A-list X-Man

BY ISAAC HAMLET

After spending the past five years leveling up in Minneapolis, Matt Allen is rolling for initiative.

“The Rolling Initiative Tour is my first ever me-headlining, like, I’m-the-guy tour,” said Allen, a hip-hop artist hailing from Minnesota who performs as Nur-D, a month before his debut tour kicked off.

Back in 2019, Allen toured with fellow hiphop artist Brother Ali. Despite having only hit the music scene in 2018 and having his performance career slowed by a global pandemic, Allen has nonetheless quickly gained a following around the Twin Cities. He earned acclaim from City Pages, a Twin Cities alt-weekly that ceased publication in 2020, when he was voted Best New Artist in 2019, and from First Avenue, a regionally known music venue, where he headlined the Best New Bands show in 2020.

In those first few years of performing as Nur-D, Allen gained a reputation for clean performances with songs that touched on themes like nerd culture and body positivity. But following the murder of fellow Minnesotan musical artist George Floyd in 2020, Allen knew his music would have to expand to talk about systemic racism, a leap he was initially nervous to make.

“It’s a lot easier to dance in the club when you’re not thinking about police brutality,” Allen said. “So I was feeling some type of way about it, but I was talking to my fans and my friends about it and it was like, ‘You know, this is the way to go,’

In 2020 alone, Allen released two full albums, 38th and Chicago Avenue, expressing personal and communal emotions and experiences in the wake of Floyd’s death and subsequent protests. He didn’t stop there. Allen founded Justice Frontline Aid—an organization that provides aid and education “to those who put their bodies on the frontline in the fight for justice”—and

“The progress is always slower than you’d like—I think in 2020, we all assumed it would be fixed by the time the lock-down finished. I think a lot of people just assumed that and forgot how long it takes for real social change to happen,” said Allen, speaking on his view of where things stand now, three years later. “It’s slow going and we don’t have thousands of people in the street as we did in 2020, but [there are] people who have not left— George Floyd Square is still being held down by protesters 1,000 days later. Things aren’t done, it’s just not as sexy in the news anymore.” and I just trusted my fans to be the type of people that I hoped they were. I was profoundly vindicated for the most part. Not to say I didn’t lose anybody, [but] I gained so much more than I lost.” co-founded an artist collective in Minneapolis called FairPlay Entertainment. He participated in protests for justice, gave a TEDx Talk and appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Songs from Allen like “Mr. Officer” and “Black Kid, White Town” speak to this struggle and are largely or entirely devoid of references to Dungeons & Dragons, anime, comics or the like. Though this broadening of focus could be perceived as a tone shift, Allen has still kept his nerdy flair. Even in the two albums he released in 2020, his material remained clean, and lines like “My power level is rising / We fighting with kaio-kens” exist in tandem with samples of dialogue from the activist and Chicago-based Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton.

One of his newer songs, “X-Man,”—off of his latest album Crush—is a love song that also lets him flex his knowledge of Marvel’s X-Men lore. The album as a whole focuses on songs about love and romance.

“I just find that there are so many avenues in these properties that I think you could find music in all of it,” said Allen of how he uses pop culture references to evoke emotion in his songs. “There’s a way to get it. If you want an emotion, I guarantee the X-Men have expressed it at some point. It doesn’t matter what emotion it is, you’ll find it.

“You can get a lot of different emotions out of the same property,” he continued. “I’ve got a song called ‘Ultra Instinct,’ which is obviously about Dragon Ball Z, and it’s about ‘nothing’s gonna stop me, I’m super powerful.’ But then I’ve also got a song called ‘Chi Chi’ where I use Dragon Ball references to talk about love and being in love with somebody.”

In preparing for his Rolling Initiative Tour, Allen is looking to introduce all the dimensions encapsulated by Nur-D to a broader audience.

“When you come out to a Nur-D show, I hope people experience a sliver of time where they can be themselves,” Allen said. “They can dance, they can be weird, they can be silly, they can have a good time, they can be sexy in their body. Just enjoy yourself and know that you’re doing so with someone who wants to see that in you and help cultivate that moment in time for you.”

Nur-D will perform at xBk Live in Des Moines at 8 p.m. on July 28, marking the artist’s second time performing in Iowa following his performance in Sioux City on July 1. Tickets for the show are $15 in advance or $20 at the door.

“I’m never doing a Nur-D show that’s just going through the motions—it is foot-to-the-gas the entire time,” Allen promised his audience. “You’re gonna see a lot of energy, a lot of movement. I’ve got two amazing openers who are coming with me, Lt. Sunnie and Mpls Drew, who I think are some of the biggest pillars in what our up-and-coming music scene looks like. It shows how we do things here in Minnesota.”