Extra Cheese is NAHreally’s 10th release.

A Note From the Author:

There’s a date in 2026 that will mark 20 years since I first recorded a rap song. There’s another that will mark 10 since I started releasing music as NAHreally. And there’s one more that will make five since the first time I dropped an album unselfconsciously. It took me 10 years to build up the nerve to make and share music in earnest. It took five more to finally release whatever baggage caused that 10 year wait. I’ve now worked (often in spite of myself) for a decade, methodically chipping away at resistance as I construct a character.

In many ways the central project of an MC is to create a personal mythology. We pick a name then pick a message that name will represent and deliver. Each line, song, and album we release expands upon, contradicts, redefines, or reimagines that message. It’s completely up to us where we take it—and if things get stale, we can start over with a new moniker. Some MCs are themselves, just turned up to 11; others disappear deeper into a character. Even those who don’t pay much attention to the whole their parts add up to still end up cohering into something distinct through sheer triangulation of information.

I rap because I love words. To me, hip-hop is the absolute pinnacle of the English language. I marvel daily at the mathematically baffling number of ways syllables can be deployed across the span of four beats per bar. The economy and creativity of language the constraints of a rhythmic loop give rise to inspire me constantly. The writing and rewriting required to match meter with meaning is what keeps me coming back, even when I don’t have much to say. So what’s my point? My point is, I really didn’t start rapping with any sort of aim to develop a character or personal mythology. But of course it happened anyway.

Some time around that five-years-ago mark, it started to occur to me what was happening. This thing I love, purely for its own sake, had turned into a way to process life and the world around me, and the character I had created was something along the lines of the person I want to be. Someone who’s quick to crack a joke, thoughtful, curious, calm, earnest—all things I often am but struggle to embody on an everyday basis. And what do all these traits add up to? Well, if you ask me, this is someone who’s a little bit cheesy. Let’s be real: If I’m going to attempt cleverness and sincerity, cheesiness is a risk I have to be willing to take. And it turns out the baggage I needed to let go of before really starting to create what I wanted to was a fear of being—pick your term—cringey, corny, uncool, wack, cheesy. I am who I am, and some days I even am who I want to be, and that person, for better or worse, is a little bit cheesy.

In 2019, before I knew all of this for sure, the following lyrics appeared in the song “Shoutout To Me” on TAPE 4:

I’m not a winner or a loser, I’m just in between.
If I were stadium seating, I’d be the mezzanine.
If I were making a pizza, I’d add some extra cheese.
If you were making a pizza, I’d share my recipe.

Something about that third line immediately stood out. So much so, that, if you look closely on streaming services and back cover art, Extra Cheese is listed as the “label” for all my self-released work dating back to 2018. So often our mind is playing catch up with what we already know to be true. Extra Cheese was always going to be the title of my 10th release—I’m just glad I stuck around long enough to see it happen.

— NAHreally