Nicolas-Tyrell Scott Interview
Nicolas-Tyrell Scott is a culture and music journalist, speaker, critic, and curator. He’s had bylines in HYPEBEAST, NME, Paper, and more. He’s also the host of the Town Hall conversations at ICA London.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
So, I feel like I've always been into music, ever since I got a Discman as a child anyway. I was raised on Mary J Blige's whole discography, as well as early Usher (8701), Ja Rule, Whitney, Janet, Madonna, etc via my parents. One of the first newer R&B albums, at the time, that I remember aligning with was Mario's self-titled and Destiny's Child's The Writing’s On The Wall, which was on repeat for me for sure.
Music has fundamentally been the art form that I first connected with. When early Twitter emerged—circa 2009—I found myself constantly tweeting about music, and it gained small traction amongst my local community and friends. I started a blog on the back of that and led music sections for blogs that my friends created around culture. In London, the "creative" eco-system was growing, which meant that my generation of younger millennials was exploring their passion points during their mid-teens. My blog work allowed me to write for bigger blogging platforms at the time and begin to learn about writing at large for culture titles being accessible to me within reason. It was more demystifying. During university, I'd come back to my hometown of London to review concerts like Burna Boy's 2014 Homecoming and Mick Jenkins' Boiler Room.