Someone Stole All of Nosaj Thing’s Gear, but He’s Not Complaining

The Grecian playwright Euripides once said, “He who submits to fate without complaint is wise.” Whether or not you share the beliefs of ancient Athenians, Nosaj Thing still has every right to complain. After an April 15 show in Houston on his recent tour with electronic producer Clark, someone broke into the car that housed his gear and that of his tour mates. The shattered window was trivial compared to the cache of stolen items: one messenger bag, one iPad mini, one camera, two external hard drives, three backpacks, and four MacBook Pros. In an instant, years’ worth of work was gone.

“It happened so quick,” the 30-year-old producer/DJ born Jason Chung says over the phone. He managed to replace some of the equipment he’d lost at the Apple store and recounts the robbery with a surprising calmness. “It was one in the morning, and there was nobody [near the diner where we were eating]. We’ll never know [who did it].”

Instead of canceling the tour, Chung called off only two dates. During this brief respite, he pieced together an entirely new live set composed of music he’d sent to Innovative Leisure head Jamie Strong, as well as tracks from his third LP, Fated, out today via Innovative Leisure. When word of the crime spread, friends and fellow musicians reached out to offer their support. Fade To Mind’s L.A. based singer Kelela took things a step further, expressing her desire to work with Chung before doing just that. “We just connected and did an edit of one of my tracks and one of her tracks in a day, and we performed it that night in L.A.” Chung says. “That gave me a boost to be able to finish the tour. It was really tough. I was going through the motions. It just kept hitting me. Losing all my sessions for the last record was pretty heavy.”

Now officially back home, the consequences of the theft have sunk in. Still, Chung doesn’t complain. He’s accepted this potentially foreordained misfortune (he did, after all, select the name of his new album before the robbery). If anything, he’s overwhelmingly optimistic about beginning anew.

“I lost two years’ worth of work and my live set, but the amount of support I’ve been getting from everybody has made me feel okay,” he says. “I’m going to bounce back and make better tracks.”

That Chung is so adept at dealing with adversity isn’t surprising. During the early stages of his career, he practically sought it out. After learning to produce and DJ while attending Schurr High School in the Los Angeles suburb of Montebello, he frequented the Smell, the all-ages DIY punk-rock haven in Downtown L.A. Predictably, the electronic-meets-hip-hop hybrid he’d forged from a love of ‘90s rap (e.g., Warren G, Snoop Dogg) and a growing fascination with jungle/house wasn’t always well-received by the punk crowd.

“I felt like the black sheep over there. Everything was noise [rock] and folk and punk,” Chung explains. “But that’s what helped me. It made me go left-field even more.”

Acceptance came in the form of beat scene bastion Low End Theory. Chung has never been a resident DJ, but he’s attended and performed regularly since the weekly’s inception in 2009. “That was all I would think about,” he says of his first years at Low End Theory. “Everyone felt it. Everyone knew something was happening.”

The rise of Chung’s stature has run tangential to Low End Theory’s ever-expanding popularity. After Kid Cudi used one of Chung’s beats for his song “Man on the Moon,” Low End Theory founder Daddy Kev released Chung’s first album, Drift, on his label Alpha Pup. High-profile tours (opening for the xx), festival performances (Coachella) and remixes (Radiohead, Little Dragon) followed. The list of rappers Chung’s worked with, though short, is unimpeachable. He’s produced songs for Low End Theory resident MC Nocando, Kendrick Lamar, and Chance the Rapper, who appears on Fated.

Yet Fated isn’t primed for radio, and there are no drops programmed to fracture festival speakers. This was a conscious decision by Chung, who had become disillusioned with the state of electronic music while composing the album. “There was a lot of trap-club shit happening… and I was so tired of that. I just wanted to disconnect myself, and I went the other direction.”

The album also marks a sonic departure from Chung’s first Innovative Leisure release, 2013’s Home. Unlike Home, the shorter, more direct suites on Fated aren’t entirely dark and insular. Instead, like an owl gliding from one moonlit branch to another, they shuttle between light and dark effortlessly, like the gods, Grecian or otherwise, intended.

Looking ahead, Chung plans to spotlight artists on his recently launched Innovative Leisure imprint Timetable. He also hopes to collaborate with more artists and release music at a faster clip. The loss of his music in Houston probably wasn’t a blessing in disguise, but the event and its subsequent outpouring of goodwill crystallized why Fated is important. “With the last records, I felt like I was in a cave. [Now] I’m finally connecting more,” Chung says. “That’s what I want to do with my music from here on out.”

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