The only one of his kind in the area, Allentown-based NyteXing's “Gamer Not a Gangster” hip-hop brings the relatively obscure genre of nerdcore to the Lehigh Valley, with music that draws on his love of video games and comic books.
Born in Brooklyn, Matthew Mosley moved to the Valley at the age of 14. Despite the lukewarm attention paid to hip-hop in the wider music community, NyteXing is at home here. “When I first started four years ago,” he says, “I started the Star City Showcase at Touchstone Theatre and got a bunch of rappers to perform.” Thanks to his prolific generation of tracks and unflagging activity, NyteXing performs in the area at spots like Sportsmen's Cafe, Hot Plate Soul Kitchen on Bethlehem's SouthSide and First Fridays, and outside the Valley in Reading, New York and Maryland.
Performing at the annual video game festival MAGfest was a highlight for NyteXing, whose name is a remix of Nightwing (and pronounced the same way), the name Robin adopts when he moves on from being Batman's partner to his own superhero. “My dad was a big Batman fan, and my mom was a Marvel fan,” Mosley says, “so they got me into both. I have a lot of respect for my father. He had a tattoo of the bat symbol, and when I was 21, I got a tattoo of the Nightwing symbol.”
The stigma that might once have been associated with interest in anime, video games and comic books has evaporated as a seemingly never-ending stream of superhero movies deluges the box office, so why not filter life into music through references to the media we love? Check out where NyteXing will be performing next and wrap your ears around some nerdcore on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Spotify, SoundCloud and Bandcamp!
