope – hits No 2 in both the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK album chart, as well as in Australia, Canada and Norway, and No 1 in the Netherlands. He has form: his last two albums topped the US charts. This summer, he will embark on a 30-date North America arena tour; each show on its October European leg has already sold out. The walls of the home studio space in the outskirts of America’s Music City are lined with platinum records from across the globe. Yet, despite his evident success, the 32-year-old musician is something of an unknown entity; elusive, with little name recognition beyond his loyal fanbase. Rarely will you hear his music on the radio; his latest album received little by way of media fanfare or reviews. And, lying back on a large cream sofa, he says he likes it that way.
“In the music industry the perception of how big artists are, and how big they really are, is often really different,” Feuerstein says. “Most people would say I’m small. I might be under the radar, and rarely have my day-to-day life interrupted, but I can come to your city and sell 10,000 tickets, and release albums that sell. I’d rather have a touring business and a culty fanbase behind the scenes – be actually killing it – than have people think I’m killing it. The way I look at it, I have the best of both worlds.”
