YUZIMA PHILIP

Yuzima Philip is a being of the modern era — his music outlasts the remnants of the old world, freeing sound from its oppressive captivity.
He grew up in the Gun Hill Projects during the crack epidemic, in a household held together by a mother who was suspicious of institutions but wise enough to know which ones were worth trusting. She placed him on a stage at Crawford Methodist Church in the Bronx before he was four years old. That decision was not accidental.
 

Born into a household where Ella Fitzgerald and Nancy Wilson shared space with Rick James and Mel’isa Morgan — alongside what a friend once called “country music”: Carole King and Todd Rundgren — Yuzima absorbed everything without choosing between any of it. When his mother moved them to Montpelier, Vermont, Metallica and Nirvana entered the mix just as “Smells Like Teen Spirit” dropped, without ever displacing his love for hip-hop. Rather than choose between scenes he began blending them, performing with alternative bands while keeping his Bronx sensibilities intact.

He built his sound on four-tracks, formed a DJ crew, and recorded for school credit at a Quaker boarding school. After graduation he relocated to New Jersey — living through drug raids and hardship in a rooming house before securing stable housing and launching his independent career on his own terms.
His debut EPs earned early praise from Treblezine. It’s Wonderful and The Machine followed, gaining viral momentum and coverage from Afropunk and Gayletter. His 20-minute noise rock opera Sound Opera—Project One was called the work of a “rising indie luminary” by the late Dan Lucas of The Guardian and Louder Than War, while Impose Magazine dubbed him a “prince of noise.” His trilogy — The Book of Slayed, Gun Hill Projectz, and Street Corner Creep — pushed further into identity, rebellion, and resistance. When “Hamburger Readymade 1” appeared in a Tonight Show skit, it was Jimmy Fallon and Questlove’s unscripted reactions that said everything the underground already knew.

Now operating as a record keeper and pattern observer in the system of anti-fascism, Yuzima releases music through the POD series — a self-designed format that refuses the architecture of streaming and builds works that function as evidence, not entertainment. POD I features Ditzy Mirage, filmed in Guanajuato, Mexico. POD II brings Ancestors, a 20-minute single structured around the conventions of Greek theatre.
Nobody has a word for what Yuzima Philip makes.
That’s the point.