Following the release of new pop punk-inflected track pretend just last month, emo rapper and musician nothing,nowhere. just dropped new single blood, featuring artist KennyHoopla and rising producer JUDGE.
While all those ultra-stylised track and artist names can be a bit of a mouthful (and sometimes read like typos), blood is a straightforward, fun, quietly eerie emo track with a catchy pop chorus. nothing,nowhere. – born Joe Mulherin – started his career on SoundCloud in 2015 before releasing a slew of successful EPs, full-length debut The Nothing,Nowhere LP and commercial breakout Reaper, an album of guitar-led emo rap released on Pete Wentz’s DCD2. He was then signed to Fueled By Ramen in 2018 for third album Ruiner.
Reaper, which featured vocals from Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional on track Hopes Up, saw nothing,nowhere. get recognised more widely, with praise from the New York Times. blood, which includes a verse and screamed sections from artist KennyHoopla, born Kenneth La’Ron, was released via Fueled By Ramen today. It’s accompanied by a video directed by Mason Mercer which follows nothing,nowhere. and KennyHoopla on a “covert mission” into an illicit black market.
Speaking to us about the track, Joe said: “I wrote this song in 15 or 20 mins in LA when JUDGE showed me the instrumental. I had this idea of writing a song about a killer, but instead of it literally being about killing someone, it’s about killing a relationship with someone you care about and getting stuck in that loop. I wanted to take the song to the next level so I hit up KennyHoopla and he just made the song that much better. I’m proud of this one."
In a release, he said: “blood is about being a metaphorical killer; killing relationships with people you care about and getting caught in that toxic cycle.” On the video, he added, “I shot the video with Kenny in Boston and we got to hang out with a bunch of rescue animals. It was a beautiful experience to be able to combine my love of animals, film and music into one shoot.”
blood is the latest in a string of promising releases for nothing,nowhere., following from standalone tracks pretend, lights 4444, and the One Takes Vol.1 EP, a digital compilation of reworked versions of his tracks. His last EP, bloodlust – a collaboration with Blink 182’s Travis Barker – was released late last year.
The highly prolific artist is pretty hard to keep track of, but here’s hoping we’ll see even more from him soon.
